DreamHost Review

DreamHost is an employee-owned hosting company with a fun and quirky culture, the have many innovative hosting plans and custom control panels.

They have a full range of plans from shared hosting to server collocation.

DreamHost hosting features:

• Los Angeles, CA and Hillsboro, OR Data Centers
• 97 Day Money-back Guarantee
• Fun pictures of Dreamhost staff on their website.

DreamHost is one of the companies that we get mixed reviews on, some people love them and other have had bad experiences.

Pros and Cons

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Pros

Over 22 years in the web hosting industry with a fun corporate culture

Cons

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Performance and Reliability

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Customer Experience / Ease of Use

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Customer Support

DreamHost’s technical support is known as one of the most responsive and friendly in the entire hosting industry. Apart from the usual toll-free telephone and email support, there’s also the innovative ‘call-back’ option where you can place a request and have support representatives call you back and work out your issues. This service costs $19.95 per month.

From the DreamHost website, you can access their support Wiki section which is an expansive walkthrough of their features and solutions to technical issues.

Hosting Plans & Packages

Dreamhost Plans

DreamHost provides different hosting packages for different customers, as listed below:

Shared Web Hosting:

Priced at $8.95 per month, this plan offers unlimited disk space, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited domains, unlimited MySQL databases and unlimited email accounts for Linux and UNIX operating systems.

VPS Hosting:

Along with the regular hosting plan, customers can opt for premium shared hosting service at $15 per month.

Dedicated Hosting:

This includes 4 GB memory, 250 GB disk space and 2 TB bandwidth for latest operating systems. Available at $69 per month, you can even customize the package according to personal needs.

Non profit Hosting:

Free web hosting solutions are provided to nonprofit organizations. Your purchase is secured by DreamHost’s generous 97-day money-back guarantee.

Hosting Features

Account management at DreamHost is done through their proprietary admin panel (which is NOT cPanel). The software has been developed by DreamHost programmers using leading web technologies like AJAX, HTML, and CSS, and is acclaimed for intuitive and responsive nature.

This admin panel lets you manage all aspects of your accounts including your files, databases, FTP and email accounts, etc. The panel also allows you great flexibility with your DNS, whereby you can link external servers to work with your account and share bandwidth.

Apart from multiple hosting plans, DreamHost provides 99.9% uptime guarantee, web builder, image gallery, audio/video support and support for advanced scripts. For Joomla users, web hosting packages are loaded with technical and communication features. With the single click control panel, you can install WordPress and maintain your blogs.

WordPress Specific Features

Wordpress is available as part of the one-click-installations included in your admin panel. DreamHost is one of the most respected and highly recommended hosting providers within the blogging industry and offers great support for bloggers.

Additional Online Services

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Hosting Specialties

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Company Details

Dreamhost was one of the first hosting companies on the scene and they have remained independently owned. DreamHost was originally founded in 1997 as the New Dream Network while its founders were still undergraduates at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California.

In those 22 plus years they have grown to over 200 employees and host over 1.5 million domains. Even more impressive is that over 750,000 of those websites are Wordpress Installs.

They have a super strong and fun corporate culture with some employees working there for over 20 years. DreamHost provides a unique and supportive work environment. They have won multiple awards for company culture, carbon footprint, and employee satisfaction.

Promoting core values is not something you would initially expect from a hosting compay but they have them and proudly displays them on their main site. Their core values are:

• Embrace Open Source
• Speak Hacker
• Be Irrevernt and Fun
• Empower People
• Give Everyone a Voice
• Provide Super Hero Service
• Practice Shameless Honesty
• Practice Flexibiliity

We have to give the thumbs up for Dreamhost being a well established and well run company. This goes a long way when deciding who to trust your website or business with.

Data Center Details

Dreamhost currently has two data centers. They are located in Hillsboro, Oregon and Los Angeles, California.

Both data centers are state of the art with redundant systems in place and multiple backup generators. The data center in Oregon is approximately 60,000 sqft.

In addition to the redundant systems Dreamhost has its own employees onsite to perform server upgrades, patches and anything else that should arise. It is nice to know they have staff on-site to address any issues.

Refund Policy

Should things not work out the way you want with Dreamhost, they do offer a 97-day full refund. The 97 days start when you open the account.

You will need to close your shared hosting plan, submit the request and the refund will be made to the method of payment you used to open the account. If you used a credit card, it will go back to that same credit card.

DreamHost offers a full refund on Shared hosting fees if your plan is canceled within the first 97 days of opening the account. The refund is processed back to the original credit card that was used towards those fees, and is issued back to your card automatically only after you close your shared hosting plan within your panel.