DreamHost Review

Is better than Bluehost or HostGator? Let's find out...

Brad Smith  —  · Read user reviews

We’ve been a paying customer for DreamHost for the last 16+ months. During that time, we’ve monitored their performance – avg. load time and uptime.

This review relies strongly on data, such as uptime, load time (speed) and customer support experience.

 

What is DreamHost?

dreamhost review
DreamHost homepage

DreamHost is the dinosaur among web hosts.

It’s ginormous. Claiming over 400,000 active customers and hosting over 1.5 million sites. That’s a lot!

It’s ancient, too. Founded waaaaaay back in 1996 by a few undergrad students at Claremont College in California.

And it’s well respected. Bringing home PCMag’s ‘Best Web Hosting Service’ award for the second year in a row.

They even go as far as to offer crazy features e.g a 97-day money back guarantee and a 100% uptime (or you get refunded).

We wanted to put DreamHost to the test, and see for ourselves if the reality lived up to the hype. We also wanted to know if they’re any better than Bluehost, SiteGround and HostGator.

In June 2015, we set up a basic WordPress test website on DreamHost’s ‘Shared Plan’. Detailed performance stats including uptime & speed can be found here by clicking ‘History’.

Here’s our quick recap:

 

Pros of using DreamHost Hosting

There’s a lot to like about DreamHost.

They promise great speed and customer support. They also throw in a few freebies to make your experience even better.

Here’s an overview of their best attributes:

1. Page Load Time 23% Faster than Average Competition

DreamHost’s page loading times didn’t let us down, clocking in at 709ms over the same eight-month period. That’s 23% faster than the average of 890ms we’ve seen in analyzing other web hosts.

You can check more stats below:

Last 10 month average load time:

  • December 2017 average speed: 773ms
  • January 2018 average speed: 778ms
  • February 2018 average speed: 809ms
  • March 2018 average speed: 817ms
  • April 2018 average speed: 678ms
  • May 2018 average speed: 598ms
  • June 2018 average speed: 562ms
  • July 2018 average speed: 733ms
  • August 2018 average speed: 658ms
  • September 2018 average speed: 688ms

2. Knowledgeable, Friendly Support

The best uptime and fastest loading times mean nothing without great support to back it all up.

In that area, DreamHost excels. Within 5 minutes we were connected to a live chat agent, getting detailed responses after every few seconds.

Their support is not outsourced (which is evident) and is available 24/7. The only catch? No phone support.

Dreamhost review: Evaluating customer support

A quick chat with a Dreamhost support agent

3. 97-Day Money Back Guarantee and ‘Free Days’ for Downtime

DreamHost offers the longest money back guarantee in the industry – 97 days for shared hosting plans.

But that’s not all!

They will also credit you a day’s service for every hour of interrupted service. They aren’t kidding around about standing behind their service. In my opinion, that’s just awesome!

P.S: We used that perk in April when our uptime was slightly lower than promised (99.75%).

According to DreamHost’s Terms of Service, you’ll only be eligible for free days if:

  • The DreamObjects service is unresponsive
  • DreamObjects gives a server error response to valid user requests for more than a minute of consecutive requests.

Scheduled maintenance that may cause downtime is excluded.

It’s also important to note that DreamHost doesn’t offer automatic refunds for certain payment methods:

  • PayPal
  • Check (written checks or electronic checks)
  • Money Orders
  • Gift Certificates

It’s awesome that DreamHost offers such a long period to receive your money back. If they’re that confident that you’ll love them, you should be too.

If you don’t want to get stuck committing to DreamHost until you are 100% sure that you’ll love their services, be sure to pay for your subscription automatically with a debit or credit card.

That way, you’ll be able to receive your refund automatically.

4. New Tiered Plan Options

DreamHost used to only offer a single shared hosting option.

While that was great for some people who don’t want to dive into the weeds, it was also priced pretty high (more on that in the next point below).

So on the surface, it looked like a good option for beginners who didn’t want to compare a bunch of complicated plans. But it ended up costing them more in the end.

Thankfully, DreamHost has made many improvements to their plans, opening up all kinds of affordable options.

5. Among the Cheaper Options Available

DreamHost was on the expensive side the last time we reviewed them. It was one of the biggest cons we had with the service.

But since then, they’ve come out with (a ton) of new tiered options that drop the price considerably.

Their most basic, shared hosting for simple websites now only runs $2.59/month for the first year.

Many other hosts will require two or even three year contracts for similar pricing. You’re getting a good value here.

And if you need something more robust, they have an unlimited shared upgrade, or you can move over to their managed WordPress hosting (DreamPress), VPS, or dedicated servers. So you can now start small and save a few bucks, upgrading only when your site grows.

dreamhost pricing

6. Unlimited (Really!) Bandwidth

All companies say they provide unlimited hosting. Unfortunately, most don’t even come close.

DreamHost truly offers unlimited bandwidth and data transfer according to their ‘Unlimited Policy‘ terms.

This service is incredibly rare for a reason (read: cost). Here are the exceptions:

  • Copyrighted content to which you do not hold usage or distribution rights.
  • File upload / sharing / archive / backup / mirroring / distribution sites.
  • A site created primarily to drive traffic to another site.
  • Making your account resources available (either for free or not) to the general public.

7. They’re Carbon Neutral (AKA Green)

Being a web host takes tons of resources. Only the amount of electricity it takes to run servers alone is tremendous.

That’s why DreamHost is committed to reducing their impact on the environment. One way that they do this is through the purchase of carbon offsets.

In fact, DreamHost has been a carbon neutral company since 2007. In just 10 years, the company has neutralized a whopping 29,298.1 tons of greenhouse gases.

dreamhost is going green

That’s huge!

According to their website, that’s not the only way that the company stays committed to energy efficiency.

 

Cons of using DreamHost Hosting

DreamHost is a perfect choice for most people.

However, there are a few potential pitfalls which might be a deal breaker for others.

1. Slightly Below Average Uptime

DreamHost stands by their uptime. They’re so confident, that they’ll provide an extra day of service for every hour of downtime your site experiences with them.

Fortunately for their accountants, that doesn’t happen very often (99.90% is less than 10 minutes of downtime per month).

However, over the last 10 months since we’ve been reviewing them, their uptime has slipped slightly below industry average to 99.95%. That’s about four hours of total downtime, significantly less than A2 Hosting, HostGator Cloud and SiteGround.

Last 10-month average uptime:

  • December 2017 average uptime: 100%
  • January 2018 average uptime: 100%
  • February 2018 average uptime: 99.85%
  • March 2018 average uptime: 99.94%
  • April 2018 average uptime: 99.75%
  • May 2018 average uptime: 99.96%
  • June 2018 average uptime: 100%
  • July 2018 average uptime: 99.99%
  • August 2018 average uptime: 100%
  • September 2018 average uptime: 99.96%

Dreamhost 10month performance stats

Dreamhost Load Time & Uptime: (Last 10 months, detailed data can be found here.)

2. No cPanel – is it really a con? Hard to tell…

DreamHost has created their own control panel to provide a streamlined version for non-techies.

Professionals accustomed to using cPanel or Plesk (like we do) probably won’t like this approach.

3. Possible Delayed Setup

New customer accounts need to be verified prior to activation. That means while registration is instant, provisioning can take a few hours. Factor that into your new launch plans if you’re trying to get up-and-running ASAP.

 

Dreamhost Pricing, Hosting Plans & Quick Facts

Here’s a quick overview of Dreamhost’s hosting plans:

DreamHost pricing 2

Shared Hosting: DreamHost offers two straightforward shared hosting plans. The first, Starter, will only set you back $2.59/month for the first annual payment for a single website. If you’re looking for more, the Shared Unlimited option gives you exactly what it sounds like: unlimited websites for $7.59/month for the first year.

Managed WordPress Hosting: DreamHost’s managed WordPress hosting is called DreamPress. The basic option gives you one site up to 10,000 monthly visits, with 30GB SSD, for $16.95/month. DreamPress Plus opens your site up to 30,000 monthly visitors with 60GB of SSD storage for $24.95/month. And DreamPress Pro allows 100,000 monthly visits, plus a staging site, with 120GB SSD storage for $71.95/month.

VPS Hosting: Their VPS hosting starts at $13.75/month that gives you a  single GB of RAM and 30GB storage for unlimited hosting domains. If that’s not enough, they have three other tiers, including Business, Professional, and Enterprise, that each increase your RAM(2GB, 4GB, 8GB), storage (60GB, 120GB, 240GB),  and unlimited bandwidth for all. Those plans start at $27.50/month, $55.00/month, and $110.00/month respectively.

Dedicated Hosting: Their dedicated server starts at $169 for the month and includes a 100% unlimited uptime guarantee, DDoS protection, plus full root & shell access. These dedicated servers include up to 12 max cores, 64GB max RAM, 2TB of storage, RAID 1, and unlimited bandwidth.

  • Ease of Signup: Long and complicated sign up process. Signup should be easier.
  • Free domain: For the first year on all annual hosting plans.
  • Payment Methods: Credit Card, PayPal, Check, Money Order, Checking Account
  • Hidden Fees and Clauses: None. Yay! 🙂
  • Upsells: A few upsells. Boo!
  • Account Activation: Account activation can take a while. Go grab a cup of coffee (or two).
  • Control Panel and Dashboard Experience: Custom Dreamhost control panel which can be a bit difficult to use – blah! But who knows, maybe you’ll like it?
  • Installation of Apps and CMSs (WordPress, Joomla, etc.): One-click installer for WordPress and other apps/CMSs.

 

Do We Recommend DreamHost?

Yes, depending on what you’re looking for.

DreamHost is super reliable, offering incredible money-back guarantees if you experience any downtime or other hiccups along the way.

Their support is exceptional across the board. And they throw in a few freebies when switching over. Pricing is also pretty affordable for what you’re getting.

If you value reliability and support that’s second-to-none, look no further than DreamHost.

P.S. If you want to see hosting providers that ranked above DreamHost, check our best performing hosts here.

Are you a satisfied (or unsatisfied) DreamHost customer? Please leave a review below! We accept all feedback (good or bad) in an effort to provide the most transparent and honest reviews possible.

 

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51 user reviews for DreamHost Review

3 — 

Changing Tides

I use my DH shared server account to create site mock-ups for clients to approve before purchase. Basically I have an average of 10 sites in various states of development and have about 15 to 20 domain names on my account.

The Good

I've had the DreamHost ~$11.00 a month shared server plan for about three years now and for the most part have been satisfied. I've found customer support easy to access and reply times to be quick. I've also experienced very limited site downtime and often the problem is fixed by the time I submit a ticket, so very FAST return to up-time (which should be a metric also). I have put clients on DH VPS accounts without any angst, vps loading time are fast with one of the best pricing options for small businesses available. I'm also very happy with the zero up-sell. I had to migrate a client from another hosting provider and I COULD NOT BELIEVE the constant stream of spammy up-sell that continued to flow for months following the move.

The Bad

I have to agree with other reviewers in saying that historically the control panel hasn't been very intuitive and finding information in the knowledge base is far more difficult than I think it needs to be. Basically, to find a simple answer you go from page to link to another page and then link to another page until you finally get the big picture of what you need to do for your specific set of circumstances. Now, this being said, it isn't much different than how everyone else sets up a knowledge base, but honestly, I think they all do a poor job and should spend the time and money to create adequate resources which would probably decrease their live support by at least a third, if not more. It is also fair to mention that the control panel has undergone improvements in the past few months and is indeed improving. I know many people are fans of Cpanel, but Cpanel has had some serious security issues in the past and may continue to fall victim to vulnerabilities, so in some circumstances, even bad may be better.

The Ugly

I choose to pay extra to be a month to month customer so I have options should I become dissatisfied. The time has come, which is why I stumbled upon this article. While I am seeing improvements in the layout of the control panel, just about everything else about my experience has gone downhill in the recent ~six months. My sites load WAAAAAY too slow, I (like others) am constantly getting server errors to the point it is almost impossible to work and there has been something completely screwed up with their security certs, causing me hours of extra work. Now, I've been around long enough to understand growing pains and I get that it takes some time to iron out wrinkles, BUT, BUT, BUT the true egregious error made by DH (imho) is the constant denial, misinformation, and lack of communication. I've been on this server for years and am very familiar with how it should perform, and yet support will basically tell you it's all in your head, not investigate an issue to resolution, or sometimes it seems they just outright lie. THIS!

The Wrap-up

I think DH is worth a look if you are just starting out and need to learn the ropes of self-hosted websites. They have fast customer service, great up-time and some of the best pricing in the industry for a non-spamy, non-cult-like hosting provider. I also believe DH will work through the issues and get back on track, but likely not in enough time for me to stay, which is heartbreaking.

5 — 

Dreamhost has been great to us for 10+ years

Our agency has been using Dreamhost for our clients for over 10 years and we have had little to no problems. I gave a 90 score because no web host is perfect, there has been some downtime but barely any in our experience. If there is anything going on they do an excellent job of letting their customers know while other hosting providers will not say anything in hopes you simply do not see that your site is down. They offer Let's Encrypt for free (as it should be but many hosts charge for that free option) and auto renew the certificate every three months.

I agree with some of the reviews here that not having a number to call for support can be frustrating but their live chat support has always worked great for us.

No web host is ideal for all developers/clients but Dreamhost has been a great solution for our clients. From small non-profits (did I mention they offer FREE hosting to non-profits!?) to large state association websites, they've been top notch.

1 — 

Dreamhost, a snake in the grass

I have been a Dreamhost customer since 2012. Since then it has been okay, some weird stuff around what can be hosted where and their 'unlimited' storage advertisement they had at one time was a complete lie... start using more than a few gigs and get shut down.

I should have known at that point that the lies would continue, but I soldiered on with all my content being hosted at Dreamhost.

More recently they removed the ability to use catch-all email accounts, which I understand their decision to do so. Yet, this forced me to start looking for another hosting provider. I found one... well two... a combination of Amazon web services and Microsoft Office 365 is where I landed. I migrated all my content away from Dreamhost and tried to cancel.

LIES LIES LIES LIES LIES.

So at the time I registered in 2012, there was a promotion, get a free domain when you sign up for hosting. This is a pretty normal promotion so I took it. In the fine print, it did say if I canceled my hosting plan or transferred that domain in that 'free' first year I would be required to pay the cost of the registration.

Guess what, it is now 2018 and they are trying to get me to pay for that free registration from 2012... saying that I owe it because I transferred the domain that they gave me for free in 2012.

They want a whole $13 but are holding my account hostage. (Also the cost for the domain in 2012 was not $13... it was closer to $9.99 if I remember right... but they want today's cost).

Anyway, if you want to avoid being hassled, stupid rules that make no sense, lies and trying to squeeze you for everything your worth... Go with ANYONE other than Dreamhost. ... wish there were negative numbers in this rating system.

1 — 

Not fit for purpose

Signed up based on the above review only to discover you are not able to alter the DNS A records for the site. Which means it is impossible to use this service for my needs - unable to link to various social media services, such as easylinks, etc. SSL setup also rejected, since my site is not (yet) hosted with them... so I can't apply SSL until fully hosted, but I can't fully host over to them without having DNS ready to go with appropriate CNAME records. Requested support and was left waiting for a long time. That is the real problem -- support is very slow.

Based on my experience so far, I am looking for an alternative supplier.

1 — 

Dreamhost makes everything hard

Not sure about this author's experience, but as new customers of this host with experience with other hosts, they make EVERYTHING much harder.

Their custom control panel seems very restrictive. Claims by their staff and fans that it is more powerful and feature rich are rhetorical. I'm counting 41 tools here compared to 114 useful tools at my current host, and I've used many of those. There are a few more tools buried in pages off of sub menus, but you'll notice right away that a lot are just missing.

The buried ones you find by searching, sometimes through fairly non-intuitive locations. Or worse yet, you search all those locations only to find that the simple tool or info you need doesn't exist there at all and you've wasted your time. BTW, 11 1-click installers compared to 75 at my current host.

When you start trying to figure out how you're going to accomplish the most common tasks you did easily in cPanel, you're in for a shock. Want to get to your files? They recommend an FTP client. I did find their newer tool, not under something intuitive such as "Files", but buried in "Manage Domains." No real loss though, it's INCREDIBLY limited. Guess that's why an FTP client is recommended instead.

Want to get to your email configuration information? Start searching support articles and visiting pages / comparing tables and taking notes. Turns out you were supposed to figure out that info was tucked away under "panel/support/datacenters." Didn't matter, there's not a link to that from their control panel anyway. Not only is the info not available from the email section of their control panel, the help article that would direct you to the info isn't even linked from there. Just start searching.

What exactly is the point of having a control panel in the first place if you can't access all of the elements of your site and domain from it?

Migration, which is offered free at a large number of hosts, you do it yourself or pay $99.

Support? The author claims it's second to none. Chat and email? Seriously?

Lack of phone support, this incredibly limited control panel, and the maze of support articles required to accomplish what should be simple tasks, have us feeling like we've made a mistake.

1 — 

Transferred.US domains are down (in Limbo)

I've transferred 23 domains to them. 12 of the domains are lost in limbo. They use ENOM to register the domains. According to whois.us (the people in charge of .US domains), ENOM has received the domains in the transfer. ENOM refuses to release the domain to Dreamhost. Dreamhost has no ability to fix this. I have 12 domains that no longer work thanks to ENOM and Dreamhost.

You're rolling the dice. I wish I never made these transfers.

4 — 

Love it Most of the Time

Overall, DreamHost is a fantastic hosting service. They'll respond relatively quickly to service tickets and servers are online and functional most of the time.

Email servers have not been good lately, however, they are moving the data to new hardware. I just wish it was sooner.

The ONLY thing I would really love to see is to get full mySQL access (like admin) and / or be able to have a user that can create databases from the command line instead of needing to do it through DreamHost's control panel. The panel isn't bad, it's just that with about *this* close to full automation of my site with minimal to no manual interaction to service clients.

5 — 

The Best Value for my Money

I was a WordPress newbie when I started with Dreamhost some four years ago. They have been incredible patient with my experiments and mistakes.

They are clear about ther policies, their pricing and their working. Dreamhost support is the best I have found so far.

If you are ready to make the jump to a hosted website. This is your best option.

5 — 

When You've Read All the Fine Print...

...and you've tried the renown hosting companies, but you're tired of doing it all-on-your-own. So, it's decision time: you can do-it-yourself and try to become an instant techy guru, OR you can do what we did and switched to DreamHost. They have always been there for us, on our side. They periodically reviewed our usage and made suggestions to remedy problems that we were experiencing. We didn't want to lose customers, so we welcomed their advice. Then, their tech experts did all the behind the scenes html tricks within an hour, so that we could attend to our business while they made our daily, weekly, monthly stats available to us. Gone are the days of not getting service refunds, not understanding the geek mentality, and not getting support. They have a broad spectrum of services that are not financially prohibitive for new or small businesses. But, best of all they respond! It can be a chat or an email query that gets responded to overnight. Never again will you feel clueless, uncared for, or disgusted.

5 — 

Absolutes Are Unattainable, but...

I've been with Dreamhost since April, 2007 and it's almost always AWESOME. The few times it's not, I just say so and BOOM! It's fixed within 24 hours - almost always! I have friends who complain about their host and how slow it is, how it's always down, how it's... But I just can't join in because Dreamhost has been truly phenomenal to me and domains I host with them for over a decade. Man, who can say that? Over a decade of damn near perfection. And no, they're not paying to me say anything here. They really are that good.

3 — 

Not quite a sinking ship, but they're taking on water

I've been with Dreamhost for a number of years, and they're my go-to solution for clients who would like a website. They're typically a good company with minimal problems.

The last couple weeks have been a technical nightmare. They've had trouble with everything from emails losing data, databases being inaccessible, security certificates failing to install, or extensive downtime. Contacting support has been equally dreadful as they let tickets linger for days without responses, and these issues haven't been addressed at all.

I don't know what the future holds for Dreamhost, but it does not bode well that they not only have all these technical problems, but they can't even staff their support team with enough bodies to adequately address the mountain of issues they've been having. This is definitely a hosting provider trending downward right now.

2 — 

Page loads slow or fail

The overall picture is not bad, but I have to admit our site has been slain with 500 Internal Server errors on not just page loads but also on movements within the dashboard. We've done all we can with plugins, using their advice, and following best practices on design. It works fine some days, but mostly very irritating since mid-2017. We were on eHost and might jump back. I'm not disputing everything they're known for and do well, but the experience lately is analogous to walking through a minefield to go from page to page or function to function. Their main response to our failures when they see them is to take several options of which they tend to promote their paid for feature - DreamPress. I'm not impressed any longer.

2 — 

Not a good hosting service

I am a web developer and I have only seen one hosting service worse than this one in all my time in business. They force you to use their expensive WP platform by slowing WP sites not hosted there to a crawl. Even image uploads time out. However, on the WP platform you cannot have a standard HTML site, so if you have a site composed of both you need 2 hosting plans.

To make matters worse, the tech help people are the worst ever. I just spent an hour on the chat with them while they troubleshooted an issue. They did not resolve the issue though, and the guy just told me that I can submit a help ticket if I want to. How is getting tech help on the line and them not solving their own issue not a trouble ticket in and of itself? Why do I need to fill out a separate form, explain the issues all over again, and start from scratch?

Steer clear.

4 — 

Not acceptable

The number of times my monitors tell me the sites are down is far too often.

The up time for the last 30 days has been over 99%, but the times it goes down is always in the PRIME time evening hours when most of my users would find my site.

Sites are much slower to load, and I'm pretty sure they're bottlenecking it by putting too many users onto the shared servers.

They're practically punishing people who don't get virtual or dedicated servers.

The icing on the cake was today's fiasco. Email has been down for hours. HOURS. It took them over two hours to even realize there were problems after the problems were being reported actively. It's still down even now, nearly a full hour after they said "We're working on it."

***You had one job. You fail at it far too frequently.***

1 — 

Worst Company - Stay away

Worst support ever and slow servers, That’s the main thing about them. I used them a year or so ago and cancelled within a month, even then it was a nightmare transferring my sites off they wouldn’t help me at all.

1 — 

Stay Away

I purchased 3 years of shared hosting from Dreamhost about a month ago. Since then my site has continually been down, returning 500 Internal Server errors and has often taken 20+ seconds to load when it’s “up”. I’ve spoken with their support team about the issue on multiple occasions and have been assured that the issue is “being worked on”, but the fix never lasts for more than a few hours. To top it all off, the customer service representatives have been rude and dismissive, making it blatantly obvious that they couldn’t care less if they keep my business or not. Do not host your site here.

1 — 

Staff doesn't help

I have 5 different Dreamhost services and file upload doesn’t work well almost 50% of the time.

When I ask Dreamhost Support, they tell me they have technical problems on their end and that they will be fixing it soon.

This happens almost once a week and it’s infuriating to see that you have to wait 3 hours to upload a 50mb file through SFTP.

When I asked on Dreamhost community about this issue, lots of people with the same problem as me replied.

I am just waiting for my hosting plans to expire in order to migrate to a more efficient hosting.

1 — 

Useless

Absurd migration processes if you want to move a WordPress site to them and actually preview it. It’s either hacking the hosts file or setting up mirrors – which go down minutes after you’ve set them up! No warning, no edits done – nothing. The site is working – and then it isn’t. Completely absurd.

I can only assume these reviews here are paid for spam.

Just save yourself time and frustration and pay more for a proper managed hosting elsewhere. You’ll thank me later.

3 — 

Terrible to communicate with

We’ve lost access to our account. We’ve been emailing for a week to gain access and they haven’t done a thing. You can’t call these people. Emails need to go to a special address or it gets rejected and the response ends up in your junk mail. No wonder they are rated as they are.

1 — 

Monrygrab

Got a bit money grabby lately. I’ve hosted here since 2004 approximately. Never had a problem until recently when they kept bombarding my control panel/email with messages to buy a fixed I.P. for the website. I declined several times. Eventually the buggers flogged my card without me knowing and I had to just remove the ‘service’. Never used to be this way, but maybe stay away!?

5 — 

Much Better than Comparable Companies

Dreamhost is my all-time favorite web hosting site. I’ve tried other web hosting companies in the past such as 1&1 and MediaTemple, but I always seemed to have problems and the customer support for these companies was rather disappointing. However, with Dreamhost, I’ve never even needed to contact support for any reason because their service allows for such a seamless experience! Plus, they offer competitive prices so you don’t have to break the bank. I’m 100% satisfied with Dreamhost and now that I’ve discovered it, I’m never going to use any other web host. I’d highly recommend it to anyone interested!

5 — 

Easy set-up, slow complete registration, smart-semi-slow support, and no worries

I started with Dreamhost in August 2016, been very happy with the service. Sign-up took a while with activation of the accounts and so on, but for a new, do-it-yourself developer their setup has been wonderful. I’m on the shared plan, paid $6 a month for a three-year deal, and haven’t looked back. The fact that I know millions of other sites are hosted takes a lot of my worries away: no scams, good support once you have a problem, and so on. It was easy to setup https for e-commerce, and their hosting stack is great for old-school PHP sites (mine). If you are a budding developer and want to get your own site up to show off and play with, this is where you want to be.

3 — 

NOT SO GOOD FOR A BIG COMPANY

I work for a human resource company (viclawrence.com) based in Nigeria with over 5,000 outsourced staff. We have been using DreamHost for about 2 years now. The experience is not interesting.

First, we lost hundreds of emails with no valid explanation from dreamhost. Sending emails to all staff is a problem as individual email accounts cannot send more than 100 emails per hour. The announcement list which is an alternative for this bulk emailing does not support adding attachments while sending. Login issues sometimes occur.

None of these was an issue with our previous host.

Their uptime is great, really great. But their custom panel makes using the platform difficult especially for a company like ours.

I will recommend dreamhost for a small company company but definitely not for a big company with hundreds or thousands of staff.

1 — 

Worst Hosting Company You Could Use

STAY AWAY FROM THIS COMPANY. The hosting is absolutely horrible. They don’t provide technical support in a quick fashion. Literally if your business depends on dependable hosting DO NOT USE this company. We lost thousands of dollars due to constant issues with this company!

5 — 

No cPanel, Hallelujah

Dreamhost’s custom control panel is a dream. With cPanel on other hosts, I always felt that there were mysterious files being made all over my account—things felt like they got cluttered and confusing quickly. Dreamhost’s panel doesn’t have as much going on, but it is transparent. I suppose their panel tries to be more of an automated sys admin rather than a webmaster, although they do still have some one-click installs and site builders.

1 — 

Dreamhost is HORRIBLE

Dreamhost disabled my site, without warning, because they noticed a lot of bot activity. They disabled my site at 11pm and have not contacted me for 8 hours. Their support is horrible. You have to pay $9.95 if you want them to call you. (Hint... they don’t actually call.)

I cannot begin to express how angry I am with Dreamhost.

3 — 

Service is terrible

Terrible service. Website was down for over a week. No support number to call. All you can do is email or submit a trouble ticket while your company is bleeding money. They call you back, but if you’re away from your desk or on another call they won’t leave a voicemail. Their number comes up as anonymous so you can’t call them back. One of the supposed owners was emailing me. Didn’t work on a business day (Monday) so I had to wait yet another day before he would call me back. Then he was rude and nasty on the phone. After making me wait a week, he couldn’t understand why I was frustrated and kept making snarky comments. Don’t use them. Plenty of other options out there.

2 — 

Used to be Good

Been with Dreamhost since 2010, finally switched. They used to be rock solid, with fast and friendly support. I also liked that they were a local company.

Things have gone downhill, support is terrible, and the server outages got to be too much. Happily moved to a new comapny.

5 — 

I really like Dreamhost

I’ve used Dreamhost for many years hosting my own domains and some for friends and family. I’m a developer with limited server admin knowledge and I find the control panel extremely helpful and easy to use. Whenever I’ve needed support I’ve got the answer I needed within a few hours although UK/US time difference affects the wait. One thing I love is that you can reply to their automated emails and support will get back to you directly – why can’t everyone do this? So much more customer friendly than “Do not reply” emails. The domain registration is simple but could be enhanced by allowing multiple domains to be registered simultaneously – maybe the answer is to prepay some money to my account? Overall I’m very satisfied although I am a probably a pretty light user of the service.

5 — 

Exceptional quality and value

I have been using Dreamhost for about a year now, I moved over our 8 sites from our last host which was a WHM/VPS server.

The simplicity of running multiple domains and stores on Dreamhost is a breath of fresh air. You have to be willing to get used to their custom dashboard, but it is worth it.

I have heard complaints about the email system, which I cannot comment on as I use Google for Business instead of their servers.

I never write reviews, but I have been so impressed I wanted to so that others could have the confidence to give them a chance.

Pros: Speed, reliability, good support, ease of use
Cons: No phone support (which doesn’t matter to me)

1 — 

Never again...

We recently moved from GoDaddy to Dreamhost after reading reviews about a lot of companies out there. With that, we chose DreamHost. I will start by saying, THE WORST IDEA EVER! If you are small company with maybe 5-10 employees. Great, use them. Anything bigger, would never recommend them to anyone. Their email is clunky, slow, and pounded with SPAM. Their filters are crap, their customer support is the worst, and the knowledge base (which they brag about) is meant for people that have a degree in Computer Science, not for the casual web user just starting out (which again, they brag about.) In the end, WORST DECISION EVER!

5 — 

Everything is perfect

I use Dreamhost services for many years now and have never had any issues that they are unable to solve.
Their systems are fast and efficient, very responsive and with many possibilities of configuration and customization for the experts, but with excellent guides that explain to beginners how to juggle.
The domain management panel, the spaces, the mailboxes and databases is very simple to use and contains useful function “One-Click Install” which allows you to configure in a few seconds the most common software like web forums, wiki, blogs, etc.

Finally, their customer service is one of the best in the world for any problem you contact them, there is always someone helpful and courteous ready to help you in the best way!

5 — 

My experience has been great...

I used Dreamhost to set up my personal website when I wanted to learn more about web development. I found a great deal (less than $10/month). Their managed WordPress option was surprisingly simple to set up and I love the fact it auto-updates WordPress so I don’t have to every couple of months.

About 1.5 years later I helped my friend make his personal website and I set him up with a Dreamhost account too. It had been a while since I did it and I was running into an issue installing WordPress on his hosting (an issue on my part, not theirs – I had simply forgotten how to do it). I had to contact customer support. I opted to do the chat support and my customer service person was able to point me in the right direction within probably 5 minutes.

As a comparison, I now manage my company’s website and their hosting provider is Godaddy, and when I have to deal with their support staff it usually takes a LOT of explaining so they fully understand the problem. This was not an issue at all with Dreamhost. Overall my experience with Dreamhost has been great with the minimal amount of features I take advantage of; I’m sure others would find its other features just as helpful and easy to use.

5 — 

Reliable host, confusing pricing...

I’ve been with Dreamhost for 2 or 3 years now, and I’ve never had any problems with the hosting. It’s been fast and reliable, two things you expect most from a hosting provider.

4 — 

OK for beginners; web vets, not so much

I signed up with Dreamhost a few years ago because it was cheaper than my then-current host, and because unlike said host, it offered Ruby On Rails, which I really wanted to learn.

Well… except that the version of RoR that Dreamhost supported was outdated and to this day has not been updated and requires user hacks to be able to use a current version — user hacks that may or may not work.

E-mail is a huge issue. Delays in receiving e-mails — especially over the web — can be a major hindrance, and Dreamhost can go weeks before resolving issues, or often be dismissive and say that they don’t see any signs of problems on their end.

E-mail filters leave much to be desired; unfortunately no way to block e-mails by top-level domain.

5 — 

Long term betterment for small bucks

I’ve been with Dreamhost for 16 years, hosting multiple sites on a shared environment. I host multiple sites with multiple needs, from SMF to WordPress, archive file storage, and more. The flexibility is great. The customer service is top notch. The availability is high. And, added bonus, whenever there’s a better deal, they’ve lowered my fees to match.

5 — 

Most dependable hosting I've ever had

I started hosting 1 site at Dreamhost in February 2007, and this morning, April 18, 2015 I just hosted my 14th and 15th sites! I love the reliability of the support staff, the ease with which I can control certain features and the fact that in over 8 years I have had little to no downtime that I did not cause for myself.

The cost of the hosting plan that holds all 15 of my domains is so affordable and with multiple payment options I can always do what works best for me at the moment.

5 — 

DreamHost is, well, a dream

I have hosted various websites with DreamHost for about one year, during which time I have dealt with many other hosts used by my clients. As an overall value, DreamHost is really hard to beat, even when stacked up against big name hosts like SiteGround and WP Engine. I can host unlimited sites, with unlimited storage, and unlimited free SSL certificates. Like I said, they’re hard to beat.

My experience with DreamHost’s customer support has always been top notch. If it’s a low priority issue, I’ll send an e-mail and they usually respond within a few hours. If it’s a higher priority issue then I open a live chat, which always connects me to a qualified tech within a couple minutes. One way or another, my issues (which have been very few) have been resolved promptly.

5 — 

Thoughtful, intelligent support

I have a number of different sites in my Dreamhost account. I’ve hit problems here and there, mostly of my own making. The most telling example of the great support was when I needed to use a specific version of PHP for a particular experiment, one that Dreamhost had moved beyond as part of their normal process of keeping things up to date. The response I got was first the expected “we don’t offer older builds”, but then an unexpected “here’s how you can install it yourself”, followed by detailed specific instructions!

I’ve had similar experiences over the ten years I’ve been with Dreamhost; thoughtful consideration of the question followed by intelligent answers or suggestions. It’s not perfect, but this shows why it is actually very, very good.

5 — 

Customer for 8 years - great host

I’ve used Dreamhost over the last 8 years to casually host ~8 websites on shared hosting. This clocks in at about $200 per two years, which while is perhaps a little pricey for what I’m using it for, I always have the option of adding more sites whenever, switching to VPS/cloud etc.

Why I stick with Dreamhost mainly is because whenever I’ve had issues (my fault or otherwise) their support is fast and knowledgeable and can be relied upon to sort you out.

Good job Dreamhost!

5 — 

Best value for a developer's site hosting

At Dreamhost, the cheapest shared hosting plan offers the usual stuff all others do (phpmyadmin, databases, ftp, etc), plus unlimited domains, storage, bandwidth and 99.9% uptime.

Since I’m developer, one of the main pros is having SSH access (with tunnel support) along a good set of tools (e.g. git, java, gcc, crontab). That makes me a lot easier to manage sites, deploy, automate tasks and work on prototypes. When they find suspicious files they send a warning e-mail, and when the files are 100% sure malicious they are quarantined (and the user advised). The support staff is kind and really willing to help.

Highly recommend it to all my fellows developers. The panel interface is not brilliant but quite good compared to the majority.

4 — 

A solid B+ host

I’ve been on Dreamhost since 2010, and I haven’t had any major problem over that time. The machine I’m on doesn’t appear to be oversold and when the migrated my sites to a newer server it was seamless. Their interface is a bit dated (some part look like they are straight out of the 90’s) and it’s sometimes difficult to find what you’re looking for.

They are generous with space, domains and bandwidth, and technically I’ve found it good. Some downside are I’ve found their support sometimes to be a little less knowledgeable than I would expect, and their backups aren’t the best.

Overall I would say they are a good hosting company that you can trust but they don’t meet the bar of outstanding.

5 — 

Value for money

I host around 20 sites/domains, and I chose Dreamhost 6 years ago, and I’m happy! They provide a very reliable hosting, with lots of services and options, for a simple price. Unlimited domains, one-click installs, I don’t give 100% rating because it will sounds strange, but 95% seems honest, regarding the services I used during 6 years. Support is always available, always smiling, and I never had to complain.

5 — 

Great and easy to use hosting provider

I use DreamHost for my personal (and business) web hosting. Everything is always quickly set up.

I have used one-click installs for WordPress that have worked beautifully, as well as installed on my own (which meant, creating databases!) and that went smoothly too.

If I’ve ever had issues, DreamHost is always very attentive and quick to assist in any way they can. The price is a steal too.

5 — 

Cheap and reliable. Highly recommended if you don't need Ruby

I’m using Dreamhost to host a few personal websites, my blog, and a couple of landing pages for mobile apps. I’ve been paying $10 per month for unlimited bandwidth and storage for nine years now. Their service is reliable, the admin panel is easy to use, and I’ve never had an issue with speed.

That said, it works best for WordPress or PHP websites. If you are looking to do host a Ruby on Rails site then turn elsewhere.

4 — 

Host of dreams

I’ve used Dreamhost for 8 years. They were relatively inexpensive, but with new cloud providers, they have lost that edge. Their interface is outdated. But their core service is solid – a C+ service.

4 — 

Premium level service for a premium price...

I would like to start off by saying that the service (both, the actual servers & customer support) is excellent. That, though, comes at a somewhat premium price tag. As a student it’s hard to find a hosting provider that gives 100% of what I have to offer them in exchange. It’s 21’st century and I feel like the price we pay for a premium service today is a bit odd. I get it that people have to pay their bills, but so does everyone else as well.

5 — 

Good prices, OK hosting

I used Dreamhost for several years and never had any issues with downtime or outages. They offered loads of space and bandwidth, but their entire control panel system is all proprietary software. I was used to the industry standard of cPanel, but got used to their system eventually.

Their support teams were very responsive and quick to resolve minor issues and answer my questions. Additionally, their referral system allows you to offset the cost of your hosting, or even pay for it entirely.

4 — 

Love the admin UI - don't love speed issues

I love how simple the Dreamhost makes to install WordPress, manage domains, or anything really. Their email support is quite good as well (if you choose the critical option when emailing).

I don’t love the speed of my sites and how they go down quite frequently... thought not for long. That’s the only reason I wouldn’t recommend Dreamhost.

5 — 

Great support, but lacking some features

I signed up to Dreamhost around 8 months ago, after being suggested by other friends in the design/development industry. I liked their modern interface (which is hard to come by compared to other hosts), which provided quick and easy access to the main features across their site. Their support is second to none, however the waiting times for a live chat session can sometimes peak at 15 minutes, which can be a little hectic if something goes wrong.

Their hosting services are speedy and their newly released one-click SSL certificates (courtesy of LetsEncrypt) make it very easy to get up and running securely and quickly.

4 — 

Great, but no cPanel...

I find Dreamhost to be a definite place for you to start your website endeavors. But it’s not perfect.

To start out, it provides an excellent speed coupled with a very reliable uptime that you can count on every single day of the week. It’s customer support isn’t bad as well, as they certainly know what they are doing.

And the good ends there. The price isn’t exactly targeted towards a very large customer base, and by that I mean that it may not be that expensive but there are cheaper web hosts out there. And the final thing that holds Dreamhost back is that fact that it is not very user friendly. Its' interface is complicated and it lacks key features and tools especially for a beginner. I just wish that it had a cPanel.

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