Compare hosting models

Colocation vs Dedicated Servers

Bring your own hardware into our data centre, or rent a ready-to-use server. Here is how the two models differ.

Colocation and dedicated servers both put a physical machine to work for you, but they split the responsibility in different places. With colocation you own the hardware and ship it to our data centre, where we provide the rack space, power, cooling, physical security and network. With a dedicated server we own and maintain the hardware, and you rent it as a ready-to-use machine. The choice usually comes down to whether you already have hardware and the people to manage it, or you would rather rent a server and let us handle the metal. We run both models in the same carrier-neutral facilities, on the same network.

Choose colocation when you own server hardware and want to house it in a professional data centre with power, cooling and connectivity. Choose a dedicated server when you would rather rent the hardware and skip the capital cost and the maintenance.

Side by side

Colocation and dedicated servers compared

Comparison of colocation and dedicated servers across ownership, cost and responsibility.
Criteria	Colocation	Dedicated server
Hardware ownership	You own the hardware	We own the hardware
Who maintains it	You, with remote hands available	We maintain and replace it
Upfront cost	Capital cost to buy hardware	No hardware purchase
What we provide	Rack space, power, cooling, security, network	A ready-to-use server, plus the facility
Configuration	Whatever hardware you bring	Configurations we offer
Time to deploy	After you ship and install hardware	Quick, the server is already racked
Best for	Owned hardware and an in-house team	Renting a server without managing metal
Facility	Carrier-neutral data centres	Same carrier-neutral data centres

When to choose what

Which model fits your team

Choose colocation when

You have your own servers already, or you have a refresh budget for new hardware.
Your team handles the faults, you have spares and do upgrades.
Occasionally you might need for some remote hands but that's about it.
You need a very specific hardware configuration that no rack mounted or managed hosting rental can offer you.
You want to manage the full lifecycle of your own servers.

Choose a dedicated server when

I need a server online, as fast as possible, no hardware purchases needed.
Rather pay a fixed monthly fee than buying some hardware first.
Server and components should be managed by service provider, failures and hardware replacements as well as single component failures should be handled by service provider.
I do not want to manage a stock of spare parts, deal with individual item warranties and send items to data center for repair.

Bring your own, or rent from us?

We run both colocation and dedicated servers in the same carrier-neutral facilities. Tell us what you have and we will map out the options.

Contact our team

Ready to deploy?

200+ teams rely on Netrouting for bare metal, cloud, GPU servers and colocation. Easy to order servers within minutes. We also love to design custom servers for you and your business, with our experienced engineers.