DreamHost evaluate
Disclosure: This content is endorsed by the reader. So if you click on some of our links we may receive a commission.
DreamHost was founded in 1996 and is one of the oldest web hosting services today. Hosting over 1.5 million websites with 400,000 customers and 750,000 WordPress installs – I think DreamHost is one of the best web hosting services for most website owners.
With extensive product offerings that aren't just limited to hosting plans, DreamHost can help you integrate domain names, website builders, and email hosting into your website efficiently and inexpensively.
It is a purpose-built web hosting that ensures that your website is fast, safe and up-to-date for your visitors.
DreamHost compared to the best web hosting services
Compared to other web hosting services, DreamHost is a more complete and comprehensive option with an extensive selection of website hosting products to suit different needs.
DreamHost is my number one choice for quick and responsive website changes as I am dedicated to highlighting and adapting to new trends. Additionally, DreamHost is passionate about privacy and security and is employee owned. Hence, they focus heavily on their users and their individual needs.
I checked dozens of different web hosting services and narrowed them down to the top eight options. I looked at each option to see who it would be best for, what options to choose from, and how to choose the right one.
Check out all of my top listings and get an in-depth analysis of each one to help make the best buying decision for your website needs.
Who is DreamHost best for?
With its low price and high quality, DreamHost is an excellent option for most website owners. That may seem broad, but listen to me.
DreamHost is the most complete web hosting service for small and large businesses working on projects of various sizes. This is because the performance is high enough for most website owners to provide customer support and reliable availability.
Whether you are in the blogging or website development niche, DreamHost offers dependable and dependable hosting support at an affordable price.
Since DreamHost supports SSDs and high-level technology, users can easily customize their control panel.
From beginners to tech-savvy users, DreamHost knows your website is your future. This makes it the best for most website owners looking for extra support and quality service.
DreamHost: pros and cons
Even the best web hosting services have shortcomings. It is important to weigh the pros and cons of any product before purchasing it to ensure that each element contributes to your preferences and the success of your website. Below is a list of the pros and cons of DreamHost.
benefits
Affordable Prices: DreamHost is one of the cheapest web hosting services out there, which we will get into later. To make it short and sweet, DreamHost has a nice selection of pricing plans that you can customize to pay for in either monthly or yearly installments.
Monthly payments start at $ 4.95, while annual pricing starts at $ 3.95 per month. This means you save more with yearly payments. This is a rarity for web hosting services as many competitors seem to charge more for annual payment options.
Automated integrations: DreamHost offers automatic integration and one click installation for some CMS options like WordPress, MediaWiki, and Joomla.
This is a huge benefit for most of the users as it gives them the option of choosing a different website and switching easily. For users who are already using one of the supported CMS options, this is even easier because DreamHost installs them for you with one click.
The most popular CMS option DreamHost supports is WordPress, and it is the easiest time to get this particular option integrated with your hosting provider. DreamHost also allows you to choose any WordPress theme or plugin for your website. Essentially, you have full control over the appearance of your website while DreamHost does it all behind the scenes.
Comprehensive customer support: Another important feature of DreamHost is comprehensive customer support. There are two ways to contact them for free through your control panel including live chat and email support.
Live chat takes place seven days a week from 5:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Pacific time, while the DreamHost support team strives to answer all emails within 24 hours. However, if you think you need additional guidance for technical issues, DreamHost offers a callback service for an additional fee.
Since callbacks are not included in your hosting plan by default, you'll need to add them. You can choose to add three callbacks per month for a low monthly fee or a one-time callback feature for a fee.
In addition to providing these support services, DreamHost has dedicated pages for questions about the knowledge base, system status, technical support, and discussion forums.
High quality performance and speed: DreamHost offers incredible performance and speed that will permanently change the quality of your website.
For example, DreamHost specifically designs products that are compatible with WordPress for optimal performance. This ensures a seamless and fluid integration between DreamHost and your WordPress website so that it can run at top speed.
Another great feature is the use of SSDs. DreamHost SSDs make your entire website, data, and caching 200 percent faster than old hard drives. With lightning-fast speeds and a loading time of 2.35 seconds, your visitors can scroll through your website without delay and are not drawn into unnecessary waiting times.
DreamHost also guarantees 100% reliable uptime, so your website is always online and reaching its maximum potential. With backup generators, constant monitoring, redundant cooling, and data center locations, your website will never work as well as it does with DreamHost.
disadvantage
Additional fees for advanced features: Unfortunately, if you're looking for a more complete web hosting service that has advanced features and tools to transform your website, DreamHost is a bit lacking in this department.
In the beginning it is possible to build your website for next to nothing. However, there are some additional costs for those looking for full support. For example, DreamHost offers products outside of web hosting such as website builders, G-Suite, design services, and marketing tools.
However, they all cost extra and can get quite expensive as they are not included in your hosting plan. If you want additional support from a platform for added convenience, consider paying an additional $ 2.95 per month for website building up to $ 1,499 for design services.
While some of the monthly payment features are quite affordable, if you want more professional services then you should reevaluate and plan for them in your budget.
The Shared Starter Plan doesn't include email hosting: Although email hosting for the shared starter plan costs an additional $ 1.67 per month per mailbox, which is still reasonably affordable, this is also an additional cost for those looking to purchase the starter plan as a beginner with little technical experience.
This is especially relevant when the next plan of unlimited email hosting is an additional $ 9 per month. This can be a disadvantage for website owners looking for a cheaper plan that is better suited to their budget.
DreamHost pricing
A big advantage of choosing DreamHost as your web hosting provider is the price. It is one of the most affordable products out there when you weigh it against the high quality services it provides to its users. DreamHost has three main hosting plans that you can pay for a discount annually, including:
Each of these three plans, Shared, DreamPress, and VPS, have additional options in the plan.
For example, Shared Starter and Shared Unlimited, DreamPress, DreamPress Plus and DreamPress Pro. Then the VPS plan is broken down into storage amounts, from 30 GB SSD storage in VPS Basic to 240 DB SSD storage in VPS Enterprise. There are two additional VPS plan options between these.
Let's start with that Divided to plan. The Shared starter The option is great for beginners who have a new website and aren't sure where to start. It provides the basic tools your website needs for hosting, like a WordPress website, free domain, and unlimited bandwidth.
For $ 3.95 per month paid annually, users get a bargain with the WP website builder and free automated WordPress integrations. These usually start between $ 2.59 and $ 9.95 per month. So having both of them included in the plan for free is tremendous value to your business.
DreamHost also offers the Unlimited shared Plan that includes everything in the Shared Starter Plan plus unlimited email and websites for $ 9.95 per month paid annually. This would be a good plan for users with multiple websites who need different email accounts.
The next major pricing plan for DreamHost is DreamPress. Save 15 percent by paying $ 16.95 per month annually. This plan includes everything that the Shared Unlimited plan has, and includes on-demand backups, free Jetpack pre-installation, and one-click deployment.
This plan is more suitable for users who already have a dedicated WordPress website as it has been created to coexist seamlessly with this builder.
There are two other DreamPress options including:
- DreamPress Plus: $ 24.95 per month with Double SSD Storage, Jetpack Professional, and Unlimited CDN
- DreamPress Pro: $ 71.95 per month with 120GB of SSD storage, 1 million+ monthly visitors, and a staging website
These pricing plans are more suited to demanding WordPress websites that require extensive tools.
I'll cover VPS hosting and options in the next section.
DreamHost Deals
DreamHost has a few web hosting product offerings for most users. Below is an in-depth look at the different products DreamHost offers for web hosting services:
WordPress hosting
WordPress hosting is by far the most popular product DreamHost offers to its users. DreamHost has optimized most of its tools and technologies specifically for compatibility with WordPress. WordPress hosting is so popular for good reason.
WordPress hosting on DreamHost will completely transform your website with powerful features, add-ons and 24/7 support. To do this, they work closely with WordPress.org so that you always get the latest version and ongoing updates to make sure your website is up and running and safe.
The easiest part of choosing WordPress hosting is the instant setup and installation process. If you choose a plan that supports multiple websites, the one-click installer does it all for you and offers seamless integration.
WordPress hosting starts at $ 2.59 per month for a website with a 36 month commitment.
When you choose WordPress hosting, your website will benefit from a number of key features including:
- Free privacy protection
- Free domain with annual plans
- Free email hosting
- Advanced and user-friendly control panel
- Free SSL Certificate
- Automated backups
WordPress hosting is a great option for those who own a WordPress website for the most effortless transitions and seamless integration with web hosting.
VPS hosting
VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosting is another popular hosting option that DreamHost manages and monitors very well. With performance and security updates, the variety of tools and features offered by VPS at DreamHost will make your website the most secure.
One powerful feature DreamHost has with VPS hosting is custom resources that only your website can use. This means that dedicated resources will help your website achieve low latency and high performance.
With an intuitive control panel, VPS hosting has never been easier to manage. DreamHost also allows you to customize this control panel to suit your individual preferences. You also have the option to upgrade your memory and storage in less than 10 seconds, which gives you extra peace of mind if your website inevitably grows.
The DreamHost VPS plans have basic and advanced features for a variety of purposes including:
Basic functions:
- 20x faster SSDs in the range from 30 GB to 240 GB
- Scalable 1 GB RAM
- Resellers and sub-accounts for accessing the website of clients and contractors
- Unlimited MySQL databases
Advanced features:
- Automatic software updates
- password protection
- Access to raw file logs
- Unique IPv4 and IPv6
These features work well for users looking for a more complete hosting service on a private server.
VPS hosting offers four different pricing plans including:
- VPS Basic: Starts at $ 10 per month with 1GB of RAM and 30GB of SSD storage
- VPS Business: Starts at $ 20 per month with 2GB of RAM and 60GB of SSD storage
- VPS Professional: From $ 40 per month with 4 GB of RAM and 120 GB of SSD storage
- VPS Enterprise: Starts at $ 80 per month with 8 GB of RAM and 240 GB of SSD storage
DreamHost makes sure that a pricing plan is created for every website owner who deals with VPS hosting.
Cloud hosting
Finally, DreamHost offers a unique service called cloud hosting with OpenStack. Cloud hosting, also known as DreamCompute, is a product that provides simple cloud servers for advanced network configurations.
Cloud hosting is an excellent option for users who want to host a website using software of their choice, run their own server for gaming, or run web-scale applications.
Like the other two product offerings, DreamHost always makes sure that speed and performance are top priorities for all servers. Cloud hosting SSH is ready in 30 seconds thanks to next-generation processors and accelerated SSD hard drives.
Cloud hosting has some helpful features like:
- Integration of storage applications
- Secure WordPress sites
- Run any application like Ruby, Python, and Redis
- Migrating works to your private cloud
DreamCompute has three pricing plans with really flexible pricing including:
- 512MB RAM Server: $ 4.50 per month ($ 0.0075 per hour)
- 2 GB RAM server: $ 12 per month ($ 0.02 per hour)
- 8 GB RAM server: $ 48 per month ($ 0.08 per hour)
With the cloud hosting plans, DreamHost only charges users up to 600 hours per month. All plans include 100 GB of block storage and free bandwidth.
The best web hosting services
I've spent hours reviewing various web hosting services. You can read my buying guide here.
Summary
Overall, DreamHost is an excellent web hosting service option for most website owners looking for high performance and quick customization at an affordable price.
With great price packages and product offerings like WordPress hosting, VPS hosting, and cloud hosting, there is an option for everyone with different preferences.
The pros definitely outweigh the cons of DreamHost, and I think it's worth looking into to transform and grow the website.
See How my agency can drive Firmly Traffic volumes on your website
- SEO – Unlock tons of SEO traffic. See real results.
- Content Marketing – Our team creates epic content that is shared, links accessed and visitors drawn.
- Paid media – effective paid strategies with a clear ROI.
Book a call