DreamHost Web Hosting Review and better than Dreamhost hosting
What is DreamHost?
DreamHost is the dinosaur among web hosts.
It is ginormous. Claim more than 400,000 active clients and welcome more than 1.5 million sites. That's a lot!
Is old, too. Waaaaaay founded in 1996 by a student few students in Claremont College in California.
And is respected. Bringing home for "Best Web Hosting Service' Award for the second consecutive year.
Even go so far as to offer features crazy for example, 97-day money back guarantee and a 100% uptime (or reimbursed).
We wanted to test DreamHost and see for ourselves if the reality lived up to the hype. We also wanted to know if they are any better than Bluehost, SiteGround and HostGator.
In June 2015, we have created a test website WordPress basic to DreamHost. Detailed performance statistics including availability and speed can be found here by clicking on 'history'.
Here is our quick summary:
Advantages of using DreamHost Hosting
There is a lot to like about DreamHost.
Promise at great speed and customer support. They also take in some gifts to make your experience even better.
Here is a summary of its best attributes:
1. Page load time a 23% lower than the average of the competitors
The page load times of DreamHost we were not disappointed, the chance in 709ms during the same period of eight months. That is 23% faster than the average of 890ms we've seen in the analysis of other web hosts.
You can check the statistics below:
Past the charging time average of 10 months:
December 2017 the average speed: 773ms
January 2018 the average speed: 778ms
February 2018 the average speed: 809ms
March 2018 the average speed: 817ms
April 2018 the average speed: 678ms
May 2018 the average speed: 598ms
June 2018 the average speed: 562ms
July 2018 the average speed: 733ms
August 2018 the average speed: 658ms
September 2018 the average speed: 688ms
2. Polite, kind support
The best availability and faster load times mean nothing without a great deal of support for all.
In that area, DreamHost excels. Within 5 minutes we were connected to a live chat, agent, obtaining detailed answers after every few seconds.
Your support is not outsourced (which is obvious) and is available 24/7. The only trick? No phone support.
3. 97-day money back guarantee and a 'free' days of inactivity
DreamHost offers the most money back guarantee in the industry - 97 days for shared hosting plans.
But that's not all!
Also, the credit that one day of service for each hour of service interruption. They are not joking around standing behind your service. In my opinion, that is just great!
According to the terms of service of DreamHost, which is only going to be eligible for the free days if:
DreamObjects service is not responding.
It gives an error of DreamObjects server response to requests for the valid user for more than a minute of consecutive requests.
Scheduled maintenance that can cause downtime is excluded.
It is also important to note that DreamHost does not offer automatic reimbursement for certain payment methods:
PayPal
Check (written checks or electronic checks)
Money Orders
Gift Certificates
It is incredible that DreamHost offers over such a long period to receive your money back. That if you are sure you will love it, it must be too.
If you do not want to get caught committing to DreamHost until you are 100% sure that you will love its services, make sure you pay your subscription automatically with a credit or debit card.
That way, you will be able to receive your refund automatically.
4. New options of a phased plan
DreamHost uses only offer a single shared hosting option.
While that was great for some people who do not want to dive into the weed, was also a relatively high cost (more on this in the next point).
As well, on the surface, seemed like a good option for beginners who do not want to compare a lot of complicated plans. But it ended up costing them more in the extreme.
Fortunately, DreamHost has made many improvements to their plans, opening all kinds of affordable options.
5. Among the cheapest options available
DreamHost was in the face of the last time that we service. He was one of the major drawbacks that we had with the service.
But since then, have come up with (a ton) of new options of levels that drop considerably the price.
Their most basic, Shared Hosting for simple web sites now works only $2.59/month for the first year.
Many other hosts will require two or even three years of contracts for similar prices. You are receiving a good value here.
And if you need something more robust, have an update or shared unlimited, you can go to your WordPress hosting managed (DreamPress), VPS or dedicated servers. Now you can start with little and save a few dollars, updating only when your site grows.
6. Unlimited bandwidth (really!)
All of the companies claim to offer unlimited hosting. Unfortunately, most don't even come close.
DreamHost offers truly unlimited bandwidth and data transfer according to its policy of 'unlimited'.
This service is incredibly rare for a reason (read: The cost). Here are the exceptions:
Copyrighted content that does not keep the use or distribution rights.
File Upload / share / Archive / Backup / duplication / distribution sites.
A site created mainly to direct traffic to another site.
Doing the account of resources available (for free or not) for the general public.
7. Are Carbon Neutral (AKA Green).
Being a web hosting provider has tons of resources. Only the amount of electricity that it takes to run servers only is tremendous.
That is why DreamHost is committed to reducing your impact on the environment. One way to do this is through the purchase of carbon credits.
In fact, DreamHost has been a carbon neutral company since 2007. In just 10 years, the company has neutralized the whopping 29,298.1 tonnes of greenhouse gases.
This is huge!
According to its website, which is not the only way that the company remains committed to energy efficiency.
The disadvantages of using DreamHost Hosting
DreamHost is a perfect choice for most people.
However, there are some potential dangers that might be a deal breaker for others.
1. Slightly below the average uptime
DreamHost is for your time of activity. They are so sure, which will provide an additional day of service for each hour of downtime of your site experiences with them.
Fortunately for its accountants, this does not happen very often (99.90%) is less than 10 minutes of downtime per month).
However, in the last 10 months, since we have been reviewing, his time of activity has declined slightly below the industry average with 99.95%. That is around 4 hours of total downtime significantly less than2 Hosting HostGator Cloud and SiteGround.
Last 10 months of activity media:
December 2017: 100% uptime average
January 2018: 100% uptime average
February 2018: 99.85% uptime average
March 2018: 99.94% uptime average
April 2018: 99.75% uptime media
May 2018: 99.96% uptime media
June 2018: 100% uptime average
July 2018: 99.99% uptime average
August 2018: 100% uptime average
September 2018: 99.96% uptime media
2. CPanel - is not really a scam? Hard to say...
DreamHost has created its own control panel to provide a simplified version for non-specialists.
The professionals accustomed to using cPanel or Plesk (like us) you probably won't like this method.
3. It is possible to configure retarded
New customer accounts must be verified prior to activation. This means that while the record is instantaneous, provisioning may take a few hours. Enter this factor in their new launch plans if you are trying to start as soon as possible.
Dreamhost prices, Hosting Plans & Quick Facts
Shared hosting: DreamHost offers two simple shared hosting plans. The first, starter, you only return $2.59/month for the first annual payment for a single web site. If you are looking for more shared, the Unlimited option gives you exactly what it sounds like: an unlimited number of web sites for $7.59/month for the first year.
: DreamHost Hosting Managed Hosting Managed WordPress is called DreamPress. The basic option gives you a site up to 10,000 visits a month, with 30GB SSD, for $16.95/month. In addition, DreamPress opens your site up to 30,000 visitors per month with 60GB SSD storage for $24.95/month. And DreamPress Pro enables 100,000 monthly visits, in addition to a trial, with 120 GB SSD storage for $71.95/month.
VPS Hosting VPS Hosting: Your start at $13.75/month gives you a single GB of RAM and 30GB of storage for unlimited domains hosting. If that is not enough, have other three levels, including business, Professional and Enterprise, that each increase of RAM (2GB, 4GB, 8GB), storage (60GB, 120GB, 240GB) and unlimited bandwidth for all. The plans start at $27.50/month, $55.00/month and $110.00/month respectively.
Dedicated hosting: your dedicated server starts at $169 per month and includes a 100% guarantee of unlimited availability, DDoS protection, more complete and access the root shell. These dedicated servers include up to 12 cores, max 64GB of RAM, 2 TB of storage, RAID 1 and unlimited bandwidth.
Ease of Signup: long and complicated registration process. Signup should be easier.
Free domain name: For the first year in all annual hosting plans.
Methods of payment: credit card, PayPal, check, money order, Checking Account
Hidden fees and clauses: None. Yay!
Enlargements: additional sales. Boo!
The activation of the account: Account activation may take a while. Go grab a cup of coffee (or two).
Control panel and panel of experience: Dreamhost custom control panel that can be a little difficult to use, blah! But who knows, maybe you like?
Installation of applications and CMS (WordPress, Joomla, etc.): the one-click installer for WordPress and other applications/CMSs.
We recommend DreamHost?
Yes, depending on what you are looking for.
DreamHost is super reliable, by offering an incredible money-back guarantee if you experience any downtime or other mishaps along the way.
Your support is exceptional through the board. And throw in a few gifts to pass. The price is also quite affordable for what you get.
If you value the reliability and technical assistance that is second to none, look no further than DreamHost.
