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DreamHost Review
Features: One day of free service for every hour of downtime
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DreamHost is a web host provider based in Los Angeles. It has close to 400,000 customers and hosts over 1 million domains.
This web host has two shared hosting plans, and DreamHost features a cool 97-day money-back guarantee.
Also, DreamHost has a unique 100% Uptime Guarantee, so that says a lot about their confidence in their services.
Here is our DreamHost review:
Meet DreamHost
DreamHost was founded in 1996 by Dallas Bethune, Josh Jones, Michael Rodriguez, and Sage Weil, a group of students at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California. Year after that, they began hosting customers’ sites.
DreamHost’s shared, VPS, and dedicated hosting network consists of web servers running on the Ubuntu operating system. DreamHost has also launched cloud storage and computing services in 2012. They are not using cPanel, but an in house made application, with billing and support system. DreamHost is pretty active when it comes to updating their official blog and knowledge base for customers.
When it comes to customer support, DreamHost does not offer call-in service, but you can pay for a callback service and receive a call from customer support. Of course, there are email and live chat support, our preferred way of communication.
Advantages of DreamHost
1. Reliability
Let’s start with a big one, uptime, to find out what can you expect from DreamHost when it comes to the availability of your future website.
Most of the hosts offer some kind of uptime guarantee, where you receive a credit if your monthly average uptime is under that mark set by a host. But none come close to DreamHost and their offer.
DreamHost is offering 100% Uptime Guarantee, where for every hour of downtime, you are getting one day of free service.
Of course, scheduled maintenance and user errors are not covered by this guarantee.
For the past three months, DreamHost has been perfect, with 100% Uptime! That’s what keeping your end of bargain means.
2. 97-Day Money-Back Guarantee
Since we started with one DreamHost guarantee, let’s continue with another one. DreamHost really loves to have the upper hand on other web hosts, so they have stepped up their game and offered one of the longest money-back guarantees on the market.
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There are no hidden terms or conditions that you need to fulfill in order to receive your refund, just standard ones.
DreamHost will issue a refund to credit card only, and they cannot provide reimbursement for domain names, Ad credits, and other third-party purchased services.
3. WordPress Recommended Host
On the official WordPress website (WordPress.org), this open-source software has listed their three favorite web hosts. On that list, you will find DreamHost, Bluehost, and SiteGround, rich hosting environments, as WordPress put it.
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When WordPress, as the largest CMS (content management system) recommends a web host, that has to hold some weight as WordPress has cooperated with almost every web host there is.
4. Load Speed
DreamHost is not the fastest when it comes to load speed, but it is pretty consistent.
For a page hosted by DreamHost, load time is 726ms on average.
To sum it for you, that is fast enough, and your visitors won’t wait long for a page to load.
5. Renewal Price
Like most of the hosts on the market, DreamHost is offering a lower monthly price if you select a longer plan.
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Nothing special, same deal almost everywhere. Well, not really.
When your initial plan expires, most of the hosts will bump up the renewal price, and you will end up paying more than double, compared to the initial plan price.
DreamHost doesn’t do that. They will renew your plan with the same initial pricing! Imagine that, no worrying about the renewal and dreading from that date. You will be saving money with this host if you have long term plans of course.
A lot of money.
6. Features
These are the features your starter pack comes with:
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So, for $2.95, you are getting a free domain, free SSL certificate, unlimited traffic, and unlimited storage. Meaning, your site goes viral, no worries. DreamHost will take care of it.
For beginners, WordPress comes pre-installed, and you can start working on your website immediately.
DreamHost has its own website builder called Remixer, and if you purchase any shared hosting plan, Remixer is included in the package.
Disadvantages of DreamHost
1. cPanel Missing
For beginners, this is certainly not an issue, as DreamHost created its own control panel, fairly easy to use.
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Where the issue is with this panel, is that it is not offering the option to migrate your website automatically.
You will have to do that manually, through MySQL and File Transfer Protocol.
2. Servers Located Only in the USA
If your audience is in the USA, no worries, go for it.
But, if you are from Europe or Asia, and you are targeting your audience there, this might affect the user experience.
Having your server on another continent, respond time between the data center and end-user might be a little bit slower. Load speed may be affected, and Google is known for considering load speed as a ranking factor.
Ease of use
We already mentioned their own Control panel, and we do consider it easy to use. You can easily access your billing information, domains, check the data center you are using, and contact DreamHost support.
There is also their knowledge base, with a pretty simple design and very nice outlook.
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They even have Popular Topics, to make it easier for you, if you don’t want to type in and scroll through the results:
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Pricing plans
There are two shared hosting options at DreamHost.
Please note that the prices presented below are for a three year period.
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Let’s go over the plans:
– Shared Starter: For $2.59 per month, this plan includes one website, free domain name, free SSL certificate, and unlimited bandwidth/traffic.
– Shared Unlimited: $4.95 per month features everything as the Starter pack but in unlimited form. So an unlimited number of websites, unlimited traffic, an unlimited number of email addresses, and a free domain name.
Conclusion
Should you go with DreamHost? Yes, you should.
DreamHost is a reliable web host, with many features that will help you start your website. And this price for the offered value is a very good deal. An excellent deal.
And taking into consideration that price doesn’t increase when it is time for renewal, DreamHost has more pros than cons to not be considered as your new web host.
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