Web Host Review: DreamHost

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Employee-owned, developer-friendly web hosting. For the tech-savvy, you can’t get any better than DreamHost: Shell access, CSV and SVN repositories, PHP 4 and 5, Ruby on Rails, and more than enough disk space and bandwidth to make use of it all.

An Award Winning Host
29 Positive Reviews
7 Negative Reviews
Features:    2.4
Support:    2.2
Value:    2.3
Overall Rating:    2.2

Customer Reviews

  1. Reviewed by Anon on January 13th, 2007
    Comments: In my experience--around eight months with them--I've found their service to be reliable, stable, and amazingly cheap (Google for a voucher code, save $97!), and their support to be fast and insanely polite and helpful. Before I joined up, I sent them an e-mail, and it was the support staff member that replied that suggested I use the code to save the money. Awesome!

    Though, admittedly, a friend I recommended to them has suffered with some uptime issues while being with DreamHost, upto about two-three months ago. DH posted on their bllog acknowleding the problems, and what they've done/are doing to remedy the problem and all seems to be just fine now.

    Overall, 9/10!
    • Reviewed by Why on January 13th, 2007
      Comments: Of the hosting companies I've used, DH is by far the most open, both in terms of communication and features. The account limits are so high that getting hit by slashdot or digg won't result in a $1000 hosting bill for over usage. Generally the rule is "don't mess it up for others". This does eliminate persistent processes or streaming, but in almost all cases this isn't a problem. I've found the *only* real weak link can be support response time. It has been getting better with the addition of new staff and better access to power in their NOC. These guys really are some of the best in the business.

      One thing to know, they will be as honest with you as you are with them. Not that they are short tempered or anything but if you don't live up to your commitments they will cut you off. FAIRLY. But by the same measure they expect to do the same for you. They suffer complaints and attacks knowing that a large number of happy customers are out there paying their bills and there are always people that cannot be made happy - and they're loud about it.

      The referral code system and the HUGE bandwidth and disk space allotments (that grow WEEKLY - yes, extra gigs of bandwidth every week for the amount of time you you've been with them) do make Dreamhost look like a "cheapie" or "sleaze" but I asked them outright - why the huge allocations? And the answer was that bandwidth was cheap in the volumes they purchase and easily available with a phone call. The majority of users don't use much of their allocations so it's not dangerous to offer. I'm sure that these limits also make accounting easier and keep site owners happy.

      Notes: Pay by Credit Card or Google Checkout - This will get you the best chance of quick activation and reserve your rights to the 97 day money back guarantee. And do use a referral code to save money. Consider it an opportunity to try their service and decide for yourself. I paid full price and don't regret it.

      All in all, the best value out there. 10 isn't enough - as Spinal Tap would say - "But this one goes to 11"
      • Reviewed by Gene Steinberg on January 14th, 2007
        Comments: I've only been with DreamHost two weeks, so consider this a preliminary review, subject to change. After reading the pros and cons, they came across as the most user-friendly system, and they are definitely eager to please. They offer an extraordinary amount of bandwidth and features for the money, and I was able to get my four major sites up and running with only a small amount of hand-holding (my Webmaster decided to take the month off). Performance is so far near-excellent, and somewhat better than my previous host, GoDaddy. After trying several hosts over the years, this one seems to be the best. I hope I can say that again a year from now.
        • Reviewed by Matthew Kennedy on January 16th, 2007
          Comments: I've been with DreamHost nearly ten months now and I'm impressed. I have an incredible amount of resources at my disposal. A few months ago I went and upgraded from their "Crazy Domain Insane" plan to their "Code Monster" plan and I couldn't be happier. Their support is always fast, and for the price I get nearly limitless amounts of disk space and bandwidth.

          Occasionally my site loads a little slow, but other than that, my experience has been great, I haven't been with anyone better.
          • Reviewed by Brian DiChiara on January 16th, 2007
            Comments: Almost everything about DreamHost is fantastic, however my experience with them was slightly flawed by the website downtime myself as well as my employer (whom i referred to them) experienced. Besides that, they have a killer control panel, excellent service, hilarious newsletter, and are in constant contact with you about the status of their services.
            • Reviewed by Decio on January 18th, 2007
              Comments: I guess the keyword for dreamhost is: value. It can't get any better.
              They have been having critical datacenter/network problems in the past months, but have been very transparent about it. I would like to see a better uptime and their custom control panel is very slow at times.
              If you're looking to 100% uptime and phone support look elsewhere (but be prepared to pay for it).
              • Reviewed by Tiago on February 18th, 2007
                Comments: Greatest price / quality relation in the market!
                • Reviewed by Jay Oatway on February 25th, 2007
                  Comments: I got so fed up with hosts that didn't understand the needs of a blogger. I switched to Dreamhost and have fallen in love with them. Everything you need is just a click away--and the support is friendly!
                  • Reviewed by Luis E Alvarado on March 5th, 2007
                    Comments: Dreamhost... OH MY GOD!!! Enough of that. I have been with so many webhosts before and so far this is the most feature packed-value oriented service that I have ever tried.
                    Even though I have been with datacenters that offer better uptime, the features for the prize; to include that your bandwidth and space increases for as long as you are with them. Dreamhost is the BEAST when it comes to this type of service.
                    So... Just like you heard before... I am A HAPPY DREAMHOST CUSTOMER!!!!
                    • Reviewed by Ben on March 26th, 2007
                      Comments: For me, Dreamhost is great. In about 1 1/2 months i only had 1 hour of downtime (monitored with host-tracker.com). Dreamhost posts all their server problems online so you can check to see if it affects you. Now they are having some troubles with their servers but i haven't had to much downtime, again only about 1 hour. For some really high traffic this could be a problem. But for the money Its really cheap. And they have one click installs, phpbb, gallery ,etc those are really easy to set up. I really enjoy those. Overall i really like Dreamhost. They are very good if you don't rely on your website really heavily for business etc.
                      • Reviewed by Will on March 27th, 2007
                        Comments: I used Dreamhost about 7 years ago when they were just starting out. At the time I got very frustrated with them as they seemed to have a lot of problems. That was the last I ever heard of them or dealt with them until about two weeks ago when I came across their site. I couldn't believe the value of their packages, I could get 4 times as much space and bandwidth for 1/2 the price I am currently paying. I am on a yearly plan at the moment but when that expires, I will defiantly consider moving to Dreamhost.
                        • Reviewed by scranton on April 2nd, 2007
                          Comments: Ran a test site on them but wasn't impressed enough to switch from 1and1.
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                            • Reviewed by Ian on May 20th, 2007
                              Comments: Good hosts are hard to find. Not any longer! DreamHost is great. Their servers are extremely reliable and they can back up their offerings (e.g., you truly can run 1000 GB of bandwidth). Whenever I had a problem, they were right there and solved it within 24 hours (many times I got a response within a few hours). Not to mention I got 1 year of hosting for $20 using a promo code.

                              If you need a good host, get hosting from DreamHost. You won't be disappointed.
                              • Reviewed by Carrie on May 26th, 2007
                                Comments: I like the support at SiteGround much better because it is telephone support. Dreamhost is email support. blah.

                                Other than that it was a great experience. Look for the promocodes. Great deals.
                                • Reviewed by Hans Blaauw on September 8th, 2007
                                  Comments: Why overall a 5? Because MySQL performance is not good. I created a Wordpress site on both Dreamhost and Hostgator and Hostgator outperformance Dreamhost. It is soooo much faster.
                                  • Reviewed by huseyin on September 11th, 2007
                                    Comments: It's the best hosting firm around. I've used them for 6 months and than I transferred to hostingplex. Within 2 months, I was regretting that I had transferred. I went back to dreamhost in a hurry and never left again :)
                                    They have great features and a reasonably fast support. The performance is nothing less than what you'd expect from a shared hosting.
                                    You can not get that value for this price anywhere else.
                                    • Reviewed by Igor Bogdanov on October 3rd, 2007
                                      Comments: Good Host!
                                      • Reviewed by Tim Linden on October 20th, 2007
                                        Comments: DreamHost has been a great host. I'll continue to use them. There are still the ups and downs of shared hosting, but all in all it's great. A tip: if you use the mysql database, utilize some kind of cache (ie: wordpress use the wp-cache plugin). This dramatically speeds things up, and it helps everyone out by using the DB server less. If everyone did that, it wouldn't ever get slowed down..
                                        • Reviewed by daithanh on October 29th, 2007
                                          Comments: slow slow slow
                                          • Reviewed by Richard Brown on November 1st, 2007
                                            Comments: The BEST thing for me about Dreamhost has been the service. I submit a ticket and I have a response in 15 minutes or less. Not only that, but a response with RESEARCH. Even with their network issues I'm willing to stick with them because of the quality of service.
                                            • Reviewed by MikeM on December 20th, 2007
                                              Comments: Our site was slow for months -- so slow it was un-usable. Dreamhost kept telling us that it was the network or we had to re-write our database queries. Just as we were about the switch hosting companies, they found someone running rouge quries on our shared database server. The site then reponded well (fast) for months. Then again it was slow -- the site had not changed. Guess what? They told us we have to optimize our database quries. I would move the site now, but it is such a hassle I'll live with it for now.
                                              • Reviewed by Mike on December 28th, 2007
                                                Comments: Dreamhost is great for the beginner webmaster, however, if you really want to dig under the hood, there are better.
                                                • Reviewed by Mike on December 28th, 2007
                                                  Comments: I really shouldn't be able to review it twice... can i?
                                                  • Reviewed by max on January 2nd, 2008
                                                    Comments: good hoster
                                                    • Reviewed by bhupesh bhandai on January 5th, 2008
                                                      Comments: well, i m useing dream host since 6 month. there hosting is fine and stable.
                                                      almost 100%uptime, once i got some prblem in site, they fix it soon. its stable one.
                                                      • Reviewed by aarsla on January 28th, 2008
                                                        Comments: The best hosting provider out there!
                                                        • Reviewed by vix on February 1st, 2008
                                                          Comments: expensive but ggreat!
                                                          • Reviewed by sean on February 1st, 2008
                                                            Comments: not bad
                                                            • Reviewed by Jon on February 5th, 2008
                                                              Comments: I have been with Dreamhost for a year and a half now. I like them, they have pretty good service, the only thing that would make them perfect is if they would add windows hosting, so that they could allow asp, but other than that great service.

                                                              Plus you get huge amounts of space and bandwidth, and it all increases each week. Dreamhost starts out at 5 TB of bandwidth and 500 GB of storage. On top of that you can host unlimited domains and subdomains on one account.
                                                              • Reviewed by alvin on February 23rd, 2008
                                                                Comments: efsef
                                                                • Reviewed by jonsonroth on March 1st, 2008
                                                                  Comments: Dreamhost sucks. Sites are constantly down, and these idiots changed the robots.txt files of some hosted sites without telling the owners. They BLOCKED Googlebot just because their servers couldn't handle it. As a result, after several months, some bloggers complained that their rankings dropped to zero. Thanks, DreamHost, for being the most idiotic hosting company out there.
                                                                  • Reviewed by Orpheus on March 2nd, 2008
                                                                    Comments: DreamHost is perhaps the worst host I've ever used. Downtime occurred at least twice a week, my site was always slow, and their support was awful and slow, often taking upwards to six hours to respond. They're also notorious oversellers, and recently, they charged everyone $119 because of a screw up on DreamHost's part. I would recommend everyone refrain from being tempted to register with DreamHost because of the price. There's numerous coupon codes out there that will allow you to purchase a years worth of hosting for $20 -- this may sound good, but the service is terrible. I guess you really do get what you pay for.
                                                                    • Reviewed by alimalik on March 6th, 2008
                                                                      Comments: Great price. you can easy find someone in support forum to share with you promo code to give you almost free in 30s $ ist year trial.
                                                                      • Reviewed by Charles on March 8th, 2008
                                                                        Comments: I've been with Dreamhost for 2 years. Uptime and speed has been excellent, my page always loads instantly, and they don't overload their servers. The staff is very friendly, and the packages have tons of features. They have good documentation on their web site, I love their web panel, it's got everything in a single place, it's easy to use, and well organize. I love these features: Jabber accounts, SVN, SSH, unlimited Unix users, FastCGI. Perfect for developers. They're not expensive also.
                                                                        • Reviewed by Ben Burgess on March 11th, 2008
                                                                          Comments: Great servers, great uptime, good support.
                                                                          • Reviewed by erer on May 2nd, 2008
                                                                            Comments: fgfgfg

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