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I really like Dreamhost. The best thing about Dreamhost is their amazing uptime and stability. I have used many cheaper hosting services previously and have always had at least some problems with their uptime and support. But I got tired of all those super cheap hosts and decided to try a "real" hosting provider instead. And from recommendations from friends, I went with Dreamhost.
I have no experience with their support service though. Why? Because, I have never had any problems, everything have worked flawlessly! And then you need to keep in mind that I have had it up on Dreamhost for about one year now, and there have been absolutely no downtime what so ever. The support is open 24/7 though, so I would expect it to be good. I have never had any troubles with the speed either, it's fast, and very stable.
I also like their control panel. It's should be easy to understand for almost everybody. It's user friendly and have an OK amount of features. But I think that the amount of features is the biggest con of this hosting. It is very suitable for "beginners" and bloggers in my opinion, because there is a automatic script installer that works well and helps you configure wordpress (for example) in minutes. Step by step. But there isn't much more than that.
I am absolutely not an advanced web developer or something like that, but I would understand if those kind of people would miss some features that they might need, in the Dreamhost control panel.
So in short I think this host is absolutely amazing for beginners and intermediate users. I really really recommend it because of the speed, user friendlyness and uptime!
Sincerely, Simon from Sweden (sorry for my bad English)Visit host
I can't praise DreamHost enough for their customer service. The support during my transition from a standard Shared Hosting to a VPS was exemplary and they were extremely fast (no more than 20 mins during a night time) at replying to my emails. Highly recommended if you're looking for a host that actually likes talking to its customers as well as providing a service.Visit host
I started blogging when I was 16 years old. Thought to switch to wordpress because of its customization. I was using a freehost, due to low uptime decided to buy a premium hosting. I joined Dream Host when I was 20, referred by my Friend who is a blogger too. Currently using their hosting for 5 years. I got my child Vanya, made a blog for her. She is trying to catch up English and she posts her Day to Day activities with my help on her blog. "
Fulfill your Dream with Dream Host" .
I found out about Dreamhost through the limited time Lifehacker promotion last month (June 2014). For about $2 a month for the first year for a service that usually costed $9/month and as a newcomer to the web hosting world, I figured I might as well give them a try. I wanted to host multiple sites, and would be taking advantage of the SQL servers.
I've been using Dreamhost for about 1 month. I was surprised by all the services they offered that I didn't realize I would find helpful, such as a free CloudFlare account to cache my website for when Dreamhost was down ( that said, this is purely anecdotal but 2 my sites were not accessible even with cloudflare for about 10-15 min during a nighttime visits at least twice this month.). The unlimited MySQL databases are nice and handy, although the interface for phpAdmin is more dated than the interfaces I've seen with friends who've used other services (such as ixwebhosting). Speaking of dated, the custom email addresses are managed through another very dated interface, called NutsMail. If I ever end up using custom email, I will have the addresses immediately forward the notes to my gmail account.
There are also a great variety of one-click installs, I used Wordpress which worked out seamlessly. I may take advantage of phpBB forums and other one click installs in the future. I can't believe that they're all free! Google Analytics integrates at the domain level just by adding your Google Analytics code into the top level domain, which saves you the trouble of including a script in the header of every page manually.
Fortunately I have not yet had a problem severe enough to need to contact support. What I will say is that Dreamhost's wiki support system has been helpful for many things, including configuring the .htaccess file and uploading my first website. I don't think many other web hosts have their own wiki pages to guide newcomers through their various bugs. The Q and A forums are quite deep, I spent a solid hour in there looking for help in getting PHP scripts to run on pages ending with the .html extension through the .htaccess file (the problem turned out to be that the way to implement this changed when PHP moved from version 4 to version 5.x).
In sum, I'm overall happy with my Dreamhost Experience. I haven't used it long enough to know whether downtime will be an issue, but for now I'm quite happy about having (relatively, with limited rate of growth) a free year's domain name with the package, unlimited domains, unlimited bandwith, and unlimited disk space. I guess I wish the sites' various interfaces (between the admin panel, email, and MySQL admin page) looked nicer, but those are relatively minor quibbles. I can't say for sure whether I'll renew the contract when my first year expires and the price jumps from 26 to $124+ a year, but overall I feel good enough about Dreamhost to recommend it!Visit host
Literally have hosted my sites (plural) with them for years. You cannot beat their uptime or their features and simplicity. I don't know why there are so many negative reviews attributed to their support - every interaction I've had with them, whether via online or phone, has been top-notch.
As I mentioned, I personally have 3 sites registered with their service and I have done freelance work for clients who have also decided to go with DreamHost. Every client I've worked with is thrilled with their decision and I am more than happy to suggest and recommend DreamHost as my hosting provider choice.
The decisions I make while doing freelance web/development jobs reflect on my work and obviously on my abilities as a developer and designer. I am more than happy, and comfortable, to recommending DreamHost to clients because they're so reliable and I've had such a positive experience with them.
Seriously, they're amazing. And you cannot beat the value.Visit host
Normally I do not write reviews because it's a waste of my time. I had been with dreamhost around 5 years. But my experience with dreamhost has recently been awful to the point that I was fed up and moved everything away and I feel the need to write this review to warn people so you do not experience the same ordeal.
My plan with dreamhost was happy hosting. It's a shared hosting environment and they offered pretty much unlimited everything. It sounded perfect however that's when the nightmare started. Initially everything worked great with the plan for a few years and then since last year, they had major issues with server connectivity and the websites were down very often.
One of my e-commerce websites had experienced issue with 500 server error often so I chatted with one of the dreamhost support team and they said my website used a lot of resources. They fixed the issue and brought my website back quickly. However what I didn't know is that tech support guy silently disabled the bot.txt file and blocked all search engines to find my website. He didn't notify me of what he did. And for several months, I had no idea why the visitors were getting less and less to the point that my website was cut out from the world. I checked and in the ftp, I found the bot file was edited on the date I contacted the support. That was the first time I was very angry with dreamhost and the way they handled was truly unprofessional.
I came to the point of no longer want to do anything with dreamhost again when last month, my website was just gone in one morning. It only showed a blank page as if all files were deleted. I panicked and logged into ftp, and found that all the files and folders in the root directory were removed and put in a new folder which I never created. Who did this??? Was it a hacker? I contacted the support immediately through chat screen. The guy said he had no idea who did it but defended that dreamhost didn't do. I asked him to help move all the files back and the site comes back online again quickly.
However!! The same problem happened again last week and that's when I found dreamhost lied. I received an email from dreamhost saying that one of their admins has to disable my website by moving all my files to a new folder which they create and rename it to "DO_NOT_RENAME_THIS_FOLDER". They said my website used too much resources and could disturb other websites in the shared environment, and threatened me not to rename or move those folders until I fix the problem! I contacted the support and they recommended upgrading to VPS would help. (BUT for 100$ a month?!?! for a website with only 30-40 visitors a day???). I had to upgrade to VPS just to fix the immediate downtime problem while seeking the solution, and that's the final straw. I moved all my websites and domain out. The new hosting I use is much more friendly.
DO NOT TRUST DREAMHOST! They take liberty to mess with your files without prior notification!!! Since late last year, my website was brought down deliberately by them 3 times and caused damages to my business, especially that one time my whole site disappeared from google search for months! THEY DON"T CARE!Visit host
As a newbie and the human who thinks differently from most of the people, this is exactly what I want. I no good in English so I even do not care about phone support I prefer chat support function. I like the way they think, they remain human not like others who only tend to take our money out of our pockets. Different thinking is exactly I was looking for.Visit host
My experience on DreamHost was truly awful.
I was setting up a simple mail-server to send emails to my users. Just a little bit of PhP, nothing too tricky. However, all emails originating from my Dreamhost VPS server were getting filed as spam by Gmail.
Throughout many tech support calls with Dreamhost, not once did any customer service rep ever say: "You know, maybe emails sent from Dreamhost just get flagged as spam by Gmail." Instead, I was sent on a wild goose chase down the rabbit hole of email authentication - I now understand more about SPF Records, DKIM keys, reverse PTR lookups, Gmail's SMTP Protocol, than any sane human being should.
At wits end, I decided to make a simple PhP mailer script, and put it on another small website I have hosted on iPage. Guess what?
It worked, first try. The email went straight into my inbox.
I had just wasted two weeks troubleshooting an issue that was mind-numbingly simple: all emails sent through Dreamhost will always get classified as spam by Gmail. Perhaps your mileage will vary, but I can say in all honesty that I was incredibly thorough scientific in ruling out every conceivable variable that could have caused my mail to fail. Ultimately, the only remaining culprit was Dreamhost.
To sum it up succinctly: Dreamhost sucks, and I wish I could get the last two weeks of my life back.Visit host
simply amazing ... this is by far the easiest and most convenient way of running your own web identity ... trying for around a year in getting my small business online and finally i have found a turnkey solution at the most affordable rates... 10/10 for you guysVisit host
It's a very good hosting, the online time it's about 98%-99%.
My favourite.
The only bad thing about this host is the support, they always have the experts busy.
My global opinion: 5 Stars.Visit host
If there was a Zero star for support i will give it to this company, SUPPORT is virtually non existant, i opened a case online 24hrs ago and still no response from anyone, i opened another case online with the highest urgency request and a few hours later still no response, i tried to chat many times and all chats sit there for a long while without being answered
Finally after many tries someone answered the CHAT, but was clueless on what i needed done, a simple custom dns entry that any dns host is able to create, the person suggested the wrong solution and then hung up the chat or the chat just ended!! taking my business somewhere else at any costVisit host
I found that DreamHost was really effective and quick in the setup of my domain. I had previously had experiences with other companies that did not service my requests well, and I wish I had known about DreamHost. When my site suffered unknown downtime, I contacted them and they were quick and effective in getting my site back up. I would definitely recommend DreamHost to my friends.Visit host
I switched to dreamhost just over a year ago so that I could take advantage of a few features they support. In particular, I liked the idea of having each of my websites stored as a separate user on the shared server. This meant that my websites couldn't interfere with each other. However, I have *constantly* been plagued with uptime and site speed issues. Multiple e-mails to dreamhost support resulted in form letters and statements that my websites were 'fine'. However, I don't accept 10 second page load times as being 'fine'. I even registered a virtual private server (VPS) to try to improve my page load times, with no improvement.
Then, this week, all of my websites went offline. Support took almost 24 hours to respond, with a simple form letter that my server had run out of virtual memory. They claimed my websites were back online, but they were not. Another e-mail to them was responded to in another 24 hours, with IDENTICAL phrasing. It was just another form letter. Then they moved my server, claiming they had given me notice, but they never had. I'm just finishing up moving all of my websites from dreamhost to another host.
Dreamhost seems like it has nice features, but their incompetent staff, they're issues with uptime, their lack of caring for customers who have sent multiple complaints, their VPS performance, and their host of other problems make them a terrible hosting company to deal with. I recommend to find a better host...
Fun fact: My web servers and mySQL servers were hosted in different data centers, resulting in 100ms+ pings between them. That explains why many people with wordpress installs on dreamhost see issues. Seriously, friends don't let friends dreamhost.Visit host
I've been hearing lots of good reviews about this host so I decided to try it out since they were having a sale. When I successfully ordered I asked tech support to help me move my site from my old host to dreamhost they were very helpful cause they did almost everything for me. They are very up to date with the latest web technologies. They even have the latest cpanel which is good cause you don't want old bug/glitches to cause problems to your site. In the end I recommend everyone to try this host out cause they will help you out.Visit host
We had a problem with hosting and tried to contact the customer service never got reply.
Stay away from this Dreamhost.Visit host
I have used many webhosting websites, DreamHost is my favourite website. It has great uptime, support and freatures better than anyone.Visit host
I used Dreamhost because it was recommended as WordPress hosting by WordPress.org, and I have to say it has worked very well. It has unlimited storage, bandwidth etc. on the basic plan and 100% uptime guaranteed, but you should note that that means they will pay you for any downtime, not that there will be no downtime at all. Despite that, I have never noticed any downtime above a few minutes and I would say uptime is a good feature of Dreamhost.
My registration came with a free .com domain and a .co domain name so if you want to host multiple websites, this is a great bonus. Their plans also allow you to host unlimited websites on your account, meaning if you run multiple sites you'll have no trouble with Dreamhost, and if you start using a ton of bandwidth they have VPS and dedicated server packages.
I have only ever contacted Dreamhost support once and they got back to me by email promptly, but I don't have enough experience dealing with them to say whether they are stellar or not. The fact that I've had to deal with them so few times also shows that even for non-technical people Dreamhost is an easy to use and high functioning web host.
Overall, Dreamhost is a great host and I would definitely recommend it to other webmasters.
We migrated our website to DreamHost a few years ago. Generally, we have had little reason to complain until the past year when a few tech issues required us to reach out to DreamHost. We found their technical support staff to be largely absent, and some staff members to be dismissive and rude.
The final straw came this morning. We arrived to our office to discover our website was down. The reason: DreamHost had migrated our website hosting to a different server, and they failed to give us sufficient notice. In fact, the email letting us know about the move had been sent in the late afternoon of the previous day. It was the only notice we had received. When we ran into some issues because of their confusing instructions in their email, the tech support person who eventually talked with our webmaster blamed us for not jumping into action the previous late afternoon when they sent the email, and hung up on us.
In short, do not trust DreamHost. As soon as possible, we're moving to a new website hosting provider!Visit host
I am here after being with DreamHost for around 3 months.
So lets start. DreamHost is the type of hosting anyone can use, whether your a small business or a big business. They have reasonably priced packages that come with great perks ( Unlimited HDD, BW etc. ). The support can be flaky at times but overall response is quick and the people at dreamhost definitely believe in what they do and have never acted unprofessional to me when speaking about problems I may have had.
But, as to any webhost there are some downsides. One being that DDoS protection isn't one of dreamhosts strong points and they definitely lack in that sector. So if anything was to be improved I would say that. But saying this, the positives definitely outweigh the negatives and I would still recommend this host to anyone who need fast hosting at a reasonable price but don't expect anything fancy when it comes to protection.
Aidan,Visit host
Well, after recommending a client to dreamhost, things have gone from bad to worse.
Support is almost non-existent. It takes more than two days to answer the most basic questions.
I recommended them this once but will not be recommending them any more. Avoid like the plague. This referral has ended up giving me a bad name.Visit host
It seems Dream host is going down fast. We have been contacting and putting tickets into support for two weeks now and get no response at all. Is this company still in business or are they shutting down? Email servers have not been functioning correctly for over a month now? Seems Dreamhost is no longer a viable option as a hosting company as of March 2014Visit host
I have had a dedicated server at Dream host and will be changing because they cannot get the services they provide to work. Unless you are happy with your the services being down for 4 or 5 days at a time you should not use dream host. They seem totally incapable of fixing the issues they have. They say it is fixed but it is not fixed so the feed back they give it totally wrong. Short version you are better off hosting on your home computer with a dial up connection than hosting on Dream host. should be name nightmare hosting. Email through their systems totally does not work. Pretty sure they will not let this review see the light of day.Visit host
DreamHost is one of best hosting provider i've ever seen. Its just give me everything about hosting. Domain registration feature is just cool and easy. DreamHost also provide latest version of cPanel. The best thing about DreamHost is its security system, dreamhost provide the best security system in webhosting. Oh, ya you can also register free subdomain at .dreamhost.com !!
For mail sevice dreamHost using SquirrelMail its fast,easy and comfortable. Also dreamhost have great uptime. Thanks dreamhost for complete hosting solution!Visit host
Live chat support is really good because I have few websited hosted in BigRock and I was trying to transfer my websites to host in Dreamhost , My website was in wordpress hosted in BigRock and I was unable to host it DreamHost but Live chat support help me out within few minutes to move from BigRock to DreamHost it was so quick they help out to make live of my site and even live chat support normal waiting time is 2 minutes compare to other service provide which is very handy in critical situation when you need any website to be live in within a short time . I would recomend Dreamhost to all customer because of Technical Support which is very much valuable in terms of Technical help and support.Visit host
I've been with Dreamhost since June 2013, after using a discount code to get a major drop from the massive price they charge. On paper, what you get seems very good. Unlimited domains, storage, databases - almost everything is unlimited. Uptime is very good - I haven't noticed a single drop in the time that I've been with DreamHost. I have three sites hosted on my one account, which generate a total of about 100k page views per month.
Their support isn't great, however. In fact - it's awful. I've spent around half an hour waiting in line for the online chat in the past, and when you're finally in the chat they're slow to respond. It's likely that the staff on the other end are dealing with too many chats at once.
The one-click installer is useless as well. It takes around 15 minutes for me to install WordPress using it, and often the install would fail after waiting so long and I'd get a generic email telling me "There was an error installing WordPress to your site". I generally just manually download the packages, and upload/install them myself now. So much less hassle.
Another issue I have faced is the amount of time it takes for operations. Simple things like adding users or mailboxes can take up to a whole day sometimes, which is ridiculously slow for a host that charges so high.
My final complaint is the administration panel. It generally looks terrible, and items are hard to find. There is no way of searching through the panel either, so its a case of clicking through each and every menu until your find it.
So overall, DreamHost is a great host if you're just wanting to set up your sites and mailboxes, and not have to touch them again. If you're like me and tend to fiddle with settings a lot, DreamHost would not be a great idea.Visit host
Dreamhost has had the best speeds and uptimes of any webhosting services I have used so far. Dreamhost also offers a lot of features that other hosters don't offer.Visit host
Dreamhost technical support team is really good because of the 24*7 email support via email with proper guide and solutions provided by there end even a non technical person can fix his problem through the wiki link provided through email support with all the necessary steps by steps guide mention in it. Backup system request is worthwhile if a person is not familiar with backup because once request is placed dreamhost technical support does from there end and intimated the user through email alert with proper link to download the backup whole process is done within 24hours request time . I would suggest each and every customer that dreamhost is really good in technical support compare to other service provider .
I am pleased with the dream host technical support which is quick within 24 hrs time frame and backup system is really good once requested it will alert you through your registered mail account with a backup link to download the backup and its backup service is really good. I am happy with the service they provide specially the technical support.Visit host
Have never used DreamHost before, and probably never will. They say it takes up to 24hr to answer support tickets...seriously? Is this another kiddie host ran by uneducated kids? If you have money sites that are making money, are you seriously going to wait 24hours for a response? I sent them one email about 2-3 days ago; I noticed I did not even get a response, and sent them another email a few hours ago. DreamHost is a cool name to have, but they are obviously not a serious hosting provider. After seeing other bad reviews; I guess I just am not shocked on why. You run your host how you run your host, and if you want to run a host like the kiddies do, then so be it. I guess that would explain why they are so cheap. If you are looking for quality hosting, then dont choose DreamHost.Visit host
Dreamhost is an awful email hosting service. There are daily downtimes, often multiple times a day. Their customer service is just to apologize repeatedly. They can't seem to fix the underlying problem -- given that they can't, however, they should not be charging for hosting. Since they are, be warned.Visit host
DreamHost has always been a very good web host. I started almost exactly two years ago and I've been very happy with their services. The first thing I noticed was different was its control panel. It is a stark contrast from cPanel and may be unfamiliar to others who have used cPanel. Nonetheless, the only major flaws I've been upset about in its control panel is the issue concerning nameservers; the only way to edit it is convoluted and is stuck inside WHOIS editing, whereas most hosts put nameserver info in a less hidden and confusing area. Second, their versions of MediaWiki is always behind and their one-click installs are not as impressive as some other services I've seen. It is also nice that they credit us for downtime; usually, submitting a simple ticket will get you either $10 or $20 for shared users. I feel that shared lives up to what it is, but their VPS and dedicated prices are a bit overrated. I personally think that their system may be hard for others to use but their service quality exceeds the confusion level.Visit host
I have been a customer of Dreamhost since for over a decade.Initially it was fantastic. Great service, great plans ... all the help one could ask for. Within the last year I have had problems with my mail address being hijacked and several email addresses being over overwhelmed by spam. There was nothing they could do to prevent mailed from being emailed from my server, nor did SpamAssassin filter out the spam. To solve the problem I had to park one of my sites and disable several email addresses.
I tried to use SPF (Sender Policy Framework) to protect my email server, but Dreamhost does not support it.
With one site parked and my email clients being overwhelmed by spam .. it's time to move on.
But they still have an entertaining monthly newsletter.
I got a promo code from an app called Zite, which normally has good deals. The price definately was really good, but right from the start, the service and quality was just not up to what I was looking for. I used an old version of Internet Explorer at work, and most things would not work. I installed other browsers and they all had glitches of some kind. I agree with other users that the support took forever to respond, but they did try to be helpful when they did.
On a Mac the software worked well, but most of my computers are PC. If you are experienced and can troubleshoot your stuff by yourself, they would be acceptable. Intermediate and beginner users stay away. Maybe stick with one of the larger providers like Godaddy.Visit host
Well, I can't say dreamhost is the best web hosting out there, but it is definitely one of the best. I've tried other hosting companies, but they either don't provide enough feature or they just have a not-as-good customer service. The only thing that is bad about dreamhost is that their pricing is significantly higher than other hosting providers, other than that, dreamhost is 100% solid.Visit host
Customer support takes forever to respond.
Total contradictions in support. They did not resolve my problems and made them my own
slow hosting and down time.
DreamHost has been great. Prompt replies to customer service tickets, and the details in the replies are very helpful. Uptime has been fine. Currently on a shared host plan and everything is working great without slowdowns. Flexibility of unlimited everything is incredible.Visit host
I am a long time Dreamhost user and they used to be amazing (4-5 years ago). Lately there are problems with my web hosting and email accounts almost daily. Multiply that by the 40+ clients I have setup on their servers and you have one hell of a nightmare. I will be moving everything off of Dreamhost as they are terrible. I would suggest everyone use something else.
- A once very happy Dreamhost customerVisit host
Generally a good, fully featured hosting service. However, Dreamhost has recurring issues with the mail service and in particular webmail is very very unstable. This has been a problem for at least a year and it only seems to be getting worse.
Support is friendly but ultimately not much use on the webmail issue. All other issues have been handled professionally and expediently.
I wouldn't recommend them to anyone without at least a modicum of technical expertise - but then again, if you don't know what you are doing at all, why do you need a domain hosted.Visit host
DreamHost has the worst possible support. Our outgoing email was not working for our whole company and after 2 days of requesting support (which can only be requested by email on their site. No personal contact number to call ) we had no contact whatsoever from DreamHost, and had no idea if anyone was actually working on a fix.
I tried their "Live Chat" support feature on their site and what waiting for over an hour for someone to enter my "live chat" from their company. Absolutely horrible service. Gave up on the Chat.
In fairness, we have had decent service from their email hosting, with limited problems. But when you do have a problem, it would be nice if you had some sort of contact or assurance that someone is actually trying to fix your problem.
If I ran my business like this , I would be out of business in no time.
Jerry Pfeil
Grey Motors Mazda
Two reasons Dreamhost is a poor service that I don't recommend.
1. Dreamhost has been out of service twice during the day when we needed it the most. That's not much on a percentage basis but it's unreliable enough that I cannot recommend it to anyone.
2. Very slow. While every other page loads in 1 second, ours takes 10-20. That's completely unacceptable and it causes us to lose visitors. This is the case even though we switched to a dedicated server at dreamhost.
I do not recommend.Visit host
I wish I had known that their email service is lacking in performance. At least once or twice a day it won't allow me entry for several minutes. It's spam filter is the worst I've encountered. It has no easy way to block a spam email. It has NO way to black an entire web presence like ".biz" from getting thru.
It takes 2, 3, 4, or 5 steps to move mail from active to spam or other areas
They're online "chat" professionals are laughable. A 20 minute wait isn't unusual and then the "help" immediately attempts to direct you to a FAQ like page. In other words they don't really listen; they leap.
Oh yes, the mail service itself doesn't read graphics, images, html stuff, so when one opens the mail it's often a long line of unintelligible words. This makes it impossible to check mail from the internet.. It HAS TO BE downloaded to read.
It has an "opt out" as oppose to "opt out" feature for upgrades to Wordpress meaning when there's an upgrade DreamHost upgrades your website without telling you. This, of course, brings down your site..
I could go own but I don't care to give them anymore of my time.Visit host
Not impressed with anything they offer. For hosting, they're down too often to have a money making business hosted with them. As a registrar, they lack some of the most basic functions that other registrars provide.
Support is an absolute joke. I needed to update the IP addresses for my personal nameservers for a domain I had registered with them. This change takes me less than 10 seconds on every other registrar I've ever been with. With dreamhost, they said this is an admin request I had to submit a ticket for, which I did. I got a response 2 days later saying this was done, but none of my sites pointed to those NS worked, so I got on with their live chat and asked the agent what the IP addresses were before telling him anything about my request to change them two days earlier and guess what? They were still the old ones.
Very very happy to get away from them, and have had no issues with my sites since. Would not recommend them to anyone.Visit host
DreamHost was my first foray into hosting services, and while it was sufficient for my needs at the time, some minor issues (with, for example, customer service) left me wanting and slightly unsatisfied, not to mention the fact that this is a service tailor-fitted to "beginners" (if I may use the term) and intermediates, and maybe not so well suited for enthusiasts. (I have since moved to
Let me begin by asserting that Dream Host has a remarkable uptime which is capable of sustaining even very high amounts of traffic without buckling under the strain. VPS and dedicated hosting also score top marks in my book, not to mention the extremely reasonable pricing offered.
This being said, let's move onto the quibbles I have with the service (and please keep in mind that these are merely things that bothered me- they may not be applicable to everyone). First of all, as mentioned by others, mobile support is not offered at the lowest price tier, which was definitely an inconvenience as my needs developed over time. Furthermore, the entire Control Panel is streamlined, which makes it accessible for first-time users and intermediates, but some may find it to be lacking in more advanced options which have been jettisoned in favor of a "simpler" approach.
Lastly, my largest grievance with DreamHost is the customer service. About halfway through my tenure with DreamHost, a few of my sites began suffering from extreme server-response time problems, a problem which was exacerbated by frequent crashes starting a little after the fact. My attempts to contact DreamHost customer service via email were maddeningly frustrating, as their average response time was roughly 1 day, and by the stroke of bad fortune (or design) the service reps I was connected to had no remedies or instructions to offer as to how to resolve my issues. Instead, I was repeatedly told that third-party issues beyond their control were to blame.
That being said, once I connected to phone support, I was met with much better reps (all U.S. based) who were able to resolve my problems in a much shorter time-frame than any of my email correspondents.
In conclusion, I suppose all's well that ends well. Dream Host is more than a sufficient resource for most users, and whatever qualms I may have had regarding its UI or customer service are outweighed by the positive features it has to offer.Visit host
The email service at DreamHost deteriorated to the point that we went back, after three horribly impactful, hair tearing months, to our old hosting company. We continually notified them that something was constantly and very wrong with their servers and FINALLY the servers crashed and over 200 people in the first twenty minutes were howling on their forum. The problem limped back up to a barely acceptable level after nearly a full day. This hosting company was 'highly recommended' in the reviews, DO NOT BELIEVE IT.
There is NO SERVICE available with DreamHost. Unless you are a really savvy webmaster DO NOT USE THIS SERVICE. Even then please be aware that their servers are unreliable.
We do NOT RECOMMEND DreamHost to anyone at this time. Mostly because they do not have their servers optimized and you can't fix that.Visit host
always i try to get the best for my money when it comes to anything for me including web hosting .that's why i choose dreamhost it gives me the maximum.
І Stаrtеd my саrееr with Dreamhost and іt didn't disappointed me fоr almost 1.6 уr. Му ехреrіеnсе was smooth and Dreamhost unlimited bandwidth and storage nеvеr stopped my sіtе tо grow until оnе black dау, they dесіdеd nоt tо host my sіtе оr asked me tо move tо VРЅ. Rеаsоn was: оnе оf my рlugіn was causing memory issue, according tо them іt was "Аll іn оnе ЅЕО" and "YАRРР", which were two essential рlugіn bасk аt that time. Ѕо, І dесіdеd tо change my hosting and move tо known host.
anyhow, lаtеr аftеr my ехреrіеnсе with word press І rеаlіzеd, most оf time hosting issue comes bесаusе оf some faulty sсrірt оr рlugіn and YАRРР was rероrtеd аs оnе such memory consuming рlugіn that time. Fоr now, Dreamhost іs а сhеар and reliable hosting that you саn орt gоt. Тhеу hаvе sсаlеd their server with Νgіnх and latest update fоr high traffic Wordpress sіtеs. Another interesting fасt about Dreamhost іs, they offer custom сРаnеl instead оf default оnе. and аlsо,you can quickly upgrade from shared tо VРЅ and dеdісаtеd and that's something which іs vеrу helpful fоr growing Wordpress blog. something which other hosting miss.
when it comes to choose hosting Dreamhosting is one to be short-listed. i'll give it a five star rating and recommend it to everyone especially due to their high standard and quick customer support
I have used this hosting for almost a year. I was very mazed by Shared Hosting, but I'm not. Now I prefer a limited amount pf space and even a traffic limit. They are over-selling. My websites was very very slow, they have downtimes and poor support.Visit host
DreamHost has a fun attitude and I am still have a small account there. I don't host any of my main web sites because of performance issues.
With the basic hosting plan my WordPress site kept failing with memory errors. I only have about 2,000 hits a day and that shouldn't overload any server. They kept telling me I was using too much memory, but the amount of memory included in the shared hosting plan is a deeply-guarded secret.
I tried one of their VPS plans, and even got a dedicated database server. I still had performance and memory problems paying like $30 a month (don't quote me on the exact price).
For a small web site (or sites), their Crazy Insane Domain plan (I think that's the right name) is find, but it won't hold up if more than a couple of people try to hit the site at the same time.
One other weirdness is that the flat out refuse to let you have two accounts. I tried, but it balked and customer service told me that having two accounts violated their terms of service.
In the past I registered all my domains there because the price was reasonable, and anonymous hosting was no additional charge. Domain management tools are good. The price lately has gone up for some reason and I'll have to decide what to do.Visit host
Horrible customer service! They scheduled a maintenance "upgrade" on my virtual private server in the middle of a business day. I was running a few businesses on it. I can't take it down in the middle of the business day. Their response was, "Unfortunately the VPS host upgrade cannot be custom scheduled or rescheduled."
Moving to a different provider who respects my business!Visit host
I have been with Dreamhost for a year and had nothing but problems with there poor customer support. I was reading some of the other reviews which I wish I had before I signed up with them. I can't tell you how many times my site has gone down and now all my sites have been infected with malware. .There customer support is awful, slow and is of no help, confusing and pasting textbook replies. I have put a lot of work into my sites and will now have to start from scratch. I am looking at other host now and would not recommend.Visit host
If you need 110% uptime or high performance look elsewhere, but if you want cheap server space and lots of features DreamHost is pretty amazing.Visit host
Dreamhost is a great service with 99.9% uptime and if your domain name server goes down they will automaticly transfer you to a running server. For $8.95 a month for shared hosting and their features it is a awesome deal! it has a very tech-savvy user friendly interface with as much storage as i needed and if you don't have 100% satisfaction they will try to help you with your experience as much as possible, they did with me. i didn't like the hosting, then compared it to 24 hosting and it looked like a better deal, so good that i haven't left for 3 years. it is a cheap solution to hosting problems. GO DREAMHOST YOU ROCK!Visit host
I have been with Dreamhost for 3 fullyears about to start my 4th, I jumpedship after switching to Drupal. It struggled with past CMS due to heavyPHP scripts, but with Drupal it took forever to load. Some people took over 2min to get the site. Terrible CPU time, even the VPS has no CPU time worth your money. I tried to reason with them and get a deal on my pricing to stay, been with them for 3 years and all they can say is they'll give me $10 coupon... Luckily I transferred out my domain, they tried to keep me with them by saying I owed them $109 only 1 month into the new year. I told themI would pay the regular fee for services used, but they don't even address the issue when I contact support. I just get a message telling me how I can cancel, which asks me to pay first, and they are sorry I'm leaving. Save your self some money and get a better host at the same time.Visit host
Several times i've had to work with DreamHost and their services and i can state from my own experiences that DreamHost is a reliable, trustworthy and userfriendly web host service with their direct support and userfriendly web interface. Thanks to DreamHost im able to create my web pages to what i want them to be, unlike many other hosting services which often interfer with web design and layout.Visit host
I have been unhappy with Dream host, and their lack of customer support.
We had been having trouble sending emails.
Before we knew what the problem was, I requested a Tech support call.
we received a email from Dream host saying that they had a overloaded serve, and that all emails would be sent if a few hours.
But they still charged us for the Tech support call, I disputed this charge and they said they would reverse the charge.
But they didn't, instead they froze our account for a past due charge of $9.95.
We did not have the log on password since our account had been set up to auto pay to our credit card.
So we had not way to get a reset password email from Dream Host.
So our business sat a whole day without email.
Dream host is inexpensive but it is worth it to pay a little more and use a company that has better and faster tech support options.Visit host
Ah yes, Dream host as the name implies this host is a dream indeed, they're shared hosting prices are off the charts and they have an always ready professional support team which will solve your problems in no time. This host will suit anyone who is looking to make a small website for their business also for all sorts of forums. They have an impressive up-time with your website never going down at all especially with a high amount of traffic. They're servers are top of the line even with Shared hosting and especially with VPS and deicated hosting. I fully recommend this host because it has an amazing support team and amazing up time for all your website needs!Visit host
uying and setting up new domains at Dreamhost was very easy, and continues to be. Its referral program allowed me to pay the cost of my hosting through referrals to other people, who became Dreamhost customers. One of the best things about Dreamhost was its tech support. Although they never offered telephone support, as far as I know, my preference has always been for email support, so that was fine with me. When there were problems, whether my fault or theirs, tech support would respond quickly, correct any problems that were on their end, and point me in the right direction, if not actually talk me through anything that I may have done wrong.Visit host
I would really recommend these guys as:
They have good features
great customer support
and a lot more than what other hosting sites may have.
I would highly recommend DreamHost as your web hosting service, due to multiple factors. If you are a beginner, you will love the easy to use control panel. If you happen to be a blogger, their one click WordPress installer really does work. Really great if you are a previous WordPress blogger.
Some awesome features include unlimited data transfer bandwidth, online storage, and hosted domains. If you are a programmer looking to write web apps, they support Python, Perl, PHPS, Ruby on Rails, and other languages. If you need reliability, DreamHost has it. The "100% uptime" statement is not a lie.
All you non-profit organizations out there, looking to make the world an even better place with a website, can do it for free, as DreamHost supports free webhosting for non-profit organisations.
One downside is that they do not offer mobile support at their cheapest option, but not a major downfall.
If you end up trying DreamHost, and you don't like it, just use their "97-day money back guarantee." I haven't had to use this yet, and my first impressions are good. Bottom Line: Yes, I would recommend DreamHost to my friends.
How can you have a business with NO customer support? How ould the dreamhost owners like it if they had a problem with something and they had to send an email and sit there and stop their work until they get a call? Maybe if you were the only one on earth providing the service!Visit host
I have been a Dreamhost customer since 2006, and I was a very happy customer for the first four or five years. Once logged into the panel at Dreamhost, things couldn't be more intuitive. Buying and setting up new domains at Dreamhost was very easy, and continues to be. Its referral program allowed me to pay the cost of my hosting through referrals to other people, who became Dreamhost customers. One of the best things about Dreamhost was its tech support. Although they never offered telephone support, as far as I know, my preference has always been for email support, so that was fine with me. When there were problems, whether my fault or theirs, tech support would respond quickly, correct any problems that were on their end, and point me in the right direction, if not actually talk me through anything that I may have done wrong.
However, things began to change around 2010 or 2011. Sites hosted on Dreamhost began to crash more often, and dynamic sites hosted with Dreamhost were far too frequently under attack, and Dreamhost seemed to hold the door open for them.
One by one, forums, wikis and PHP-based sites that I had put several years into were crashing or being infected with malware. Tech support was no help whatsoever. Finally, it got to the point where, once they became aware that any third-party software had been installed on the domain, they would wash their hands of it immediately, despite the fact that this software was often installed and updated through Dreamhost.
Far from receiving the excellent tech support that once defined Dreamhost, it got to the point where there was little reason to even contact them. Tech support responses alternated between referring me to an unhelpful wiki and blaming third-party software, never even considering that the problem may be on their end, or acknowledging that sites hosted on Dreamhost were far more accessible to Chinese hackers than any others.
I still have several sites hosted on Dreamhost but, as they crash, as they surely will on Dreamhost, I am rebuilding them on WebHostingHub.Visit host
I've started using Dreamhost's DreamObjects service to host some files online 'in the cloud'. At the moment, these are mainly site backups. So far, I cannot fault this service. Here are some highlights:
1. Their pricing is highly competitive. Their regular advertised prices beat the major competitors. Their introductory pricing is even better still.
2. It's compatible with the Amazon S3 APIs. This means I can use Cyberduck, and pretty much any other tool used to interface with S3.
3. No downtime, support issues, etc. In the few weeks I've been using this service, I have had zero issues. None at all. It'll be interesting to see if this holds up over time, but so far so good.Visit host
I started with DreamHost in 2004, almost 10 years!
It used to be a good hosting company, with good support,
But their support is now my WORST experience ever!!!
=> they FAIL to check BUGS when you mention them, and ALWAYS reply with textbook answers
=> they ALWAYS consider that you are a beginner and reply with the standard answer without checking the real issue, and without understanding that - if you contact the support - it's because you have a REAL issue, not only because you want to speak to someone
=> their UI has a LOT OF BUGS: but the support team is ONLY here to provide textbook answers, so they CLOSE your ticket one they have posted their stupid answers, thinking that you must be dummy!
=> you HAVE to raise - and closed - at least 10 tickets BEFORE they move it to the Level 2 support team
=> BUT the level 2 is so proud of their crappy development, that they also manage to close your tickets without fixing the BUGS
DreamHost is like this: you saw a bug? there is NO bug sir, we make not mistake here!!
DreamHost has became a VERY BAD HOST, I would not anymore recommend that Host to anyone.
AVOID AVOID AVOID DREAMHOSTVisit host
I've been using the Dreamhost service for almost a year (come June/July), most everything has been working well, despite the occasional downtime and billing issues. As of late, however, the service has done nothing but degrade.
To start the saga, I noticed that several of my websites hosted on my VPS were experiencing server-response time issues according to Google Pagespeed. As most would do, I checked the forums to determine if the issue was localized to my account, or if others had been experience similar issues. Finding a post, I replied with my information, and attempted to join in on the conversation, alas, my reply was almost immediately flagged for spam, and I was permanently banned from the forums, in both replying and reading any posts or comments. Not only could I not inquire as to the cause of the slow load-times for several of my websites, but I still had to deal with the main issue.
I would not recommend this host to anyone, their support team is lax in most departments, and takes several hours, if not a full day to respond to what should be extremely simple requests.Visit host
This is by far the WORST company I have ever come across. Their customer service could not be worse. If something goes wrong there is no way to get in touch with them other than via email which is entirely unhelpful. They are extremely slow at fixing problems. Please do yourself a favor and stay away from this company!Visit host
I've been hosted on a friend's DreamHost account for one year and a half (no longer there, now, because my friend moved) and I've been quites satisfied with the service.
I only had one downtime, around last summer, but it was quite short and support was beside me during the whole process - it deserves 5 stars.
The 4 stars on Features and Value ared because of DH Control Panel and price.
If my friend hadn't hosted me, I would never have been able to afford it; 8,95 $/mo are way too high for me. The Control Panel is not very clear, especially the MySQL section: I had to ask my friend to set up a database for me, because I didn't understand which where the data (username, db name, etc.) I had to enter.
This were minor issues, anyway; all in all, I've found myself happy with DreamHost service and I would surely recommend it.
Been with them now 4 years.
In the beginning they were good.
Then they started having problems - like getting hacked.
Now they are blacklisted on many email application like Hotmails, Yahoo - so no email to our customers get through.
They say nothing has changed since they were hacked.
But that's them just denying the fact.
There are better option out there - go with a company that are bigger and better.Visit host
I am a web developer. We recently began working with several clients who are hosted at Dreamhost. The old developer died and had not made provision for giving the clients access to their accounts.
I began the long and frustrating process of trying to contact Dreamhost to help our clients get into their accounts to make changes on their web sites. Dreamhost support was virtually non-existant - to say it nicely. There is no phone number listed on their web site which I could find. Their email support is slow - you can expect one email a day from them, but don't get your hopes up that they will actually respond to your actual request.
After multiple emails and coorspondance back and forth (at one email per day), they have yet to even provide me with instructions to help our clients get into their web sites. They won't provide any information about the account, who to contact about it or even verify if the web site owner is the hosting account owner. They say they emailed the account holder(s), but said that the account holder was evidently not the developer and they wouldn't even say if the account holder is or is not the web site owner. A very frustrating process to say the least. They said it is a 'very simple' process to gain access to the account, but haven't provided me instructions on that 'simple process'.
My analysis: stay away from Dreamhost or you will regret it. I could never recommend them to any of our clients.Visit host
We started using Dreamhost because they have a one-click OpenVBX installer, which made getting up and running with OpenVBX very easy. (This is a GREAT feature - liked it a lot!)
The costs are SUPER reasonable (less than $10 / month).
Also, their support personnel are very nice to deal with. They appear to be US-based (or at least I had absolutely no problems at all communicating with them - including when I spoke with them on the phone.)
However, we rely on our phones to work, 24x7.
Being a software company ourselves, I can understand minor downtime and such - but I got sick of hearing "Hey - are our phones down again?" every month or so.
Yesterday we experienced *yet another* outage - this time it was related to our shared MySQL server being down. Status for this server did not show up in our "panel", and I didn't get any sort of support response for over an hour (not the fault of the friendly support folks - but still.)
That was the straw that broke this camel's back. We switched to Rackspace, and were up and running with a new OpenVBX setup in two hours for $16/month.
As nice as the one-click-installer is, and as great as the price is, ultimately it wasn't a workable situation for us.
If you're looking to throw a project up on the web, and don't mind some occasional (and relatively "minor" downtime), then I'd say Dreamhost is a great deal.
But if you care about uptime, you're willing to pay just a little bit more, and you have some technical expertise in house, I'd seriously consider hosting elsewhere.Visit host
Since about 2010 Dreamhost shared hosting started to become sluggish. The MySql database cluster seems to primarily be at fault. They do have a lot of one-click installs, but if it doesn't work (i.e. DB configuration fails because of the agonizingly long times it takes to create a simple empty table) they tell you that it's because you're on a shared hosting plan and if you want any kind of reliability you have to purchase a virtual private server.Visit host
Dreamhost is a famous hosting service in the world, but for me, it is famous in China because of its promotion activity. You can get a very cheap unlimited hosting for only 9.99 USD periodically especially on presidential day.
I got to know this hosting service because a pop blog mentioned this, and then I purchased.Frankly speaking, there are still very short Down Time, but is very short especially during night hours.
I did not contact their customer service because usually the down time is exactly very short, no more than 1 min according to my monitor service's report.
I think if anyone who is fortunately got the promotion code and shall practice their technical skills first, and then use it. After all, I will still recommend it to my friends for its good quality.Visit host
I would recommend Dreamhost. I've been working with them for a while and have only had a couple of down times. Their support is quick, although phone support is quite limited. I have very simple sites and their structure is right for us. Easy to start a now site and manage assets.Visit host
I setup an account, and for some reason I don't know, one hosting plan was added to my account (it's name Happy Hosting). And when I contact support to help me remove this plan and active my account so that I can buy VPS plan. They reply me:
"What did you wish to sign up for? The Happy Hosting plan is the only way
you could use the promo code which you entered (that is our basic shared
hosting plan) so if I remove that there is nothing on your account to pay
for and approve."
I think that I'm talking with my teacher, not a supporter.
So I need to pay about $64.5 to active my account, after that pay for my VPS with just $15/month. I think there is nobody stupid enough to do that.
So I decide to quit right away, say good bye to this provider forever.Visit host
Have used Dreamhost for the past 7 years for building small business and hobby type wordpress blogs. They support easy one click installs for wordpress and include the wp super cache plugin for speedy loading sites. They also support the more complete caching package for wordpress w3tc. On the basic dreamhost package you can use the basic disk and database cache as well as the minify and combine js and css. These caching settings should allow you to run larger size blogs or company websites on the cheapest packages available.Visit host
I've been using dreamhost since 2007, in 2010 my sites started getting slow, I continued staying with them because it is unlimited and I had many websites hosted there in the second half of 2012 the server started giving problems and speed got worse and our sites began to be hacked, we had to take all the websites server and close the account. Our biggest problem was that we lost over half of our customers due to the problems that server.Visit host
Thu 1/10/2013 1:40 pm. I'm sort of expert/ignorant: I'm a great + powerful s/w engineer (owenlabs.org/resume) but don't know that much about internet details; if anybody does. Like another reviewer said, I've had problems every few months, but I suspect the hosting providers are all like that.
I don't mind the email-only support; I don't want to talk to somebody in Bangladesh anyway. I *do* mind them lying to me.
At 11:00 am EST Thu 1/10/2013 my beloved owenlabs.org disappeared from the internet, replaced by a stupid message "Site Temporarily Unavailable / We apologize for the inconvenience. Please contact the webmaster/ tech support immediately to have them rectify this. / error id: bad_httpd_conf".
I went to my dreamhost "panel", complained, no change. Eventually, between 1:00 pm and now, I got an email telling me my "account was recently moved to newer hardware", and that they sent me an email about it -- on "Dec 13 2012 09:12 PST (27 days 23 hours ago)".
That is of course why it went dead at 11:00 AM today. They did tell me how to get it back -- by clearing my "cache history", and that worked. I hope my vast legions of fans know that....
Obviously they broke something, and obviously they're lying about it; *patently* obvious! I don't know if other web hosts do that routinely, but probably. I know it's generally true of dreamhost support; they *never* admit anything went wrong -- except for vast obvious outages. ... Annoying, and stupid.Visit host
Great because is always up, the billing method is neat and its very organized also i like the one click installs featureVisit host
99.9% up time, not true, learned it the hard way. But, to be fair, the service is fine until something blows up in their data center, or whomever they resell for. The outages last anywhere from 3 days to a week. On one occasion went 3 days without e-mail, which is really not bad unless you use it. A couple of hack attacks on their system lasted 1 and 3 days and having to change every password on every account and every e-mail account. The machine where my site was hosted some RAID apparatus blew up, and after a week of waiting for the restore, I had to move to another machine. The one good thing about Dreamhost is its tech support. Great guys and very helpful. Sometimes support is fast and sometimes it takes a little longer, but they are knowledgeable and understanding. And another thing, if you notice that your site is acting a little weird, or serving old pages, its because something happened and, surprise, they restored your site with a 3 month old backup. The reason I still use them? it is because just about every other web hosting service I tried has had one type of problem or another. Price wise, its about the same as everybody else.Visit host
DreamHost is by far the best web-host I've come across:
1. 100% uptime!
2. I'm paying only $5.95 per month (for life) for the shared hosting plan, which offers unlimited space & bandwidth for unlimited number of domain names.
3. They support SSH Tunneling. So I can use DreamHost as a proxy server too!
4. Instantaneous response from their customer support via e-mail.
All this and more at just $71.4 per year! Amazing value for money.Visit host
HORRIBLE customer service. If you have a disruption in service, the only way to get in touch with them is via e-mail, which of course you can't do if you.... have no e-mail. AND the phone number only takes you to voicemail. 4 calls in 4 days and no one called us back.
Don't recommend.Visit host
DREAMHOST SERVER CONTROL PANEL IS TERRIBLE!!!! I am a developer and the tools for managing the site are way too embedded in other categories, confusing and hard to really smoothly get a site up and running.
NO ACCESS TO SERVER BEFORE DNS CHANGE. I am switching a site to Dreamhost and can't access the database I created until everything is propagated over which means I can't do anything in advance for the site to be up sooner. BAD SYSTEM and database should be accessible outside of DNS change. Other host I use gives me the ability to use phpMyAdmin to access the server regardless of the DNS.
So no recommendations to Dreamhost from me for sure.Visit host
I've been using Dreamhost since 2004, going on 8 years now. When I first started using them, anything that relied on MySQL databases was extremely slow. I went with a dedicated server but the cost ended up being much more than I had hoped for. After going back to shared hosting, it seems like they eventually upgraded their systems because my site has ran smooth as butter since then. I host my website as well as a few others and can't say I have any complains apart from the occasional downtime which doesn't seem to last very long and isn't very frequent anyways. For unlimited space/bandwidth, you really can't beat the value.Visit host
Dreamhost is by and far the worst hosting service available to the public.
Their customer service is non-existant and in fact, they will not pickup the
phone to call their own clients without forcing a $10fee down their throats.
They send you 100 emails all of which are non helpful and redundant, and I
have personally exchanged 20+ emails for something as simple as trying to
renew. During the process, they threw my website into redemption and said
they did not know I wanted to renew it-despite 20 documented emails of me
trying to renew. Why anyone would use this company when reputable hosting
services like GoDaddy exist is beyond me, and was definitely my mistake. If
you want to host a website with a sole person with no phone sitting in a room
somewhere in California, use Dreamhost.
Don't make the same mistake I did - STAY AWAY !!
I've been hosting our company's ecommerce site at Dreamhost for the last 2 year, and it's the most unreliable web host I've ever dealt with! Our server has gone down more times than i can count, i'd say an average of once every couple months or so. Tech support is available only through a form or if you pay for chat support. Their responses are often canned and unhelpful, along the lines of "Yup, it's broken, we're working on it. No, we don't know how long it will take, sorry and thank you for your patience." I've only ever had one tech support rep actually help me fix anything.
I have been with Dreamhost for about a year now and I host a few websites. I love the 1 click installs and the very fast speed of Dreamhost. I have had a few email support tickets and have always solved my problem within 1 day. Unlimited domains, bandwidth, disk space php etc. For a great startup price i got $24 for a year but after that $10 a month seems a bit high. Only had a few times where my site/ftp was down but came back on after a couple hours. No cPanel so it takes a little longer to do things but its worth it.Visit host
Dreamhost rocks because they have 99% uptime. Their server speed is damn high and I would recommend this host to everybody in this world because they are fucking awesome. I have been using them for 1 year and I am extremely satisfied.Visit host
I just had a website vanish from dreamhost and they can't tell me what happened. It was offline for about 20 hours.
I have about 16 websites with them. The service has varied from horrible in the beginning to pretty good to great at one time. But this last debacle was just awful. I am no looking for a hosting service that uses a similar panel as I really like their panel.
I hate the C panel of many others.
Does anyone know of a hosting company with similar panel???Visit host
DreamHost is horrible this year (2012). They've been down multiple times a week. If you don't mind 80-90% uptime, then go with them. Otherwise stay clear.
They aren't even posting all their downtime on their status blog, because the last outage on March 23 they had over 1,500 comments from angry customers saying that they were leaving. They are horrible.
I'm down right now. Was out last night at 5 until this morning. Then it was up for a couple hours. It's been down for 6 hours since. No post on their status blog but in my account it does say that they are aware of the issue and looking to resolve.
If you don't want people to see your site or have the ability to upload via FTP, this is a great choice. Noone will know that you exist. It's also a good service if you want your customer base to leave your company.
A week ago my entire account was deleted for over an hour. I signed in but all I had was their jabber account. No directory. I thought I was hacked and my account deleted. I nearly cried. Then about an hour later everything returned. I'm constantly holding my breath waiting for everything in my account to be deleted and never return. They are having so much downtime and problems that their staff is sure to have issues.
Just a couple months ago they sent notice that they were hacked and all their passwords were stolen. We had to reset our passwords but you know that many people are using the same password to sign in to their email and possibly their bank. Dreamhost is a huge security risk. They are not well protected.
This is a hokey operation. Go with someone else!Visit host
What do you wish you'd known before becoming a customer? -- nothing. I've been with them for 6+ years. Loyal customer, long term, referred many people to them. But lately they've sucked horrendously. And their support was absolutely lacking, unprofessional and unhelpful.
What level of technical expertise do their customers need? -- High, and I mean sysadmin high. If you're doing basic things like running WordPress, probably not to high. But anything else, you better know what you're doing and or want to read through pages and pages of technical jargon that contradicts itself (their wiki). Or pay them $10 BUCKS! each time you need to talk to them.
What kind of customer is this host suitable for? -- this might be good if you want a test box with the ability to install pretty much anything you need and have multiple users, custom permissions, or even write some apps that use some of the newer popular languages like ruby, python, node, etc. This should NOT be used for production websites. Primarily because their uptime sucks, and their support sucks. So if the sites go down for your business, you're pretty much out of luck until they get around to fixing whatever issue they have.
Most of their issue stems from ancient hardware and their lack of proactive measures to replace such hardware. If you read through their blog you'll notice a trend. This HDD failed, or this router went down, or this and the other and "our admins are on site fixing" -- YOu see these updates and posts a lot. Communication is good of course so they get a pat on the back for keeping us appraised of the situation... But do you see HS, RS, MT, LW or other great *and cheaper* hosts with these many issues? No... you don't.
Search through Twitter, Google, Facebook, their own blog, people's blogs, heck read the comments on their blog, read, read and research before you buy. You've been warned.Visit host
I can't imagine a worse hosting company in terms of uptime and bandwidth speed. That said, you get what you pay for, and they're pretty much the cheapest hosting company around that will give you everything you need (in my case, one-click WordPress installs, unlimited domains and emails and a full-featured control panel). But if you pay the lowest price, expect a constantly slow-loading website (seriously throttled traffic?), major outages every few weeks and a host of other random problems. Luckily the support isn't abysmal, but it ain't anything to write home about either. Most issues are resolved via support tickets in 48 hrs, but way more issues happen that you'd like.
I'm ready to pay twice or more than what I pay now for better load speeds and less downtime, so I'm on the hunt for new hosting companies. Don't use the DreamHost budget hosting plan unless you can't afford something real.Visit host
Yeah, I used him for three months when I was creating a website, and I stoped, they have a good support and have refunded all to my card, this is very good, have a good support and service, this I can say.Visit host
Usually the bigger a host gets, the worse their customer service becomes. This leads to people in the know not using large companies to host their sites because they know support will be unreliable and/or servers overcrowded.
Not so with Dreamhost.
I've been a dreamhost customer for many years. They often have $10 promotions for special occasions (July 4th etc) which is what led me to sign up in the first place- getting a whole year's hosting for just $10 was an absolute bargain.
Their hosting is feature packed and easy to use. Everything is automated, so you can have an account ready to go very quickly, and they offer a free domain (sometimes two) for your account.
Unfortunately they don't use cPanel, which might put some people off, but instead they have a custom control panel they made themselves. It's very easy to get the hang off and is just as powerful.
One of their best features is the one-click install feature they offer. This is their equivalent of Fantastico or Softaculous, and lets you install everything from Mediawiki to Wordpress in a few simple clicks.
Support wise, I've only had to contact their customer service department twice. Once when their backup server was failing. It's also worth mentioning that they have a status blog to keep you up to date with major issues.
Opening a support ticket was very easy and they even ask you to pick you expertise level from a drop-down list, so if you're a beginner they can tailor their response to you. They got back to me within 8 hours and everything was resolved. The whole process was very simple.
The second time I used their support was to set up private nameservers. Given that my DNS is hosted offsite and they don't usually get this type of request, I wondered whether they'd actually set it up for my domain (which is registered with them), but I got a response the next morning (6 hours later) and it was all done with no fuss.
Overall, they're excellent, timely support, great features and a friendly image.Visit host
Dreamhost.com is terrible. Service is bad. Everything is an add on service. I paid for 1 year up front, and thought 24/7 customer service was included in that price. It is included at a 48 hour email only turn around. No phone number provided...but if you want to give them your phone number they will call you at a rate 9.95 per call (the length of the call doesn't change the price of the call).Visit host
I can't believe dreamhost is getting all of these 5 star reviews. we've had nothing but issues with their uptime and customer support -- no number, email response is ridiculous.Visit host
Constant outages.
No live customer support. Via live chat or phone.
Slow and or no ticket responses.
The price is great until you have an outage and lose customer business.
Email outages and the only method dreamhost will use to contact you is on the email that is out of service....CRAZY!!!
I am moving all of my domains TODAY!!!Visit host
They are awful, our site is down all the time and customer services are awful at providing any help, considering they are quit a pricey host I thought we'd get more for our money but we are getting less and losing business because of it! we are moving hosts as they have been so useless. In the past month our site has been down for at least an hour every single day!Visit host
Do not believe the hype, DreamHost is the absolute worst web host I have ever used. My websites are constantly down, and incredible slow loading. Their 'support' (which really is a joke) uses white lies to cover up why my sites are constantly down, and it's one thing after another even though I bought a private server with them. I transferred the website on my server with 90% of traffic to another webhost, and my site is still down all of the time. Save your money and spend it elsewhere.Visit host
I have been with dreamhost for several months primarily to use their FTP backup server (50GB/month @$70), which is a great deal...IF it works. It did work initially. But that did not last. Now, the backup server is slow and the connection is poor so that full backups cannot fully upload and downloading these backups (in my case 6GB) that do make it up to the backup server take forever, when previously they took a few hours.
I have since noticed that there are numerous network outages and server downtime issues that this company deals with on a fairly regular basis, which means they are evidently doing everything on the cheap. Buyer beware.Visit host
Excellent tools. Excellent support.
The UI is very text-based and could use a refresh, but one can learn it quickly.Visit host
I'm a web developer, so a good hosting company means good support and lots of enabled features out of the box.
From a support standpoint, they supposedly have live technical chat, but they aren't very consistent. For example, Im trying to get help right now, its 2:00 on a monday, and there is no one there. I live in the same city that the company is based in, so its not a timezone thing. I'll be in my account sometimes at 2:00am and they are on. So I guess its just if you get lucky enough for them to be there. Unfortunately I find it rare that they are on.
The email support is there, but sometimes it takes them 24 to 48 hrs to respond. So what that means is that if something is broken, or not functioning properly, it takes DAYS to get it resolved. From a business standpoint, its simply too long.
From a technical standpoint, Dreamhost doesn't run php natively. This means its extremely limited and very difficult to change things. For example. Want to run wordpress or other CMS? Your limited in that you can only upload files less than 8mb.
This may seem like a small thing... until you've got a video you want to throw up. This should be a simple thing to change. With other hosts its just one line in a file.. The process here insanely difficult.. Shell access, backing up the php cgi installation etc... I need to make a Soap call in my current project.. Doesnt work obviously, Im scared to know what I have to do to enable that.....
Im also a dreamhost affiliate, they give 100 dollars per referal. Thats really good! But I have yet to refer anyone, because there are other hosts with better customer support and a better product, even though they offer far less for referals.Visit host
I registered a few months ago, and I got a year for only 9.49 USD. I said "AMAZING", The first days The server wasn't too fast (I Suppose because a LOT of people bought the promo) but after some days the speed of the site go to the normal. Is really fast, the uptime is 100% and never had a problem, I din't contact support because I don't had any problems with my site.
I own a Forum with 8000+ registered users, and 1000 daily visitors (In average).
I'm So hapy with Dreamhost, is a rellay NICE and GOOD Host.
DreamHost is my second favorite shared host. Support and features are awesome, but I'm a big fan of cPanel so I've never been as comfortable using their good but different custom dashboard.Visit host
DreamHost really lives up to its name for a lot of reasons. Many other hosts are way too harsh on the customers, which make me feel unimportant and useless. DreamHost, on the other hand, gave me great power and control over my account. They are cool about things as long as it for the most part complies with their (compared to other hosts) laid-back rules. They are there to help you all the way, and they really mean it.
I had some troubles a while ago. Their rules wouldn't let me make a "file hosting service", according to their rules, so I asked the support team about it, and they were cool about it... as long as it doesn't use too much resources.
DreamHost is suitable for small-medium sized business websites, personal websites, and developers for the most part. It is fast and reliable, and easy to deal with. This is by far the most compliant host I have ever had to do with, and no other host has ever come near DreamHost in any aspect. Even though it is a bit expensive, it is worth every single penny. DreamHost has so much more than all the others.
It is truly the host of my dreams.
I am working with DreamHost since 2009 and their service is awesome, nice support but I find them little costly.
There are two accounts I am having one is reseller and another is VPS both are good as there is almost no downtime and best part is their control panel they provide us with a control panel even in their VPS which helps us manage the server more easily and quickly while others don't offer and control panel when we go for VPS.
With most of the hosts when we go for VPS we need to configure servers on our own until we don't go for managed VPS but with dreamhost this is the best part for those who don't want to mess up with the Linux commands which are generally needed to host sites on VPS.
I run network of sites I opted DreamHost VPS for high traffic site and reseller one for low traffic sites in reseller we get cpanel and unlimited database which again gives flexibility to host unlimited low traffic sites as they provide unlimited bandwidth.
Its easy and fun to operate site with DreamHost and if your site get quite good number of visitors you can join their affiliate program they offer decent referral commission on each sale made through your referral.
Getting referral sale for DreamHost is also easy as they are having wide range of creatives which can be used on sites to generate sales.As they are one of the biggest players in web hosting its easy to convince people to go for DreamHost.Visit host
Dreamhost rocks. Great uptime and value for money. Still there are some things than can be better like support. I have had my hosting at one.com too.. They offer a better support.Visit host
I wish That I knew How to host my site but I didn't know how to host my site but they did. Next they handle all my customer support well fixed all my issues I was having. They have high level's of technical expertise they covered my issues and understood what problems I was having. DreamHost handled them by telling me step by step on how to fix all my erros there were simple steps to follow. The type of customer are from non level customers that don't know what they do from expert customers who know tons and can follow there easy fixes. I would highly recommend these services to all my friends great steps and fixes support and one last thing prices!Visit host
Well, Dreamhost is an excellent hosting solution provider among others, especially here in Mexico because Mexican companies do not provide good service hosting pages, in Dreamhost tou can host you website "a big site or small site", but you can also just register your domain "www.xXxXx.com/net/org/info", it's a cheap service but ti's good too, less than 10/month. and of course also includes support for "e-mail: pop IMAP etc, full support for Java PHP MSQL CGI etc." also includes support for audio and video store...Visit host
DreamHost is a great host for any number of things. They offer a lot of leeway to their shared hosting customers, allowing (even if not supporting) things such as custom PHP builds and advanced tricks that other hosts might block.
They include pretty much unlimited everything on their hosting plan, from MySQL databases to disk usage to bandwidth. It's great not having to worry about paying extra for unexpected resource usage.
However, there are some caveats.
WordPress is included in the One-Click Install system (a great way to install popular packages like WP, MediaWiki, trac, etc.) but your mileage will definitely vary. My WordPress site is constantly having issues on both the front- and back-end sides, mostly related to DreamHost's annoying process-killing bot.
Yes, that's right. DreamHost servers run a daemon that watches every account for processes that exceed some unspecified memory usage limit and unceremoniously kills processes that violate the limits.
I have asked DreamHost support a few times about related issues, and they told me to reduce my memory usage. Without a target, of course, I could spend the next five years tweaking and tweaking away with no results. (Am I allowed 30MB per process? 50MB? 100? They won't say.)
As long as you don't run afoul of that memory daemon, though, DreamHost is pretty great. The server almost never goes down (I'd estimate 98% server uptime, at least) and it'll do nearly anything you might throw at it (if it doesn't involve heavy processing).
DreamHost is a good home for static sites, to be sure, and dynamic sites that have little need for extensive processing. Running a CMS like WordPress, Drupal, or Joomla! should go fine, if you don't install several dozen plugins.
Give them a try. They do have a two-week (used to be 30-day, IIRC...) free trial program, after all, and it can't hurt to test out their system to see if it works for you.Visit host
Pretty good for the price!
Given that you can find some pretty wicked promo codes for Dreamhost I'd say it's a pretty good value. In the 6 or so months that I have been with them I haven't really had any serious problems. A number of one click installs are available including the popular Wordpress. I've tested almost every one of the one click installs on my various domains.
It's easy to use, cheap to start, not down very often, they try to fix any problems quickly, and it's great for anyone just getting started messing around with hosting/comics/startups.Visit host
Dreamhost shared hosting really rocks but I don't their VPS rocks too. Their VPS is as worst as not even thinking of trying it at all. I am their happy customer of Dreamhost shared hosting for around 3 years, I tried using their VPS service but my website not only lost traffic but also the up time. Their VPS hangs so many times. After restarting request, it takes around half an hour and this time is enough to loose a good amount of traffic on not even a very busy site. I had to do the restart 3 times a day effectively 1.5 hours of down time.
I am hating their VPS and planning to move VPS to some other hosting provider.Visit host
DreamHost is probably one of the most reliable hosting provider out there. Their server rarely down, speed was blazing fast (powered by 100Mbps ports), datacenter located in Los Angeles, and support is amazing (live chat available in control panel, support ticket responce are normally within 4 hours, sometimes are instantly). Their features are unique, which includes a free domain, unlimited bandwidth, disk space and transfer, unlimited ftp accounts, with ssh, custom php.ini, free ipv6 addresses (shared, but still better than other hosts), a user-friendly control panel and MORE. The only thing about the host is their price being higher than other hosts ($8.95/month for 24 months, $9.95/month for 12 months) but I think it worth every penny on the host.
To be honest, I would recommend DreamHost if their price is lower, but if you are a new customer, then don't rush, wait for their promos (sometimes only $10 a year, with a domain, for the first year) and signup. This way will save you over $100 for the first year.
DreamHost totally Rocks! They have not had any down time since I have been with them. I use iWeb and and am just learning and anytime I have a problem even with iWeb they go out of their way to help me. I have had problems uploading and they help me right out and get it fixed so I am up and running in no time. I also like that they are very kind and understanding with a great sense of humor. I also like that they don't make me feel like a dork when when I have a Dorky question either. I truly like this Hosting company and I have not been able to say that about any other Hosting other company before.Visit host
They are the worst hosting company ever!
Once my site started to get lot of visitors and I believe it started consuming more server resources they just closed my shared server hosting account without explanation and without notice!
They never answered any of my emails after that and I've sent many emails asking them for the reason of suspension, but they couldn't care less...
If you are serious with you hosting you will stay away from dreamhost!
I have been administrating a plan on DreamHost since November 2010 and I can say that they are a great web host, offering cheap plans.
Their one-clicks used to be limited, but things changed when in December 2010, allowing app developers to get their applications an initial boost to a large base.
I also like the fact that they also offer Subversion repositories free with every plan. This is good news for open source supporters like me.
DreamHost's shared servers is great for small to lesser large sites, then you should use their PSes (which are also cheap).
I am a happy DreamHoster with a large website using about 8GB of space and 30GBs of bandwidth on their shared servers.Visit host
I'm a new to hosting, so I'm glad I started out with Dreamhost. I like their company overall, and respect the fact that they are employee-owned especially in this day and age of corporate layoffs/BS etc. I also like to read their amusing blog. As far as hosting goes, I was worried about their Californian location at first. However, they assured me that with investments they've made in technology and remote data centers that my websites will remain operable in case of small disasters.
I had two web hosting accounts initially, one with Dreamhost and the other with GoDaddy because I didn't understand that domains I registered with elsewhere I could just point to my Dreamhost account (registration and hosting are separate issues! Google it). So in comparing the two, I prefer Dreamhost's interface and support way over GoDaddy's dizzying assortment of menu and popups littered with advertisements for add-on sells. Everything on Dreamhost is organized well and there is small help documentation at the top of each tab with a link to their wiki for additional documentation.
If you are starting out with a wordpress site then you'll find that Dreamhost's interface in a lot of ways imitates the wordpress admin interface with a left hand pane and drop down tabs. Lastly, its hard to screw things up unless you intentionally go ahead with some of the more advanced options. Their interface is like a sandbox. When you want to do more advanced stuff, Dreamhost will warn you that you are going into an advanced area where they might not be able to support you. At the same time they will link to the part of their wiki that helps you find out more about the advanced features you are tinkering with.
Down time is no stranger to Dreamhost as it is for every web host but I agree with most other Dreamhost customers who say that they are open and honest about downtime and work diligently to get people back up again. Their communication and support is very good, i've hardly had to wait very long when I emailed my requests for help.
Ok so what are the drawbacks? Well shared hosting does have its limits. When I first signed up I thought I had everything I needed with the $45 or so I paid for two years. I thought it was a steal and I was under the impression I was set for life with unlimited bandwidth and disk space. My intent was to set up a business website so this is where my lack of understanding on my hosting needs went. I learned quickly that CPU and memory are important resources to shop for when looking for a web host. This is not to say that you can't have a business blog on the Dreamhost shared server option, I just believe that you have to be more knowledgable on how to get all your wanted website bells and whistles working while still coming under the resource allotment they allow for each user. Wordpress has the potential to use a lot of memory. I found out that a few of my wordpress sites were already reaching the limit and thus were shut down by an automatic Dreamhost script to prevent overuse. When I inquired with Dreamhost they gave me some pointers on how to reduce my usage, pointed me to one of their wikis about the subject and tried to up-sell me on the Dreamhost Virtual Personal Server (VPS) option.
So back to the Dreamhost VPS solution, I wasn't happy with my memory dilemma at first but I eventually took them up on VPS because I just didn't want to deal with the script errors anymore. I now have two personal servers and one mySQL PS. I found that one of my personal servers (PS) is good for only so many wordpress sites (mind you they hardly have any traffic now). I realized it was better to order two PS at $15/300mb each level rather than order one and up the memory to around the $24-30/450-600 level.
All in all I think the memory is a bit pricey but I have a hard time comparing them apples-to-apples to other web hosts. This is because competitor VPS and cloud options don't come with Dreamhost's easy way of getting your websites set up on them. Those other VPS come barebones, are designed for professionals, and require you to know everything about managing a server on your own. Dreamhost VPS on the other hand, acts just like your shared hosting account. The only exception being is that you have more resources available to you at touch of the resource slider. One-click installs still work just like they did on the shared server which is wonderful thing.
What I don't like about Dreamhost's VPS is the fact that mySQL PS and the VPS are sold separately which is a bit of a waste of resources because mySQL doesn't even come close to using its minimal allotment of 300mb. Furthermore, if they were on the same server they would be even more optimized for websites as is my current understanding. The only thing that has me staying with their VPS at all is fact that there is a 20% discount on all servers you add to your account.
Memory does operate a bit differently on all their VPS offerings which is also a bone of contention for me but I've learned to live with it. Specifically, there is no swap/burstable memory and you have to account for an "invisible" 100mb or so overhead for regular operations at all times. I say invisible because it doesn't show up on the pretty graphical representation of your server that they provide on your account. You have to go into the ugly shell to see this memory usage more clearly. What is a shell you say? If you don't know what that is don't worry I didn't either. Again, you'll learn how to set yourself up with the Dreamhost wiki at your side. I became a shell pro in a very short amount of time.
All in all, I am fairly happy after educating myself on everything I need. It is in fact Dreamhost which makes it easier. I feel like i'm on webmaster training wheels! I may move on eventually with a second account somewhere that provides a more authentic VPS option, but I'm sure I'll always be with Dreamhost for one reason or another.
In conclusion, I say Dreamhost is great for basic/intermediate websites and I highly recommend them for the beginning webmaster.
Well its been 10 months since i am using dreamhost its quite early to write up a review but still i would like to share , the experience so far have been satisfactory i cannot say that there was no downtime, actually i have seen a lot of them :) still i am happy with it.
There have been instances when my hosting was altogether shifted by the support team to a different server to resolve issues, the support is excellent, the hosting plan in itself is good at least for shared hosters you get everything unlimited i.e. u can host unlimited website i currently host a dozen of them, and yes the One Click Installs are amazing, The affiliate programme is amazing i paid for first year of hosting and already i have earned much to pay for my next few years of hosting with themVisit host
DreamHost are great because they are only host that combines great hosting features with amazing prices, I can't single out any one feature of DreamHost because they are all amazing.
One click installations, some would say too limiting with only a few choices compared to others running cPanel, but the fact that DreamHost allow direct SSH access to your home server without requiring any further setup is incredible.
I have had to jump through so many annoying hoops with other hosts to have SSH access applied.
.htaccess management, web stats, google apps integration for mail, fast subdomain and redirect setups... its all fantastic.
The best thing though? DreamHost Hosting Codes program, you get people signed up to DreamHost, and credit is applied for your own site. This ENTIRE YEARS hosting has only cost be USD $9.95 so far!
Last of all, the support is the quickest I've had, ask a question, get an answer in under an hour in most cases and if thats to slow the almost instant live chat has been the difference between a small change for DreamHost or a critical failure of my site.
I can't praise DreamHost enough!Visit host
I have used dreamhost for more than a year. Back then I'm needing an hosting with ssh access and svn repositories. After review similar hosting that provide features that I need, Dreamhost fulfill all I want, so I'm proceed to create an account there.
In fact, Dreamhost provide more than what I expect. With relatively low price, I can get what other hosting company provide for higher price. This make me very grateful hosting my web in Dreamhost.
List of Dreamhost features that I like:
1. Super control panel. I'm often confused with cpanel that used in most of hosting, but Dreamhost using their own control panel that easy to used.
2. SSH access.
3. SVN and GIT support. I even can compile the latest git instead used already installed git to get the latest version work. Initially I'm using svn but now I've converted to a happy git user.
4. Sharing privileges. I can share the panel access to my fellow friend easily.
5. Unlimited everything. Bandwidth, space, mysql database, ssh user, domain, all unlimited. I even get 50GB backup space for free, outside regular hosting space
There are many more features, but that's the top 5 features that I'm using everyday. Thank you Dreamhost.Visit host
DreamHost offered me a good plan $9.99 for an entire year of web hosting plus a free domain - I couldn't resist. They offer extreme fast email support {which I have used 2x so far; which they proudly resolved}. The first email I sent them was a billing question and I got a ersponse in exactly 4 minutes. The second email I sent them was regarding a technical issue with mysql and I got a response within 48 minutes.
Even though they have fast email support, they however, require that you pay them on a monthly basis for live support help. I don't like the fact that they don't use cpanel. they have their own custom managing panel which can be slightly confusing too use, but you'll get the hang of it after you use it a couple of times. Their support is a bit lacking. They only provide email support for free and for live chat or phone support, you have to pay. But their uptime makes up for it as I have had 100% uptime so far.
Really I don't think you can get a better deal ever - a year of hosting plus a free domain for 9.99.
i would definitely recommend people to go sign up with dreamhost since the uptime is very excellent and since they have a good plan going. The support is relatively fast - email.
DreamHost is awesome, I have never noticed any downtime on the server my site is on. They have a real easy to use hosting panel once you transition to it from cPanel. Most hosting providers use cPanel so there is a learning curve if you are used to using cPanel. They offer a good amount of customization through the panel. I would say that any person could learn to use their panel and setup a website fairly quickly. DreamHost is suitable for anyone looking for a web host. I think the best thing about DreamHost is that they provide lifetime free web hosting to 501(c)3 (non profit) organizations which is good for churches looking for a place to put their website without the large amount of cost.Visit host
DreamHost rocks!
Since feb 2008 a friend registered a site with hosting from DreamHost. I helped him to do the website, and administrate it,even now. So i have more than a year of experience becoming an estable user from DreamHost.
The best from DreamHost is the price and the PERFECT support.
You can decrease money by reffering friends to register to DreamHost, that's simply great. There's also promo codes like DS30 (USD $30 discount for the first year).
The speed is great, all the users from the site are from outside US (so it's international speed) and they NEVER had problems viewing our site.
The bandwith is simply perfect, we never had problems with that, and our site has a lot of users!
The Panel is really user-friendly, it was easy to configurate mails, subdomains, FTP accounts, database, and all the things works perfectly.
Our plan really fits with our demand, all is perfect, we don't want more or less, and price is the best!
I used a lot of hosting services, since 1998, and i have to admit i always had some problems with everyone (server down, database error, even damaged discs!).. until i met DreamHost!
So if you are thinking in real, pro and cheap hosting... DreamHost is your Dream Host!Visit host
Dreamhost are great because the suport is very great, i get responses less than 10, 12 hours. Have a wiki avaible, a very active forum and a special domain dedicated to state for a hosting.
The values are cheap, but for me just a free hosting, i dont add advertising, the control panel interface is very intuitive and the speed is good.
On the technical side supports several php modules, although not allowed to fopen, I curl scheduling solutions without any problem.
I had other hostings before, but were expensive and space was very little, so I am now contracting with a few but they are very good, among them this dreamhost
Sometimes when I'm traveling and need to make some adjustments on some file or change a few lines from a script, I have no problem login from a mobile device via ssh and make the appropriate changes.
so far have had no problems with dreamhost, apart from which he had commented on the php module.
I always recommend to my friend that hosting.
DreamHost services are widely praised. DreamHost offers a solid web hosting with a reputable name. DreamHost is a bit expensive if you do not buy their annual plan, but many web hosting services require that. DreamHost is certainly worth the few extra dollars. You get what you pay for after all, and delivers on its promise, DreamHost has great customer service. Dreamhost also has one of the most abundant reimbursement policies, giving their customers full 97 days to try the service. That is perhaps the best industry.
DreamHost offers a wide range of features such as excellent VPN! Many webmasters are enjoying, it is hard to find the webhosting affording VPN, while Dreamhost offers such reputable service class. What I mean by that is, most of the time, good web hosting services that offer such great features are more expensive, and cheap hosting services web service does not offer great customer of Dreamhost.
DreamHost's services are very unique. They are one of the few to offer affordable access VPN with its strictly business plan. Their plans are competitively priced and are loaded with features, and a large corporate atmosphere. DreamHost is also a web hosting company green regardless of the climate change debate, it is always a good thing to reduce harmful waste, and Dreamhost is powered by renewable energy. Dreamhost also maintains a corporate environment which are handsome, casual, and funny, something the cold professionalism of other web hosting companies.
They have many other features. Webhosting features available include: full UNIX Shell, server side includes (SSI), and support for Crontab and ruby on rails.
Dreamhost also has, in large measure, the longest warranty in the industry. You have a guarantee of 97 days with Dreamhost. That's more than enough to satisfy any claim of DreamHost you might have a big fat refund check. Please keep in mind that fixed fees and domain registration fees are always non-refundable with any web hosting company.
Dreamhost offers great features including VPN.
The company currently has over 700 servers installed in a data center and employs over 40 people.
Provides web hosting over 300,000 domains, although the number of clients is not known, since each client can accommodate any number of domains.Visit host
I bought dreamhost hosting about 7 months ago now. And its bought for my main domain www.henegamacc.org which is non profit school project. And that time dreamhost had promotion for 1 year hosting for $9 with free domain name with whois protection. So think about that, that's a great deal! And I thought Ill face problems soon because the hosting package is cheap and its selling hard! But never had problems till now. Now I host more than 5 of my autoblogs and other 2 sites. Non of them didnt had any of problems or data loss so far!
Dreamhost gave me surprising speeds and worth for buck! Their custom control panel is very easy to manage than Cpanel. The only problem on their custom control panel is it doesnt have web stats system like awstats or webalizer. That should be fixed by dreamhost that's the only problem I seen on their cpanel! Their support team is great and they always answers my support tickets less than a hour. (I cant believe that too :D ) And they always keeps you updated on their status blog that is the the best way to know their info!
Although I'm very much satisfied with dreamhost! and I'm hosting with them next years!Visit host
DreamHost offers one click installs, which reduces the burden of uploading web software's, FTP etc., and thereby saves time. It has an easy to use control panel. It has a toolbox to quickly reach the necessary menu options like 'manage database' , 'domain management' etc.,
The menu is very easy to use. I pay 120$ per year on the hosting and I believe I get every dollar is worth it. Domain expiry warnings, registrations and billing are also handled well.
The support queries are answered effectively in less than 10 minutes time, this is one of the worth mentioning facilities on DreamHost. The DreamHost team is fair enough in answering questions, they even provide technical assistance accordingly.
And, every referral is paid 97$ which is another motivating factor. On the whole, the features, support and up-time are pretty good.
I have been using DreamHost for the past two years, I hardly experienced any difficulties or issues with the hosting and other services. Yes, I do recommend DreamHost to my friends.
Thanks and Regards
Srikanth AD
Before being a customer i heard both good and bad things about Dreamhost.
So i decided to check it my self.
First of all i must say that they have a fairly good customer support service.But i must say that my site experienced down time in few occasions with in the first week.They did managed to fix it reasonably quickly as i complained but that created a bad image in my mind about Dreamhost.
Well talking about the customer expertise needed, i found that they do not provide much assistance with the mysql options.Here is an email that i got regarding an inquiry about an PHP installation,
"Hello Thelahera,
You are using the default. If you'd set up your own, you'd know. As far
as I know, our default PHP installation does meet those requirements, but
if you do run into problems, bear in mind, we can't offer assistance when
it comes to custom configurations, but you can always turn to
http://discussion.dreamhost.com for help from your fellow users (who
maintain much of the custom configuration and 3rd party software articles
on the wiki anyway).
Please let me know if you have any other questions!"
but i must say i'm pretty satisfied with the support service.
I would say dream host is suitable for any kind of customer from beginner to large site hoster.It will be good if they can improve the features in the c panel though.
Finally i say i can recommend Dreamhost to my friends..but must not forget the fact that they have to improve in some areas to be a better hosting provider.Visit host
I was with a local reseller web hosting company ManasHosting here in India, and I had a nightmare for around 3 years with them. They provided me cheap windows web hosting but the service was poorest of poor. Then I migrated to Dreamhosting and I am proud to be associated with them. Their service is superb. They treat you like a valued customer and try to help you in every possible way. They also possess some very good technical experts who go out of the way to solve your issues.
Their control panel speaks for itself. It is full of everything that is generally required by a website owner.
Their knowledge base is again filled with everything. I like their portal where they keep posting status of the server. If something happens to the server, you can track it there (http://www.dreamhoststatus.com).
Till now I am hosting my four websites with them and have already recommended DreamHost to 3 of my friends.
I got >99% uptime for two consecutive months which I never got from my previous host.
I am really loving it and I would definitely recommend it to as many people as I can.Visit host
I got my hosting package from dreamhost for only $9 year when their discount prices going on. Im happy about their service because their custom c-Panel looks very good and very easy to do things there. Also their customer support is very good and normally answers my support tickets quickly. But i have had bit down time thats the only one problem i have faced there. My site sucks more than 6GB bandwidth a day but seems very good on the traffic! Im satisfied about dreamhost!
Ruchira Sahan
I purchased a 2 year hosting from Dreamhost for about $25 during a spceical promotion. It had unlimited domains and unlimited bandwidth. It is amazing for the price. It comes out to about a $1 a month for all my domains. Awesome deal! I recently had an issue with them when all my sites appeared to be down...I sent them an email. They sent me an email back within 10 mts informing me that one of their servers was having an issue and about 1/2 hour later the sites were up...It was amazing. They tend to be slightly slower a couple of times in the last 3 months but other than they are great especially for the money I paid them. I would recommend them to everyone!Visit host
If you don't care about 99.9% uptime, they offer a lot of features. If you want 24/7 phone support should your site go down, and it will, you may want to check out their competition. Dreamhost makes no phone numbers public, so try contacting them when your site has issues on their servers, it is impossible. Your only support is when they get around to reading their e-mail. Your site can be offline for days, or your server has been hacked or has a virus, and try getting in touch with someone. I will never host with them or anyone else that does not offer 24/7 reliable tech support. In today's competitive environment, stick with a company that offers reliable 24/7 phone support. Don't get hooked on all the unlimited bandwidth or goodies, most sites offer that, stick with reliability, 99.9% uptimes hosting companies etc. You will notice that not on any of their advertising or reviews you will see they do not brag or bost about 99.9% uptime, because it's more like 82.1% one of the poorest uptime ratings and when you run an e-commerce site, that can be costly when your site is offline and their servers were hacked or had a virus. For a company that has been around for 12 years, you'd think they could afford better customer support.......imhoVisit host
I was reading a blog when I came across a article stating Dreamhost was giving free domains to Yahoo Geocities customers since they bought them out. I remembered creating one a long time ago, but decided to host my site at home so I could have a bit more power of configuration. For free, I have unlimited disk space and bandwidth along with my domain, http://newbieworks.org for 2 years. I was a little disappointed because they have no common control panel like cpanel or vistapanel. Their custom panel takes a little getting used to and I had to wait until the next day for the account details and FTP to start working flawlessly although that is expected. Since my site it still small, the speed some relatively good. I've only had my site for around 2 weeks now, but everything seems to be working. I was able to transfer my forum, http://newbieworks.org/pceasies , from a free byethost account over with little problems (after a I cleared the Wordpress cache). Transferring the MySQL database was easy. Dreamhost has one-click installers which are nice. They also offer some easy to setup services like streaming video and setting up Amazon CDN. Once you have everything setup (you need to manually enable PHP, which I found to be a bit annoying) you really don't have to worry about the control panel anymore. I haven't had to deal with customer support yet, so I can't comment on that. I'm going to stream some videos pretty soon (although my site is still very, very small and just starting), so I'll have to see if they like that. If you know the basics you can get started pretty easily. You may want to play around in the control panel to get the feeling for it and where everything is. They do have phpMyAdmin once you setup MySQL. If you know how FTP works then it's not very hard to get started. They also offer FrontPage Extensions for those people for still use Frontpage. To me, a newcomer to paid hosting, it seems like they offer everything expected of a paid host. As I've mentioned time and time again, the only issue is the odd custom control panel they have. I think anyone who wants to start a website should atleast look at Dreamhost (GoDaddy does not have a cpanel either). If I could choice again, I probably would go with Bluehost instead, but it's more of a user choice on what you want.Visit host
I appreciate the openness of their customer facing communications. I've personally experienced excellent uptime. Their services are feature rich and easy to use. I've been with them for about two years and look forward to future years!Visit host
I've been using DreamHost as my cheap secondary server for over a year now. For the price and features, DreamHost has the best value of among bargain shared hosting providers.
My server with DreamHost is not as fast as my VPS... but it only costs a fraction of the price of my "good server".
I use DreamHost as my secondary server, it's where I grow my sites before they have decent traffic -- especially blogs because DreamHost makes it so easy to set-up Wordpress blogs and easy upgrades.
For me, support has been fantastic -- but I haven't had many problems except the occasional downtime. I know other DreamHost customers have had issues with major downtime, but I've only had 5-10 minutes of downtime a handful of times over the last year.
I would recommend DreamHost to anyone who does not need 100% uptime. Honestly, most mom and pop websites would be perfect here...no one will notice if Bob's local handyman site is down at 1am for 10mins.
Also: DreamHost's control panel is better than cpanel.Visit host
I have a few websites (photos, blogs, small ecommerce...) with Dreamhost.
Having all my sites and domains under one roof is very handy. They have been helpful when I had technical issues.
They are also very good value for money. I would recommend it for personal use and pro-am. I would however not recommend it if your business depends on your website.Visit host
You've hired your l33t team of hackers. The VC funding has arrived, and your San Francisco office is full of nerf guns and improbable chairs. All set with the start up? Great.
All you need now is a room full of servers and a bearded gentleman who considers English his third language after Unix and Klingon. Save yourself the effort, cash and difficult personal hygiene discussions.
Sign up with Dreamhost and you're good to go. I consider myself an experienced server admin and programmer. So, when I started my business I considered Dreamhost a stepping stone to the sort of setup described above.
I've never needed it; Dreamhost has always come through. Source control system? SVN is setup with a few clicks from the control panel. Easy creation of databases with PHPMyAdmin access? All there. Full shell access, lots of disk space, and a response time speedy enough from all the countries I've tried it.
DreamHost are not completely comprehensive; the more advanced you get, there will be esoteric (or not so esoteric but difficult to install: I'm looking at you, Trac) applications that you find you need. In these cases, somebody with decent Unix chops will still need to get their hands dirty at the command line.
Their support will back you up as they can, and I've always found responses to be very speedy. There will be times when the answer comes back 'cant be done on a shared server' but they will generally do their best and propose a word around to achieve the same goal.
Twice I've had fairly complex problems that required their direction intervention on my shared server, and they have fixed them within a couple of hours. Frankly, I have employees that don't match up to that.
On top of their professional support, Dreamhost's popularity means that whatever you're trying to do, somebody will already have done it. Hopefully, they've also posted it to the Wiki or the support forums to enlighten you, too.
They're far from perfect for every business. A reputation for downtime is not entirely undeserved, so if you're working on a web-based nuclear facility manager, I'd go elsewhere.
If you don't need five nines, I'd seriously consider accepting the occasional drop in service in exchange for the value for money and ease of use they'll give you.
Equally, remember you're on a shared host with hundreds of other users. If your site hits Digg and Slashdot simultaneously and regularly, or you're solving the Riemann hypothesis using Python's excellent math libraries - sorry, Dreamhost isn't for you.
Then again, if you're at that stage in your project you can probably afford that lavish server room and a WoW guild's worth of geeks. Until then, Dreamhost it.Visit host
I have used DreamHost for about 6 months now, its really simple. The one click installs are a nice time saving feature. Unfortunately they don't have the latest version of PHP on their servers so its been a bit restricted for me lately. Can't complain about downtime as I haven't seen any.Visit host
If you need 100% uptime or high performance look elsewhere, but if you want cheap server space and lots of features DreamHost is pretty amazing.Visit host
I have two dedicated servers with Dreamhost plus another bunch of sites in the shared environment, and while they might not be the most reliable in terms of uptime, the customer care is generally very good (you won't receive copy & paste responses that don't answer your questions), and this means I'm inclined to forgive them for hosting that is less-than-100% solid. It's probably not the best place for mission-critical stuff, but it's cheap and cheerful and undoubted value-for-money.Visit host
I've been using DreamHost for a few years now. While they're not ideal for high-traffic, database driven or CPU intensive sites, they rock for quick 'n' dirty hosting for staging sites, microsites etc. And I'll take their homegrown control panel over cPanel anyday.Visit host
DreamHost are known for low-cost shared web hosting and domains, but also offer VPS and dedicated services.
At the time of writing this review, DreamHost are about to launch cloud storage. However, they do already have a limited personal cloud storage service called Files Forever. This allows content producers to host files on DreamHost's servers for a one-off fee. Producers can optionally charge for downloads. To try Files Forever, you need to be a DreamHost customer.
Based in Brea, California, west of Los Angeles, DreamHost launched in 1997, so it has a long and proven track record. It's owned by New Dream Network LLC, a company formed by four college students in 1996. All four co-founders are still working for the company, and Simon Anderson - an experienced entrepreneur and executive - is now CEO. Despite restructuring, the company still employ a friendly and personal tone on their website and marketing material.
DreamHost offer a very generous affiliate programme which offers cash rewards for referrals, plus a free domain name with each new account. They also have an impressive two week free trial and a 97-day money-back guarantee promise. The environmentally-conscious will also be interested to note that DreamHost is entirely carbon neutral despite hosting more than one million domains.
DreamHost Hosting Plans
DreamHost's shared hosting is based on Debian Linux and aimed squarely at the budget end of the market. It has all the hallmarks of a low-cost host with little or no limits on capacity and bandwidth.
Their VPS and dedicated hosting is also Linux-based. Signing up to any package will give new users a free domain name for one year. Dedicated servers on DreamHost include dual-core and quad-core processor options, and you can optionally choose to run Nginx in place of Apache.
Interestingly, DreamHost also provide free web hosting to non-profit charitable organisations. However, your organisation will need to be US-registered to take advantage.
Details of their cloud hosting packages have yet to be announced at the time of writing this review. The Files Forever service runs at a one-time upload fee plus associated transaction fees for downloads.
Unusually, customers can purchase gift cards for DreamHost hosting. There's also no reseller option beyond the normal affiliate programme.
DreamHost Uptime/Downtime
Unusually, DreamHost offer a 100% uptime guarantee across all shared, VPS and dedicated hosting. Should a fault at DreamHost cause your website, database, email, FTP, SSH or webmail to go down, you'll be credited with one free day's hosting for every hour of downtime. The amount of downtime is calculated from the moment you open a support ticket, so it pays to be proactive.
DreamHost don't publish any data about uptime on their website, but they do have a detailed status blog at dreamhoststatus.com.
DreamHost currently operate from two data centres, one in downtown LA and one close to LAX airport. These are shared facilities, although DreamHost own a large stake in Alchemy, the company that runs them. Each facility is staffed round the clock and has 3 megawatts of uninterrupted power supply provision. Both facilities are equipped to handle fire and earthquakes.
Customers can manually back up their websites and account data (including mailboxes) with a single click from their control panel.
DreamHost Support
DreamHost doesn't offer telephone support, although you can pay a small premium on your monthly fee to have a member of staff call you. The extra fee also covers live chat support. Otherwise, all support is via email and/or ticket - there's no phone number.
Customers can find most of the answers to technical questions (such as DNS, domain transfer, email and FTP details) in the wiki (which acts as a knowledge base) and forum on the DreamHost support portal alongside the network status blog. Customers are kept up-to-date with a regular newsletter.
DreamHost in the News
DreamHost has something of a chequered history.
In January 2008, DreamHost over-billed practically their entire customer base when automated billing services failed and a member of staff re-ran billing for the wrong year. The company initially said that they accidentally took an additional $7.5 million in hosting fees in the space of one day. After this blog was written, the figure was downgraded to $2.1 million.
In another high-profile news story, DreamHost's FTP passwords across all accounts were hacked. Customers were advised to change their passwords.
DreamHost Control Panel
Fans of Cpanel or Plesk may be disappointed to hear that neither is provided on DreamHost. Instead, the company offer a completely custom control panel which was created entirely in-house.
Login to DreamHost's control panel and you'll find access to everything to do with the hosting account, from billing, Django, ImageMagick and account details to MySQL and email accounts. Although it's very capable, people who have previously used Cpanel may feel frustrated once they realise they have to re-learn a new administration system to perform basic tasks, such as increasing the php memory limit or accessing phpmyadmin.
DreamHost Extras
DreamHost are proud of their One-Click Installer software which allows users to quickly install common packages. The One-Click Installer covers WordPress, phpBB, Moodle, Joomla, Drupal and other bits and pieces to handle discussion, wikis, ecommerce and blogs.
With every package, you'll also enjoy a free domain name for a year. The domain is registered in the customer's name and can be transferred away from DreamHost at any time.
DreamHost also offer free CloudFlare performance and security services. They offer limited support for Java and full support for Jabber (including running your own Jabber server) and Jquery.
DreamHost Money Back Guarantee / Cancellation Policy
DreamHost offer a comprehensive 97-day money back guarantee. Should you change your mind about hosting with them, you can close your account with a click and receive a full refund. In order to qualify, you'll need to pay your fees via credit card and your account must not have been closed for spamming or violating DreamHost's terms. As with most money-back offers, any fees for domain registration can't be refunded.
DreamHost Summary
DreamHost are built on the 'stack it high, sell it cheap' philosophy. By using their own control panel, they retain a certain amount of control over what customers can do with their domains. In addition, by offering extremely limited support options, the company don't expose themselves to high after-sales costs, helping them achieve more competitive pricing.
If you want an easy, low-cost way to get a few websites online, DreamHost provide most of the features you'll need for a good price, particularly on their shared hosting plan. If you don't get along with their control panel, you can simply cancel the contract within that 97-day period and get your money back.
However, fans of Cpanel would be best advised to look elsewhere. And if you rely on live chat or phone support to get things done, be sure to factor in the extra cost when comparing hosting providers.
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