Top 16 Bare Metal Cloud Providers [2024]

Driven by the growth of AI/ML applications and the manufacturing industry undergoing a digital transformation, the bare metal cloud market is expected to increase from $8.5 billion in 2023 to $19.1 billion by 2028 at a CAGR of 17.4%. Bare metal cloud servers offer a secure and reliable high-performance hosting solution that has become especially popular.

This guide lists the top 16 bare metal cloud providers based on the Research and Markets bare metal cloud report. We will highlight the services, pros and cons, and pricing of the 8 best providers in the SMBs section and 8 best enterprise bare metal cloud providers.

#What is bare metal?

A bare metal or dedicated server is a physical server utilized by one consumer or a tenant without sharing it with anyone else and managed on-site. A bare metal server offers direct access to hardware without a virtualization layer in between.

#What is bare metal cloud?

A bare metal cloud is a cloud computing service offered by a third-party provider. It enables customers access to dedicated physical servers remotely, with servers managed by the provider. Bare metal cloud hosting allows users to rent a physical server without maintaining it on-site, benefiting from instant provisioning.

Bare metal cloud differs from other cloud services like virtual servers (VPS) or cloud hosting because server hardware doesn't come with a pre-installed hypervisor. Instead, the virtualization software is installed directly onto the server hardware, giving tenants complete control over its resources, not shared with other users.

Bare metal enables faster processing times, lower latency, higher flexibility, scalability, security, and control over your infrastructure, ideal for demanding latency-sensitive workloads such as in data science, IoT, blockchain applications, financial services, or manufacturing/logistics.

#Top Bare Metal Cloud Providers in 2024

Bare Metal Cloud Providers is particularly attractive to a growing number of industries, like AI/ML, manufacturing, and mobile app development.

Below, we list the top 16 bare metal cloud providers highlighted in the Research and Markets bare metal cloud report. The report utilized both primary (in-depth interviews with industry experts, surveying the end users) and secondary sources (exploring the company's websites, services, and financial reports) to define these key players.

The bare metal cloud providers listed in the report were evaluated based on several criteria to ascertain their positions as leaders of the industry:

• Size and scale - indicative of infrastructure robustness;
• The breadth of service offerings to cater to diverse needs;
• Technological capabilities, including automation, orchestration, and networking prowess;
• Market share and revenue metrics reflecting industry standing;
• Global customer presence indicating reach and reliability;
• Innovation fostering competitive edge;
• Pricing models offer flexibility through subscription or fixed options.

We have divided the bare metal cloud providers into two distinct groups - large-scale enterprises seeking more robust infrastructure solutions and small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMBs) seeking more cost-effective options.

#8 Top bare metal cloud providers: SMBs

We analyzed the list of small and medium-sized business (SMB) bare metal cloud providers in the report, based on factors like competitive pricing, flexibility, regional expertise, and how they can cater to smaller enterprises with their dedicated bare metal cloud server solutions. Here is a list of top bare metal cloud providers in the SMB category, in no particular order.

#1. Cherry Servers (LT)

Reviews: 4.5 / 5 (out of 87 reviews)

Overview: Cherry Servers is a Lithuania-based European bare metal cloud provider that offers a wide range of servers for developers and SMBs with light, moderate, and heavy workloads. It emphasizes a flexible and fully customizable configuration for specific workload needs. The primary servers include 4 CPU cores, 3.5 GHz processing power, 32 GB memory, and DDoS protection.

Overall, Cherry Servers is a bare metal cloud provider suitable for any audience requiring a dedicated, high-performance server with the flexibility and scalability of cloud computing.

Pros & cons: Prebuilt servers & customizable options are available, you can add more storage capacity (alter most features like RAM, storage, and hardware). Complete automation for server resource management and scalable storage with free backups. DevOps integrations. Top-notch friendly and free 24/7 technical support.

Pricing: Affordable, lightweight plan starts at $107 monthly.

Best for: Individuals and organizations requiring powerful and highly customizable bare metal cloud infrastructure. Developers and DevOps teams, SMBs, data science professionals, AI and machine learning, gaming, media, and online retailers and e-commerce platforms.

#2. OVHcloud (FR)

Reviews: 2.4 / 5 (out of 2.6K+ reviews)

Overview: OVHcloud is a leading European bare metal cloud provider headquartered in France offering cost-effective dedicated servers and private cloud solutions. OVHcloud provides bare metal servers, hybrid and public cloud solutions, and hosted private cloud to SMBs.

Pros & cons: Manages 40 data centers in 4 continents, with self-manufactured servers and fiber-optic network for maximum efficiency. Customized solutions for enterprise-level projects, big data, AI, and machine learning. Some factors, like the absence of a free website migration service and no automatic backups, are a con; however, generally, only a few drawbacks are experienced in OVHcloud usage.

Pricing: Rise Dedicated Servers start at around $52/month with memory up to 128GB.

Best for: Caters to a wide audience, such as large corporations and established businesses, universities, research labs, educational organizations, security companies, and cybersecurity professionals, or for any business-critical application, development projects, or specialized workloads.

#3. DigitalOcean (US)

Reviews: 4.4 / 5 (out of 1K+ reviews)

Overview: DigitalOcean is an American multinational technology company and cloud service provider headquartered in New York City, operating 15 globally distributed data centers actively serving developers, startups, and SMBs. Enhances growth with predictable cloud costs, good price-to-performance ratio. Cloudways offers fully managed cloud hosting, utilizing DigitalOcean Droplets.

Pros & cons: Offers virtual and bare metal droplet instances with monthly subscriptions. Simplifies development with easy-to-use tools, dedicated support, and faster response times. A globally distributed platform that ensures superior customer experience with minimal downtime and intuitive products.

Pricing: Bare Metal Cloud pricing in the US typically starts at around $150/month for its base model. Extra costs for resources like CPU, RAM, and storage may vary based on usage and location.

Best for: App deployment among tech-savvy teams. Developers can also appreciate its user-friendly interface, whereas business owners can take advantage of its predictable pricing, ease of usage, and development environments.

#4. Joyent (US)

Reviews: not enough available

Overview: Based in the US, Joyent is considered an early innovator in bare metal cloud, offering containers and virtual networking on dedicated servers. Provides core computing, storage, networking, and security globally, in line with several major cloud providers, and services like data analytics, computing, microservices, database, and storage services.

Utilizing open source technology for more than 18 years, championed microservices, containers, and multi-cloud architectures and has partnered with Samsung to develop a next-generation private cloud for scalable applications.

Pros & cons: Provides cloud management tools, including identity & access management, GUI & API management, and usage reports.

Pricing: Their pricing typically starts at around $500 per month for their base configuration.

Best for: Joyent's cloud services are sought after by enterprise-level clients and high-performance computing users. Its robust infrastructure makes it suitable for mission-critical workloads, large-scale applications, and data-intensive operations utilized by developers worldwide.

#5. HPE (US)

Reviews: 1.8 / 5 (out of 76 reviews)

Overview: HPE, or Hewlett Packard Enterprise, is an American multinational information technology company based in Spring, Texa. It offers Bare Metal Cloud as a service solution for enterprise-grade automation and scalability. HPE GreenLake provides a cloud experience for apps and data across all clouds, with complete visibility and control, in a single operating model.

The bare metal cloud market-leading HPE GreenLake portfolio features modular building blocks for enabling workload, including a stack of infrastructure, software, and services.

Pros & cons: Provides solutions for workloads like Data Protection, Big Data, Private cloud, Machine learning, etc. HPE also delivers services for managing end-to-end hybrid cloud environments, simplifying complex migration processes.

Pricing: HPE's entry-level server solutions start at around $100 per month for enterprise-grade infrastructure with prices exceeding several thousand dollars monthly.

Best for: HPE's solutions are primarily consumed by enterprise-level clients in the US. It also caters to finance, healthcare, government, and telecommunications industries.

#6. Scaleway (FR)

Reviews: 1.5 / 5 (out of 242 reviews)

Overview: Scaleway, a French company, specializes in ARM-based servers and object storage services. It offers a range of Bare Metal Cloud solutions, including online servers and comprehensive current Bare Metal offerings.

Pros & cons: Dedibox offers more than 100 hardware configurations dedicated to performance with full server control, premium network access, and infrastructure options. Elastic Metal provides seamless hybrid flexibility, predictable performance, and flexible pricing options. Apple Silicon offers lightning-fast CI-CD for iOS and macOS, ultra-secure data centers in France, and a fully native macOS Monterey 13 experience.

Pricing: Bare metal cloud server plans start at a minimum of €9.99/month for 4 GB RAM.

Best for: Scaleway's Bare Metal Cloud (BMC) solutions are tailored to meet the needs of a diverse range of users, including startups, developers, SMBs, and businesses.

#7. PhoenixNAP (US)

Reviews: 3.5 / 5 (out of 12 reviews)

Overview: PhoenixNAP is a US-based cloud and data center provider that offers bare metal cloud hosting, colocation, and other managed services. The company specializes in designing and developing world-class bare metal clouds that focus on performance, security, reliability, and availability. Key features include colocation facilities with redundant systems, high-density deployments, and flexibility in service options.

Pros & cons: Dedicated servers guarantee 100% uptime, extensive server lineup, connectivity, and 24x7x365 live support. Network services offer high-bandwidth connectivity, enterprise-grade security, and exceptional performance. Tailor-made business solutions that emphasize efficiency, affordability, and protection. Operates data centers across North America, providing cutting-edge computing technology with a pay-per-use payment model, which could be considered an advantage or disadvantage depending on the usage requirements.

Pricing: The minimum pricing for a Single CPU Instance plan starts at $89/month for 64 GB RAM.

Best for: PhoenixNAP is an ideal solution for disaster recovery in global locations because it provides the required backup and restoration solutions. It caters to a diverse range of clients, including small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), enterprises, developers, and IT professionals. It also serves industries such as finance, healthcare, technology, and e-commerce.

#8. Hetzner (DE)

Reviews: 3.1 / 5 (out of 1824 reviews)

Overview: Hetzner is a well-known German company that offers competitive prices on bare metal servers, VMs, and storage solutions. Their bare metal cloud features include a load balancer, primary IPs, networks, firewalls, performance monitoring, documentation & API access, snapshots, backups, DDoS protection, traffic management, and data protection.

Pros & cons: They have dedicated vCPU plans that provide low latencies, which is ideal for sustained high CPU and network use in business-critical applications. Block Storage Volumes offer flexible and scalable SSD-based storage (up to 10TB expandable) & support up to 16 Volumes per cloud server. On the other hand, few users have, at times, experienced hardware failures compared to other BMC providers.

Pricing: Their minimum price for a Dedicated vCPU plan starts at €11.99/month for 8 GB RAM. Their cloud servers boast the best price-performance ratio with unshared power for production workloads.

Best for: Startups, SMBs, developers, and enterprises absorb Hetzner's services to their total. It appeals to those seeking reliable and cost-effective hosting solutions for websites, applications, and databases.

#8 Largest bare metal cloud providers: Enterprises

We evaluated bare metal cloud enterprises, blending qualitative and quantitative research against specific predefined criteria. These top 8 bare metal cloud enterprises, in no particular order, emerged because of their significant revenues, large cloud infrastructure, diverse portfolio for bare metal services, global market leadership, and technically advanced, innovative approaches.

#1. IBM (US)

Reviews: 4.4 / 5 (out of 563 reviews)

Overview: IBM is a major BMC market leader known for its extensive global data center presence and automation tools. IBM acquired SoftLayer in the year 2013, expanding its capabilities in bare-metal servers, now operating over 60 IBM Cloud data centers across 19 countries.

Pros & cons: IMB offers customizable bare-metal servers with over 11 million configurations available, and payment options include hourly, monthly, or reserved capacity pricing. It definitely is on the costlier side when it comes to BMC providers. Also, other users have observed that reloading the OS takes a long time.

Pricing: Classic Plan for IBM Bare Metal Server starts at almost $2625 per month.

Best for: IBM Cloud Bare Metal Servers are single-tenant, dedicated servers that can be deployed and managed as cloud services. They are available in classic or VPC deployment models and cater to diverse customers, including enterprises, startups, developers, and businesses in finance, healthcare, research, and technology industries with demanding computational needs.

#2. Oracle (US)

Reviews: 4.2 / 5 (out of 343 reviews)

Overview: Oracle offers customized bare-metal server configurations offering specific workloads through its Bare Metal Instances. It includes 'Standard' instance configuration for various workloads, balancing CPU cores, memory, and network resources.

Pros & cons: Oracle supports high core counts, high bandwidth applications, and large memory, scaling up to 1.92 billion, 2.3 TB of RAM, and 1 PB of block storage. Customers experience significant performance improvements compared to other public clouds and on-premises data centers. However, factors like implementation complexity, high costs, limited customization, and dependence on the vendor are challenges faced while utilizing Oracle BMC.

Pricing: The estimated monthly cost for Compute - Bare Metal Instances is almost $2,468.

Best for: The target audience for Oracle Bare metal cloud services includes large corporations with complex IT requirements, software developers and DevOps teams, innovative startups, e-commerce platforms, banks, insurance companies, and other organizations with demanding computational needs.

#3. AWS (US)

Reviews: [4.5 / 5 (out of 3652 reviews)[(https://www.gartner.com/reviews/market/strategic-cloud-platform-services/vendor/amazon-web-services/product/amazon-web-services)

Overview: AWS is a significant player in cloud computing, providing bare metal and virtual services for flexibility and performance. Amazon's EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) enables the creation and management of cloud computing resources. While EC2 instances are typically virtual, Amazon offers numerous bare metal options.

Pros & cons: Bare metal instances are suitable for demanding workloads like video encoding, scientific modeling, and multiplayer gaming, requiring direct access to physical resources. Although AWS offers good uptime services, it is not infallible. It does go down like most other providers.

Pricing: The monthly cost for Compute - Bare Metal Instances on AWS is $1500.

Best for: Customers that could benefit from AWS Bare Metal Cloud include enterprise clients, corporations with demanding workloads, big data and analytics companies, game developers, banks, insurance companies, fintech startups, universities, research labs, and scientific organizations can also utilize AWS Bare Metal Cloud for running data-intensive research simulations, scientific computing, and high-performance computing tasks.

#4. Lumen (US)

Reviews: [4 / 5] (out of 23 reviews)(https://www.gartner.com/reviews/market/strategic-cloud-platform-services/vendor/lumen)

Overview: Lumen Edge Bare Metal (formerly known as CenturyLink) is a US-based computing solutions company that leverages an extensive fiber network and manages both dedicated servers and virtual environments for clients. It offers access to a distributed edge network of high-capacity bare metal cloud servers, reducing latency for real-time data processing and storage.

Pros & cons: Lumen has customizable options that allow you to choose the OS, configuration, and pricing model that best suits your business needs, ensuring performance and cost control. Secure, single-tenancy dedicated servers protect data with user-defined firewall policies, customer encryption, and adjustable access across features. But sometimes, the interface can be a little slow.

Pricing: Lumen offers dynamic estimates before deployment, with convenient monthly or pay-as-you-go models. The estimated starting price for 96 GB of RAM is $360 per month.

Best for: Lumen's Bare Metal Cloud (BMC) serves a variety of target audiences, including large corporations and innovative startups, software developers and DevOps teams, companies in the media and entertainment sector, and healthcare organizations utilizing BMC for storing and analyzing data securely.

#5. Rackspace (US)

Reviews: 4.2 / 5 (out of 46 reviews)

Overview: Rackspace Technology specializes in fully managed dedicated servers with professional support offerings. Their dedicated bare metal servers ensure maximum uptime, visibility, security, and control for custom needs. Cloud experts collaborate to design and build a secure, customized bare metal hosting platform dedicated solely to each client's unique business requirements.

Pros & cons: Rackspace offers best-in-class uptime, high performance, and flexible support options tailored to specific needs. Key features include customizable infrastructure, dedicated vendor partnerships, on-demand data centers, always-on connectivity, professional and managed services, and data freedom.

On the other hand, factors like the high cost of hosting, homogenous hardware environment, lack of options for external instance storage, and limited features in their cloud environment could be challenging to deal with in Rackspace.

Pricing: Rackspace's Bare Metal Cloud pricing typically starts at around $500 to $1000 per month for basic configurations.

Best for: Rackspace's Bare Metal Cloud can be utilized by schools, colleges, and universities, companies offering software solutions, marketing and advertising agencies, manufacturing companies, and large & small enterprises.

#6. Horizoniq (formerly INAP) (US)

Reviews: 4.8 / 5 (out of 34 reviews)

Overview: Horizoniq, formerly Internap or INAP, provides bare metal servers, optimized networks, and managed solutions. Deploy across various regions to meet specific needs. Guaranteed infrastructure and network uptime for peace of mind. Customized configurations with the ability to scale up quickly. Offerings include firewalls, load balancers, DDoS mitigation, and block storage. Manage servers through the Compass portal, including rebooting and OS reinstallation.

Pros & cons: Key features include dedicated performance, full server control, 24/7/365 support, a Compass Portal with Console and API Access, and predictable connectivity costs. In contrast, it was observed that there is a lack of hands-on people available for service at a point.

Pricing: Affordable Bare Metal servers start at $100/month and are tailored for small to medium-sized businesses. They feature Intel Xeon CPUs, up to 128GB memory, and 12TB storage.

Best for: Consumers who might benefit from utilizing Horizoniq’s Bare Metal Cloud services include online retailers looking for robust infrastructure, telecom companies utilizing BMC for hosting network management systems, energy companies utilizing BMC for running analytics, companies in the transportation and logistics sector utilizing BMC for tracking shipments, and more

#7. Dell (US)

Reviews: 4.4 / 5 (out of 294 reviews)

Overview: Dell offers scalable dedicated servers and automated tools for cloud-native application deployment. Bare Metal Orchestrator is a software solution facilitating seamless deployment, configuration, and network infrastructure management for Communication Service Providers (CSPs). Enables lifecycle management of multi-vendor servers through a unified user interface.

Pros & cons: Benefits include cost reduction, error minimization, and consistent SLA adherence. Capabilities allow for servers' deployment, configuration, and management at a massive scale. Remotely discover, deploy, and manage hundreds of thousands of multi-vendor bare metal servers. This solution offers agility and flexibility for Core, Edge, and RAN operations. On the other hand, sometimes users experience that the servers can't be added using independent parameters.

Pricing: Get the best prices for Dell dedicated servers here.

Best for: Dell's Bare Metal Cloud solutions benefit various industries, including finance, healthcare, e-commerce, manufacturing, and technology, generally targeting large enterprises.

#8. Microsoft Azure (US)

Reviews: 4.4 / 5 (out of 2017 reviews)

Overview: Microsoft Azure offers bare metal VMs and dedicated host options for specialized workloads via Azure infrastructure services. It provides high-performance storage options such as NFS, iSCSI, and Fiber Channel, which are shareable across BareMetal instances for features like scale-out clusters. Offers function-specific virtual LANs (VLANs) in an isolated environment with certified hardware for specialized workloads.

Pros & cons: Redundant power, supplies, NICs, TORs, ports, WANs, and management, with hot spares for replacement and customer-coordinated maintenance windows. Non-hypervisor BareMetal instances ensure single-tenant ownership with low latency (0.35 ms) between Azure-hosted application VMs and Bare Metal instances. Provides application-aware snapshots, archives, mirroring, and cloning.

Contrarily, factors like Azure requiring platform expertise to navigate its extensive suite of services and configurations can be complex, requiring a significant investment in training, which could be challenging during operation.

Pricing: The minimum price starts at $2,142.68/month for 144 GiB RAM.

Best for: Enterprises - industries benefiting from Microsoft's Azure include telecom companies, manufacturers, transportation firms, energy companies, enterprises, and government agencies utilizing BMC for secure data management and infrastructure modernization.

#To conclude

By providing dedicated physical servers without virtualization layers, the bare metal cloud empowers users with direct access to raw computing power and allows optimal performance with ultimate flexibility and customization. As per the analysis, the future of bare metal cloud providers looks extremely promising due to the emergence of AI and ML applications and an increased demand for high-performance computing solutions.