DreamHost Review: You Can Trust Them With Your Site
Here at Webhostreviews4u.com our goal is to bring you the most up to date information in the world of Web hosting.Whether that’s bringing you great lists of top hosts, or giving you the information you need to make the best choice possible to host your blog or website. In an effort to bring you the most up to date information we’ve decided to crowd-source some of our information and bring you hosting reviews of some of our best hosts. These posts will feature just one host and will give you a plethora of pros and cons to weigh your decision against. As is expected the reviews contained in these articles are not the opinions of webhostreviews4u.com. Instead it’s the voice of the internet, those that have gone before you that speaks on these posts. We hope that their experiences, good or bad, will aid you in your journey to build and deploy the application of your dreams.
I can honestly say that dreamhost has lived up to what is advertised. First off, no hosting company can give you a 100% uptime. I have been with dreamhost for over 8 years now.
Dreamhost Introduction
DreamHost has been a popular award-winning hosting company since it was founded in 1997, and it has offices in Los Angeles and Brea in California, and Portland, Oregon. DreamHost is one of WordPress.org’s officially recommended hosts. Dreamhost has become famous for its generous 97-day money-back guarantee. They offer domain registration and web hosting services, including managed WordPress hosting. You’ll find they offer everything you need to grow your website, whether you’re a new blogger or established business.
Over the years,the customer count has grown to over 400,000, spanning throughout more than 100 countries. DreamHost proudly hosts over 1.5 million websites, including over 750,000 WordPress installations. They’ve won PCMag’s Business Choice Awards for Web Hosting Service for 2014-2016. DreamHost is also a certified carbon-neutral host, and makes every effort to conserve resources in their own offices. They’re also a member of the U.S. Green Chamber of Commerce.
Ready to get started with DreamHost? Click here to select your DreamHost plan today.
DreamHost Hosting Plans
DreamHost specializes in providing hosting for web designers, developers, bloggers and online businesses. They offer shared hosting, managed WordPress hosting, VPS hosting, and dedicated servers. They also offer cloud servers and cloud storage.All of DreamHost’s plans use SSD drives for faster loading.
Shared hosting includes:
- 1 free domain registration
- unlimited storage and bandwidth
- hosting for unlimited websites
- unlimited email accounts
- 1-click installation of WordPress
DreamHost also offers a managed WordPress hosting plan called DreamPress. DreamPress is over 5 times faster than shared hosting. The servers are optimized for WordPress, and can handle traffic spikes without your site going down.
Managed WordPress hosting also includes:
- automatic WordPress core updates for security
- private IP address and SSL certificate pre-installed for eCommerce sites
- no limits on visitors or bandwidth
- a firewall for brute-force attack mitigation
If you only run WordPress, the DreamPress service is a fully managed WordPress product. Dreamhost says that it’s a lot faster than regular shared hosting, and it scales to cope with spikes in traffic.
As such, DreamHost support agents know what they’re talking about. Available all day, every day, the in-house support team provides help worthy of DreamHost’s speedy SSD-based architecture, hand-crafted control panel, WordPress-tailored solutions, and reliable managed services.
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.
Dreamhost Web-Based Control Panel
Dreamhost has always rejected third party control panels like cPanel and Plesk. Instead, it has its own proprietary panel called Web-Based Control Panel,This panel allows you to control most of the same technical aspects of a hosting account, and it’s provided free on every hosting package. Access your billing information, create email addresses, create MySQL databases, contact tech support and more all through our easy-to-use.This consistency means that many users have grown to love the custom panel.
With the Control Panel ,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.
Dreamhost Datacenter
Dreamhost uses datacenters on the east and west coasts of the US. Customers can’t choose which datacenter their files are stored at, and you can’t select your preferred location at checkout. If you want to change, you’ll need to raise a support ticket.
One advantage that Dreamhost does have is that its staff are physically close to some of its machines at all times. So it can get that crucial hands-on access that’s sometimes needed, without the need to rely on third party remote hands.
Technical Support
DreamHost offers 24/7 support via a ticket system. You can open a request for support through your customer dashboard.
They also maintain a forum on their website where you can post your questions. Support staff is active in the forums, and most questions are answered within 24 hours.
Many reviews mention the quality of their support, though some reviewers were frustrated by not having access to immediate phone or live chat support.
While live chat and phone support can be useful for simple questions, customers with more complicated issues are usually directed to open a support ticket anyway. DreamHost maintains an extensive knowledgebase on their website that answers the most common questions users have about hosting. If you have a more complicated issue, it probably could not be answered immediately via live chat or phone even if it was available.
Uptime and Service Guarantees
Dreamhost’s 97-day money-back guarantee is a key selling point for its service. It’s one of the longest guarantee periods you’ll find at any hosting company, and it gives you time to try out its control panel without commitment. This guarantee only applies to shared hosting accounts paid for using a credit card.
It also offers an excellent 100% uptime guarantee across all hosting packages. Credit is provided for downtime, using a simple calculation: 1 day of credit for 1 hour of downtime. However, this is capped at a maximum of 10% of your hosting fee. Downtime only officially begins when you open a support ticket, so if you suspect network problems, it’s a good idea to act quickly.
DreamHost offers nuanced and performant hosting perfect for scaling websites and applications through the ranks of shared, VPS, cloud, and dedicated hosting.
We love their features but realize that beginners or hobbyist developers might not want to fork over the extra cash to capitalize on the performance, optimization, and managed services that DreamHost offers.
If, however, your site is growing and gathering more and more traffic, few hosts will take care of you as well as DreamHost. Managed services include infrastructure management, automatic backups and updates, malware scans, and DDoS protection.
Pros and Cons
Dreamhost offers an innovative approach to hosting, and its move to the cloud has allowed it to branch out. Despite the advance of other control panels, it has stuck to its approach of using its own custom panel for everything. Depending on your situation, the control panel could be a blessing or a curse, and the lack of a reseller option could be limiting in some cases. But the long money-back period means you have a chance to try Dreamhost’s unique service for 97 days without risk.
DreamHost is a popular web hosting company, but it may not be right for everyone. Consider these pros and cons before choosing a plan.
Pros
- Award Winning Hosting – DreamHost has won the PCMag Readers’ Choice Award for best business hosting for the past 3 years. They rated high in reader surveys for their reliability and tech support.
- No Plugin Restrictions – Unlike other managed WordPress hosting providers, DreamHost does not forbid you from using any plugins on your DreamPress account.
- Free Domain and Privacy – Every DreamHost plan includes one free domain registration plus domain privacy, so your contact information isn’t made public on the web.
- Monthly Billing With No Setup Fee – You can choose to pay month-to-month with any DreamHost plan, without having to pay a setup fee.
Cons
- Support Isn’t Immediate – DreamHost only offers support via a ticket system. They don’t offer live chat or phone support. They do aim to respond to all support requests within 24 hours, but some users find it frustrating to have to wait for an answer.
- No cPanel – DreamHost uses their own custom-designed control panel, which allows you to manage your billing and domains as well as your hosting. Users who are accustomed to cPanel might not want to try a new control panel.
Is DreamHost Right for You?
Now that you have read through our entire DreamHost review, you might be wondering whether DreamHost is the right web host for you.
After reviewing DreamHost services in detail, we are awarding them with the title “Best DIY Hosting.”
DreamHost is highly rated for their fast and reliable hosting. They’ve won numerous awards and get rave reviews from their customers. But it may not be the right choice for you if you need a lot of help getting started. Since they only offer support via tickets, we recommend DreamHost to DIY users who are comfortable figuring things out on their own using the comprehensive knowledgebase.
DreamHost Coupon
we are offering Webhostreviews4u users an exclusive 25% discount. Use our DreamPress coupon below to get 25% off on managed WordPress hosting.
All you have to do is click on this link to purchase. The discount will be auto-applied.
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