DreamHost Review

DreamHost is not your typical hosting shop. They are employee owned. They have been named one of the most democratic places to work. The use green energy for their hosting. They clearly have a different view of the world than most hosts, but that view definitely includes a focus on quality. Not only are they incredibly reliable, but you get unlimited domains and your storage and transfer allowances go up every week. If their price were lower, they really would be a dream. As it is, their package remains a decent choice.

Shared Hosting

DreamHost used to have a whole slew of different plans, but has since moved to the simpler one-plan-fits-all model which has become so popular. Dreamhost says that shared hosting is their “bread and butter” and their plan’s quality is consistent with that view. While other hosts may offer more storage or transfer, DreamHost has a neat little system where they automatically increase those each week. Think of it as a built in inflation buffer. So you get 2GB more storage each week and 40GB more transfer each week.

Dedicated Servers

DreamHost does not really offer dedicated servers. The do have a section on their site about them, but they are just acting as resellers for hosting.com and the pricing is anything but competitive. You don’t get root access, which is a show stopper for me. You can do better elsewhere. Skip it.

Support

DreamHost’s support is surprising good, given that they do not offer live chat support or even phone support. Their response times to support tickets is short, however, and problems are usually solved quickly. A discussion board is also available and active. That said, the lack of phone support limits them to at most a ‘B’ for support.

What the Reviewers Say

• “Definitely one of the packages to be considered when looking to purchase Web hosting.” — Web Hosting Doctor
• “All in all we were pleased with Dreamhost’s offering and would recommend it to anyone in need of advanced hosting tools and features.” &mdash Web Hosting Handbook

What DreamHost Says

Our Past

We at DreamHost have been happily hosting our clients’ dreams (and websites) since April 1997 - close to a century ago in Internet years! That was when we (four Computer Science undergraduates at hmc.edu in Claremont, CA) launched this company with no capital apart from a single Pentium 100 web server (Destro was her name), using shared bandwidth on a T1 line that a friend gave us at no cost.

By necessity we had to be frugal, but even with our less than ample resources we always did our best to provide a quality service at a reasonable price. Those early days quickly taught us the technical expertise and market savvy necessary to survive in our industry, as well as teaching us to respect each and every customer’s wishes, dealing with them as though they were our friends. Hey, most of them were!

It’s hard to believe that we’ve already grown to over 700 servers (each with over 50 times the processing power of Destro), a state-of-the-art data center, and a full time staff of 50 at last count. Even though we now grow more in a day than we did in our first three months of business, we’ve always made it our number one priority to deal with every client as a human being and as a friend. We like to think that that, more than anything else, is the real reason for our current success.

Now hosting over 350,000 web sites, we’ve definitely come a long way since 1997. But we can see there’s still a long road in front of us. We don’t know exactly where it will lead; all we know is that the trip will be fun, and we wish you’d come with us!

Our Present

As with all companies, there are some things we do the same as our competitors and there are some things we do differently. We try and imitate whenever we feel imitation is deserved, and we deviate whenever we feel deviation is a must. Most hosts offer a wide range of features bundled with various service plans, and we are of course no exception. Canned CGI scripts, full CGI access, PHP4, SSH and Telnet, raw log files plus analyzed access statistics, unlimited email forwarding, aliasing, auto-responding, vanity domain names, MySQL, e-commerce, plenty of disk space and transfer allowance are available on our numerous service plans (prices range from $9.95 to $79.95/month).

Most hosts offer a web-based control panel to manage your account and its features, and we do too. From there you can control all aspects of your account(s), including any billing-related and customer support concerns you may have. But wait. There is more…

Where you first start to notice the difference between DreamHost and all other webhosts is the community feel of our web panel. Besides the standard links for things like email and domain management, there are areas for customer suggestions, DreamHost newsletters, the DreamHost Site of the Month, DreamHost donations, the unofficial DreamHost directory, the DreamHost Rewards program, as well as a customer discussion area. All of these are a natural outcropping of our desire to stay in touch with our clients and to foster a free flow of ideas between them and us. What better way to learn how to keep our customers happy than to ask them, and then to act on what they say?

Another refreshing difference is how relaxed and customer-oriented our billing practices are. There is an unconditional 97 day money back guarantee on all accounts, including any setup fees, and we have no hidden costs and no minimum monthly contracts on any of our plans! We accept payment via Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, Diner’s Club, and Carte Blanche, as well as by personal check or money order. We even provide an online PDF invoice if required by your Accounts Payable department. The differences keep coming!

Our choice to not provide Microsoft operating systems for any of our hosting products is one that is a common subject of inquiry. We feel strongly that the best products available for the job of serving Internet content are those based on UNIX TM, and that the efforts of the open source community specifically (Linux, Apache, MySQL and so on) are best of breed. To use any Windows or related products would be to us a vote of no confidence against the very technology that made it possible for us to compete in this industry in the first place! It turns out that once our customers give open source alternatives a chance they are overjoyed with the performance and feature set available to them. Of course, some will decide to go with someone else, and we respect their decision. Our only request is that if in the future the need ever does arise for a Unix-based solution they’ll give us another shot!

But of course, the biggest difference, the one that keeps people singing our praises and referring their friends, is our customer service. Every message is responded to with a friendly, helpful, and completely honest answer. Sometimes a server does go down, and we let our customers know when it happens. We’ll also let them know if a cheaper plan better fits their needs, or what sort of software we personally use for whatever they’re trying to implement. We constantly try to treat everyone as a friend in need (indeed!).

Maybe you’re wondering just how stable we are? We’ve been a privately held company and since 1997 when we first started hosting our customers’ dreams, so that should give you some indication that we’re serious about what we do! We’re currently connected to the Internet via redundant gigabit connections with multiple carriers to ensure continued network connectivity in case any carrier goes down. Each connection is carried across a diversified fiber network and connects to different entrances to the Internet’s backbone. This allows for total network redundancy. We also keep our bandwidth ~unsaturated~. We carry enough network capacity to double our load if we need to. We’ve been doing this hosting thing since 1997, and in that time we’ve learned what it takes to provide rock-solid service and connectivity.

Our Future

We’re focused squarely on providing quality customer service and the absolute best web hosting packages in the industry. It’s a never-ending quest, but it’s one we’re happy to take on.

We pledge to always take your business seriously. We’re always looking for ways to diversify our offerings, improve reliability, and improve our overall quality of service - all while keeping prices low!

We’re glad that you’ve chosen to check us out today and we hope that you’ll give us the opportunity to host your dreams someday soon.

Go to DreamHost

www.dreamhost.com