11 Best Bare Metal Servers (April 2024)

Bare metal servers provide business and academic research groups with custom hardware configurations to support high-performance solutions. The cloud hosting company provides dedicated hardware without virtualization.

While most development teams building cloud-native applications prefer fully managed data center hardware that can scale on demand with project growth, bare metal servers are guaranteed single-tenant occupancy for the highest levels of isolation in production.

Bare metal server platforms are increasingly being used for artificial intelligence and machine learning. These applications require the web server to be equipped with a GPU for dedicated use. Let’s explore some of the top options I recommend for dev teams and research groups.

I chose IONOS as the best bare metal server provider for its balance of price and features. The company offers both Intel and AMD servers at different configurations with billing by the minute that maxes out at monthly rates for consistent budgeting. A 32-gigabyte RAM Intel six-core CPU with two terabytes of storage will run no more than $100 per month.

You can create custom configurations with different hardware, like SSD and HDD storage. AMD Ryzen Pro and EPYC processors are cheaper, starting at $32.00 monthly.

If you need more than one dedicated server and are looking for a bare metal solution, you can build your own cloud server network of any size at IONOS for discounted rates.

Bare metal server hosting at IONOS includes personalized customer service that is designed to meet the requirements of BPO in enterprise IT. The prices are much lower than those of IBM Cloud and most other public cloud hardware solutions.

InMotion Hosting offers bare metal dedicated server plans for applications like high-frequency quant trading and private cloud implementations.

Compared to a virtual machine or VPS hosting with cPanel administration, developers will get the fastest performance speeds for their hardware specifications with a bare metal cloud app.

Cloud computing includes virtual desktop deployments where the physical server is located in a remote data center.

Dedicated server hosting will be more expensive over time if your business or organization relies on an in-house IT management team for systems administration. InMotion Hosting bare metal plans start at $69.99 per month. Compared to most of the other dedicated hosts I’ve reviewed, InMotion’s bare metal servers are a steal.

I’ve always appreciated Liquid Web for its no-fuss professional services. It’s base-level dedicated server offers similar specs to InMotion’s Aspire line, but it costs a bit more. A four-core server with 16 gigabytes of RAM and eight terabytes of bandwidth costs $75.00 per month.

Unlike a virtual server on shared hardware, your organization can use the hardware for data management to support any cloud infrastructure. It is your choice to install Linux, BSD, or Windows server software.

Liquid Web has one of the best reputations in the industry as a bare metal server provider. It also provides traditional dedicated server solutions that are configured for high-performance requirements.

A bare metal cloud server can be cheaper than a fully managed hosting solution because of the division of workload responsibilities. Developers can use bare metal hosting at Liquid Web with any cloud service.

Bare metal server accounts at AccuWebHosting start at $103.00 per month and provide dedicated resources at higher price ranges for data center outsourcing.

A bare metal cloud solution at AccuWebHosting will support any OS or web software stack you need to run for database-driven applications. Its data center specializes in Intel Xeon servers, which are much cheaper than Alibaba Cloud, AWS, GCP, or Azure.

AccuWebHosting includes bare metal server backups with a service-level agreement that is generated for enterprise compliance requirements. Unlike shared or reseller hosting, you will never share your hardware environment with other users.

Bare metal dedicated servers at AccuWebHosting will network with other cloud provider resources to build out complex systems for microservices and mobile applications.

HostGator has a dedicated server line famous for reliability, uptime, and affordability. To order a server under the bare metal plan, you will need to contact the customer service department directly.

Dedicated servers are fully managed hosting solutions designed for multi-domain publishing at the cheapest rates. A Virtual Private Server (VPS) is another budget option at HostGator. The managed platform offers dedicated cPanel hosting.

HostGator delivers bare metal hardware resources on demand to enterprise clients, academic groups, and other groups with custom workload activity for dedicated hardware.

As a bare metal server provider, HostGator lacks the cloud server engineering resources for private cloud and Windows server solutions. Choose them when you need a cheap cPanel host with support for unlimited domain names and a suite of bonus offers on sign-up.

Bluehost is another popular cPanel host with a great reputation for WordPress hosting on shared servers. Web publishers can scale their sites and mobile applications through affordable levels of VPS and dedicated server hosting.

For bare metal cloud server accounts, you will need to contact customer service directly. The default dedicated server plan is fully managed.

Bluehost maintains independent data center locations, which are a viable alternative to public cloud resources for some enterprise workloads. As a cloud service, you can network with other hardware resources to build microservice apps with APIs that guarantee compliance with industry privacy requirements using physical server isolation.

Most WordPress publishers will be able to scale on virtual machine plans by transitioning from shared to VPS hosting.

I’ve reviewed many dedicated servers in my time, and I’ve found InterServer has some of the lowest rates in the industry for bare metal server configurations, starting at $44.00 a month. If you need to build out custom cloud infrastructure for different apps and business departments, the dedicated resources at InterServer are engineered for every level of support.

You can order bare metal, fully managed, or GUI dedicated server plans that support high-performance requirements.

Web server snapshots make it easy to install full-stack solutions on dedicated servers without a lot of complex systems administration.

Bare metal dedicated servers at InterServer give you the command line tools and root access required to build out any web server configuration. This is great for programming teams to support non-standard databases and programming languages with dedicated resources at low prices.

Contabo dedicated servers are priced according to the specifications of the Intel or AMD hardware licensed to the plan. AMD RYZEN 12 units with 64 gigabytes of RAM and one TB NVMe SSD storage are only $106.99 per month.

You can scale server resources up and down as required with a choice of eight international data centers for cloud hosting using the control panel.

Web server hardware with individual configurations, secure isolation, and high-performance specifications are available with bare metal, managed cloud, and GUI subscription options according to the needs of your project and organization.

By consolidating data center resources at Contabo, you can save considerably over the price of public cloud resources when supporting high-traffic apps in production. The resources are good for testing and staging environments.

The policy at GreenGeeks is that managed dedicated servers include the full stack of administrative and runtime software as its VPS and shared hosting plans, while any unmanaged dedicated server plans are provided as bare metal with the individual installation of any web server stack combination.

This makes it easy to transition production apps to better hardware plans as traffic scales or build microservice apps. GreenGeeks pledges carbon neutrality by contributing back its data center electricity usage to charity organizations and environmental groups.

Dedicated servers start at $169.00 per month at GreenGeeks with Intel Atom 330 Dual Core servers. You get five IP addresses and 10 TB of data transfer monthly, but the general specifications of the web servers are less robust than other choices.

Bare metal options are sold as unmanaged dedicated server plans with subscriptions for managed services priced extra. The GreenGeeks advantage is superior customer service and long-term data center engineering experience for security, uptime, and performance.

A2 Hosting gives you the option of four bare metal server offerings located in its Michigan-based data center.

One thing I noticed in my review of A2 Hosting is the renewal costs for dedicated servers. You’ll get a fantastic discount for your first 24-month contract, but be prepared to pay roughly double upon renewal. The difference between the managed servers and unmanaged platforms is around $50 per month, cheaper than in-house staff.

I recommend A2 Hosting if you know that you will be using cPanel and CloudLinux as your web server solution. MySQL database, PHP, and Python tools are pre-installed.

Under the managed plan, A2 Hosting provides security patches and updates. With unmanaged bare metal servers, you will have to do it yourself. You can run both options in a unified AMP.

Hostwinds dedicated servers come in at $122.00 per month for an E3-1270 v3 CPU with four cores and eight gigabytes of RAM. You only get one TB HDD storage with the base configuration, while the upgrade to one TB SSD storage is $30 per month.

This configuration can be useful for projects that need to manage SSD and HDD storage resources together. However, I don’t recommend HDD for CMS apps.

Hostwinds makes it easy to configure each dedicated server with a choice of Linux operating systems or Windows. Another advantage is that the platform provides full IPMI access to VNC KVM controls with more configuration, maintenance, and ISO mounting options available in an integrated control panel.

The control panel contains real-time hardware monitoring, metrics, and traffic reports that are helpful for active site management. I find its customer support is usually quick and reliable.

A bare metal server consists of the CPU, RAM, storage, motherboard, and I/O networking of a dedicated web server without the installation of any layers of the software stack. Customers are able to install the exact operating system, server framework, database, and extensions required.

A bare metal server can be compared to a dedicated server with a managed software stack that is pre-installed and maintained over time by the web host. In contrast, access to a bare metal server is limited to the systems administration team, which is in complete isolation.

The disadvantages of a bare metal server depend on the requirements of your development project. Bare metal servers provide functionality that cannot be built on managed cloud platforms. This means companies will need to invest more in systems administration over time.

The ability to access secure hardware partitions using virtual machines or VPS platforms makes bare metal servers a more expensive option. Users of shared hardware will have limitations on data processing that bare metal servers overcome with single-tenant occupancy.

Shared hosting plans limit the number of data requests that can be processed at one time, as well as quotas for the total number of monthly page hits or database requests permitted per plan. Shared hosting platforms host multiple domains under a single IP address using pooled server resources. This means that the performance of websites may vary in production.

With shared hosting, thousands of domains can run on a cloud web server with various rates of traffic, non-aligned domain ownership, and varieties of content under publication. Some sites may attract more malicious activity from bots or hackers — so security is better on bare metal.

VMs and VPS platforms include an independent operating system and web server configuration for each account using virtualization to provide isolation on multi-tenant hardware at rates cheaper than dedicated hardware. Dedicated servers with managed cloud plans remove systems administration duties for development teams and provide pro tools for programmers.

With bare metal servers, the business or academic group using the hardware has guaranteed single-tenant occupancy, which includes full use of web server resources in production. This means you won’t need to share RAM, CPU usage, or traffic congestion with other users.

A dedicated server guarantees a fixed level of RAM, CPU allocation, storage, and bandwidth every month with the security of a single-tenant environment. But, dedicated servers also include a managed web server stack where the web host maintains the OS, database, and other runtime extensions for the hardware environment — this is not provided on bare metal.

With bare metal servers, your team gets root access to the web server hardware with guaranteed single-tenant occupancy but must install all of the components of the software stack manually through DevOps tools or command line utilities. Your team must also manage the security upgrades and software patches over time to maintain the integrity of the environment.

A managed dedicated server will save business and academic groups a lot of money over time by providing security upgrades to the web server stack. Otherwise, with bare metal servers, you will need to employ your own staff and maintain operations at a high state of vigilance.

If you are a multi-domain publisher accustomed to using tools like cPanel and Plesk, a managed server will make it simpler to set up and deploy domains, email accounts, FTP transfers, database installations, and programming language settings.

Bare metal server solutions are generally marketed to enterprise groups that need guaranteed single-tenant occupancy on hardware for the purposes of industry compliance. VM and VPS plans both run on shared hardware where the business owner has no control over the type of web traffic that other accounts will generate. The difference with dedicated servers is that not even the web hosting company will have access to your server environment.

Another major benefit of bare metal servers is that they can be accessed at near-commodity rates for groups that need large volumes of resources in a data center. Bare metal platforms can support web server clusters that scale well past the resources of a single dedicated server to hundreds or thousands of autonomous units. Your IT department can then configure the hardware to meet the needs of different departments and groups with different stack software.