Dreamhost was founded in 1996, being one of the oldest web hosting services to date, it hosts over 1.5 million websites with more than 4,00,000 customers and 7,50,000 WordPress installations. These data are well enough to imagine the position of Dreamhost in the market.
It does not limit itself to hosting services. Dreamhost offers reliable services for domain names, website builders and email hosting, which always comes in the budget.
Being a good name in market, let’s find out if Dreamhost hosting plans do stand on it’s mark in this Dreamhost hosting review.
Dreamhost Hosting Plans and Pricing (and some quick facts about them) :
| Shared Starter Plan | Shared Unlimited Plan | |
| Pricing | $2.59/month | $5.99/mo |
| Renews at | $3.95/month | $10.99/mo |
| Websites | 1 | Unlimited |
| Bandwidth | Unmetered | Unmetered |
| Storage | Unmetered | Unmetered |
| Email Accounts | Costs extra ($1.67/mo) | Unlimited |
| Other features | – | • Unlimited Subdomains & MySQL Databases • Unlimited FTP/SFTP/Shell Users |
| DreamPress Plan | DreamPress Plus Plan | DreamPress Pro Plan | |
| Pricing | $16.95/month | $24.95/month | $71.95/month |
| Websites | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Bandwidth | Unmetered | Unmetered | Unmetered |
| Storage | 30 GB | 60 GB | 120 GB |
| Email Accounts | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Other Features | – | • Unlimited CDN | • Unlimited CDN • Priority Support |
Dreamhost WordPress hosting
In Dreamhost WordPress hosting plan they put powerful features, add-ons and 24/7 support to transform it into a giant.
Their connection with wordpress.org make sure your websites is well updated and is running and secure.
By providing instant setup and installation process, they turn things very easy in Dreamhost WordPress hosting.
Other valuables features that they provide in their WordPress hosting are Free privacy protection, Free domain with annual plans with Free email hosting Advanced and easy-to-use control panel and also Free SSL certificate Automated backups.
Pricing:
Dreamhost WordPress hosting goes with 1 website for a duration of 36 month at $2.59/month
For WordPress site owners, Dreamhost WordPress hosting plan fits very well.
Dreamhost VPS Hosting
Dreamhost VPS(Virtual Power Server) Hosting is the next plan managed by Dreamhost. With Addition of new functions and security with new wide variety of tools and features of VPS hosting, they make your webtsite safest.
As the name goes VPS, it provides you individual resources that is only used by your website.
By giving you an individual server they make your website less latent and high performing.
The complex control panel has always been an issue with VPS hosting but Dreamhost allows you to customise your control panel as you wish.
Also when your website would grow Dreamhost gives you an option to upgrade your Ram and storage in no more than 10 seconds.
The Dreamhost VPS hosting plans provides two different plans (basic and advanced) for different goals, which includes:
Basic features:
- 20x faster SSDs that range from 30GB to 240GB
- Scalable 1GB RAM
- Unlimited MySQL databases
- Reseller and sub-accounts for client and contractor website access
Advanced features:
- Automatic software updates
- Password protection
- Unique IPv4 and IPv6
- Access to raw file logs
Dreamhost VPS hosting makes you choose from their four different pricing plans, which includes:
VPS Basic:
- $10 per month
- 1GB RAM
- 30 GB SSD storage
VPS Business:
- $20 per month
- 2GB RAM
- 60 GB SSD storage
VPS Professional:
- $40 per month
- 4GB RAM
- 120 GB SSD storage
VPS Enterprise:
- $80 per month
- 8GB RAM
- 240 GB SSD storage
Dreamhost Cloud Hosting
To get introduced in last, it is unique too. Dreamhost provides Cloud hosting with OpenStack, it is also known as DreamCompute, it provides advanced network configurations to simple cloud servers.
Dreamhost Cloud hosting is an option for those who are willing to use their own software, hosting a website or running their own server.
Mostly for gaming purposes and running web-scale applications.
Speed and Performance is top priority in this hosting too.
Dreamy Cloud hosting provides some helpful features, like : Storage application integration with Migrate works into your private cloud also Run any application like Ruby, Python, and Redis and Backup WordPress sites .
Dreamhost Cloud hosting shows amazing flexibility in pricing range for different specifications:
$4.50 per month ($0.0075 per hour) is for a server of 512MB RAM
$12 per month ($0.02 per hour) goes for a server of2GB RAM
And at $48 per month ($0.08 per hour) Dreamhost provides you a server of 8GB RAM
In the Dreamhost Cloud hosting plan, they charge you upto 600 hours.
All of all the upper listed plans come with 100GB of block storage and free bandwidth.
Pros & Cons
Pros
Under budget: Dreamhost offer one of the cheapest hosting plans in the market.
Speedy: On base Dreamhost perform very well in uptime ansmd speed (with some exceptions mentioned below) .
No limits: Unlike others hosting providers in the market, they do not put limits and offer you unlimited bandwidth and generous storage.
Impressive backend: Their backends are really impressive with modern look, it may take some time to get to know their used to cPanel dashboard.
One time money: Dreamhost do not pitch upsells and upgrades unlike other hosting providers in the market.
97-day money back guarantee: They are willing to return your money even after 97 days, if you aren’t happy with their services.
Free Migration: Dreamhost recently started offering free site migration, but it is only limited to WordPress and shared hosting plans.
Cons
Not much 1-click installations: Automated installations are offered to only few CMSs (e.g. WordPress)
No servers abroad: All of their servers are located in US, it can affect the performance in other regions (e.g. Europe, Asia)
No free email account for starters: They do not offer email in starter plans, you have to pay for them. They do not cost much, but still they are not inclusive.
Missing advanced features: Some advanced features which are used in larger projects are missing. For example- no built-in coaching, no staging or advanced backup solutions.
No 24*7 chat support: They do not offer 24/7 live chat support, only from 5:30 AM to 9:30 PM (Pacific time).
Apart from this timing, you are handled by ticket support, which is slower.
Speed Test and Uptime
Speed time
Loading time is a very important factor. As when people see your site is not working properly or working slow, they tend to leave which affects bounce rate of your website, which ultimately degrades your SEO.
Fast websites always have an upper hand in the business.
Unfortunately, Dreamhost’s servers are only in US which affects the functionality of a website under them in the other regions and also in the past 12 months their average loading time was 1350 ms which is not enough.
Uptime
Dreamhost’s past 12 months average uptime is also been disappointing, with 99.84% that means more than 14 hours of downtime can actually cause an enough degrade to your website.
Low uptime can make you lose your audience and your profit.
But the good thing is that Dreamhost has an uptime warranty. Just like other hosting providers, it ensures you that if the uptime goes down the threshold, you’ll get some credit for the amount of cost of the service that got wasted.
Most of the hosting providers in the market provides the warranty upto 99.99%, so that they too got a cover up of 0.01% for the casual hits.
Whereas Dreamhost warranties you for 100% uptime. Except scheduled maintenance or user errors.
The credit is that you’ll get a free day service for every hour your website stays down, but only upto 10% max of your next prepaid hosting plan renewal fee i.e, it would apply in future rather than a retroactive refund.
Customer service
Dreamhost offers 24*7 email support via a ticket system. To open a request for support, you can apply through your Dreamhost account dashboard.
Live chat support is also available between 5:30 AM and 9:30 PM Pacific Time. A callback service can also be used but there is an additional fee for that.
You are said to ask relatively easy questions through live chat support and callback feature. For long and complex questions there is a forum on their website where you can ask them questions. The support team is active there 24*7 and most of the questions are answered under 24 hours.
When to perfer DreamHost’s Hosting and When Not?
When to perfer DreamHost’s Hosting?
Dreamhost can be very good for small businesses. It offers low pricing and high value. Small businesses can get their value for money at Dreamhost.
And also if your audience is mainly based at US or North America then Dreamhost can help you a lot around there.
E-Commerce projects can find an amazing place in Dreamhost hosting plans.
When Not to prefer DreamHost’s hosting?
But there’s still occurs problems while choosing Dreamhost.
As all of their servers are based in US, so if your audience base is not North America then you should try other hosting providers for your website.
Also, the techy users considering developers or agencies can miss some advanced features including staging areas, pre-installed Git repositories and integrated caching system. If you want these things you should try our other hosting reviews.
Thanks for reading our Dreamhost hosting Review, we hope you have had found all your answers about Dreamhost hosting plans and if you don’t feel free to comment, we would try our best to resolve your query ASAP.