DREAMHOST
Web Hosting with Purpose
We make sure your website is fast, secure & always up –
so your visitors & search engines trust you. Guaranteed.
If you want to build a Linux-powered website, DreamHost should be one of the first places you look. The web hosting service has a rich feature set that satisfies many personal- and business-related web hosting needs by offering shared, WordPress, virtual private server (VPS), cloud, and dedicated plans. In addition, its website-building software gives webmasters simple tools to create attractive, flexible sites. As a result, DreamHost is an Editors’ Choice award-winning web host, racing to the top alongside competitors like HostGator, Hostwinds, and Liquid Web.
DreamHost is a web hosting company founded in 1996. It provides a variety of hosting services including shared hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated hosting, and managed WordPress hosting. They also offer domain registration, SSL certificates, and website design services. DreamHost is known for its strong focus on privacy and commitment to open-source software. They also have a strong reputation for providing excellent customer support.
DreamHost Helps You Succeed
Grow your website faster by using DreamHost as your foundation.
Super Easy to Use
Our custom control panel is simple to use and removes the headache of managing your web hosting.
Full Featured
We do more than web hosting. Our tool suite includes everything you need to be successful.
Fast & Reliable
If your website is slow or down, then you are losing customers, conversion and search engine rankings.
24/7 Expert Support
Our award-winning US-based experts are available to help when you get stuck — anytime, day or night.
Features
DreamHost offers a wide range of features to customers depending on the hosting plan they choose. Some of the key features include:
- Unlimited bandwidth and storage: Many of DreamHost’s plans include unlimited bandwidth and storage, allowing customers to have as much traffic and data on their website as they need.
- Easy website building: DreamHost offers a simple website builder that allows customers to create a professional-looking website without any coding experience.
- Control Panel: Dreamhost has a Control Panel which is user-friendly, intuitive, and easy to use, which allows customers to manage their hosting account and website from one place.
- Automatic updates: DreamHost automatically updates WordPress, security and other software to the latest version, so customers don’t have to worry about maintaining their website.
- One-Click Installs: DreamHost offers one-click installs for several popular web applications such as WordPress, Joomla, and more.
- CDN: Dreamhost has CDN (Content Delivery Network) which helps to load faster for visitors from all around the world.
- Email hosting: DreamHost also offers email hosting services, which allows customers to create custom email addresses for their domain.
- Excellent customer support: DreamHost is known for its customer support team, which is available 24/7 to assist customers with any issues they may have.
- 30-day money-back guarantee: If customers are not satisfied with DreamHost’s services, they can get a full refund within the first 30 days of service.
What Makes DreamHost So Different?
With over 20 years of hosting experience, we focus on successful sites for web designers, developers, bloggers and online businesses. Our community and support helps you create a website fast and easy!
Employee Owned
Being employee-owned keeps us focused on the unique needs of our users, and we wouldn’t have it any other way. We’re committed to helping everyone find success online.
Passion for Privacy
We believe in everyone’s right to privacy, and we back that with a strong anti-spam policy and free WHOIS privacy.
Commitment to Security
Our many security features include Multi Factor Authentication, auto-enabled sFTP and free secure hosting with Let’s Encrypt.
Embrace Open Source
We strongly believe in providing open source solutions to our customers whenever possible.
24/7 Support
Our in-house team members do their best to provide one-touch resolution, making you feel like a part of our family.
100% Uptime Guaranteed
We guarantee it so you don’t have to worry about it.
What Products Does DreamHost Offer?
As their offering is not limited to shared hosting plans, let’s review what other services you can get with DreamHost like dedicated servers, cloud hosting and more.
Domain Names
Alongside hosting packages, you can get domain names at DreamHost. DreamHost offers over 400 TLDs (like .com, .org, .net) or more exotic extensions (like .club or .guru). Country specific TLDs such as .es, .fr, .co.uk or .de are also available. A .com domain name is $17.99 at renewal.
Shared Hosting
This entry-level web hosting will give you a lot for your money, on renewal they cost $6.99 a month for the 1-site plan or $12.99 for the Unlimited tier – straightforward pricing. This type of hosting is great to start, but if your project grows a lot (e.g. more than 50,000 visitors a month), you may need to upgrade.
You will also see hosting called “WordPress Basic” on the DreamHost website. This is divided into WordPress Starter and WordPress Unlimited, and is exactly the same as the Shared Starter and Shared Unlimited referenced above.
For Managed WordPress hosting, see below.
VPS
You can imagine a Virtual Private Server (VPS plans) as a shared hosting server that has been divided into smaller servers. This means that you can configure it to your needs. Therefore, your website will be hosted independently of other clients’ – the resources aren’t shared either. VPS hosting plans at DreamHost start at $15.99 a month on renewal and can go all the way up to $114 a month.
You will also see hosting called “VPS WordPress” on the DreamHost website. This is exactly the same as the standard VPS hosting.
Dedicated Hosting
But, if your website gets so big that you need your own dedicated servers, that’s when you should consider getting a dedicated hosting account – beware, these are a bit more expensive. Dedicated hosting at DreamHost starts at $149 per month up to $279 monthly.
Cloud Hosting
That’s not all, DreamHost also offers cloud hosting plans. Imagine this as a series of interconnected cloud servers that host your website. This solution is ideal for those expecting peaks of traffic as more resources (e.g. RAM and CPU) can be added as you need them. Figuring out how much will you pay is tricky, as the price depends on the resources (e.g. RAM or storage) that you need. DreamHost cloud server packages start at $4.50/mo.
Managed WordPress Hosting
On top of all that, DreamHost offers also offer managed WordPress hosting plans. If you’d like automatic updates, staging areas and dedicated WordPress support, you can opt for a Managed WordPress hosting account, which starts at $19.99 on renewal (for one site only).
The focus of this DreamHost review is their shared hosting plans, so from now on, I’ll be referencing those.
Pros
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Affordable
DreamHost is an affordable web hosting services, even the top shared hosting plan is cheaper than most alternatives.
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Unlimited bandwidth and generous storage
All accounts come with truly unlimited bandwidth and generous storage. Unlike others, no inodes limitation.
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Modern-looking backend
Their backend looks very contemporary. It may take a bit of time to master for those used to cPanel dashboards.
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No upsells and upgrades
So many competitors push you into buying add-ons with aggressive pitches. DreamHost is a breath of fresh air.
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97-day money-back guarantee
DreamHost offers a money back guarantee, if after 97 days (yes 97) of using them, you are unhappy with their service.
CONS
- No email with Shared Starter plan
- Lacks Windows-based servers
- No telephone support
DreamHost Pricing
Starter
- 1 website
- 50 GB storage
- 6 databases
- Email accounts not included
Unlimited
- Unlimited websites
- Unlimited storage
- Unlimited databases
- Email accounts included
Price Increases on Renewal
Almost all web hosting companies offer very cheap introductory prices to get you on board. However, unfortunately these prices are not forever. At the end of the offer period, your hosting plan will renew at the standard price.
These renewal prices are usually much more expensive than the introductory offers. However, since these are the standard prices, they are much more representative of the true value of your hosting plan.
And therefore it’s these renewal prices that you should use to compare different hosting providers, and they are the prices we use in all our hosting reviews.
In the chart below, you can see the price increases on renewal of the basic shared hosting plans for all the providers that we test and review at Tooltester:
As you can see, DreamHost starts off with a very low introductory offer that increases considerably on renewal. However, even on renewal, DreamHost remains cheap compared to many of the other providers.
