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The first dedicated server that we had was a descktop computer we setup ourselves and just delivered it to the host where it sat on his internet pipe for a monthly fee.
The second dedicated server we got was about 5 or 6 years ago. We had to pay $2000 for the box but the host built it, installed FreeBSD, Apache and all the softare. He keeps it running, but we have root access and can install anything we want on it ourselves. We pay a flat monthly fee for this with no bandwidth charges.
Nowadays you can get a dedicated server with no up front fee, just monthly bandwidth charges starting at under $200, but you pay per GByte.
Just make sure you get a unix server, either Linux or FreeBSD with Apache, MySQL, PHP and SSL. When our FreeBSD server went online, it stayed up for about 2 years before we restarted the OS. It never crashes.
Also make sure you get some kind of telnet access or SSH. Root access is nice to have but a lot of hosts won't give it to you because they don't trust you. But most unix software can only be installed as root.
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