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DreamHost Review 2024
Website owners have seemingly unlimited options to find a web hosting provider. However, many first-time website owners gravitate towards a recognized name like BlueHost or GoDaddy before taking the time to explore other options. If you’re in need of website hosting, check out this DreamHost review to see why businesses, bloggers, developers, and web designers all support DreamHost.
- Easy to Use
- 1-click WordPress Installation
- Free DreamHost Domain Name
- Reliable Uptime
- Good Website Builder
- No Free Email for Starter Plan
- No Telephone Support
- Few Server Locations
- Average/below average response times
- Various hosting plans available
- WordPress comes pre-installed
- Additional professional services available
About DreamHost
DreamHost is an open-source web hosting provider founded in 1997 in California. Upon its founding, the company quickly developed a reputation for providing quality services at an affordable price. After 25 years, DreamHost continues to improve its services in hopes to help businesses and everyday people to grow their online presence.
Since the beginning of DreamHost’s operations, the company has served over 400,00 customers across 100 countries. The web hosting provider hosts over 1.5 million websites—including over 750,000 WordPress installations— that range from developer applications to small business websites to personal blogs.
What is Web Hosting?
Web hosting is a service provided by companies to users or businesses who want to publish a website on the internet. Many people tend to get web hosting confused with services like WordPress or other website builders. Web hosting companies typically do not provide services that help you build and design your website. Rather, they provide space in data centers where all the files for your website are kept—this is what allows your website to be accessible 24/7 on the internet.
Web hosting is simply the act of hosting website files, but there are various types of hosting. For example, with shared hosting, users can pay for storage on a shared server where other businesses and individuals also have a website. Alternatively, there are Virtual Private Servers (VPS hosting) which are virtual environments that mimic a private server.
What Kind of Web Hosting Service is Best for Me?
If you’re new to web hosting, you may be overwhelmed by all the hosting options. When you begin to explore hosting providers, you may see terms like WordPress hosting, Dedicated Hosting, Reseller hosting, VPS hosting, and Shared hosting. Luckily, it’s easy to narrow down the options by knowing what kind of features and services you need.
For instance, if you need to host several domains, you’ll need to opt for a more premium option like VPS plans, a dedicated server, or a professional shared tier. If you have one or more WordPress sites, you’ll need to go for WordPress-specific hosting or a shared hosting plan that offers WordPress hosting. If you’re building a website for blogging or as a hobby, you can opt for a basic shared hosting plan as it’ll have all the features you need to get started, and it will be the most affordable option.
Our Rating Process
To create this DreamHost review, we focused on four key criteria to help potential customers see how we rate DreamHost as a web hosting provider. Beyond the DreamHost price plans, we looked at the company’s product offerings, hosting performance, support services, and security features.
Product Offerings – 5/5
Whether you’re a business looking to change hosting providers or a first-time hosting user, DreamHost has a plethora of offerings and services that will meet your needs. You can get shared hosting, DreamHost WordPress hosting, VPS hosting—all with DreamHost domains—and professional services.
Performance - 4 /5
DreamHost has solid uptime reports (reflects how well the servers are operating) and average response or loading times (how quickly a website loads/acts upon a user’s request). In August 2022, DreamHost reported 99.67% uptime with an average response time of 1,702ms.
Support- 4/5
DreamHost has built a reputation for providing great customer service and tech support to its clients with 24/7 availability. Users can contact the support team through email and live chat, and they can find helpful information through a dedicated knowledge base on the DreamHost website, however, users find the lack of free phone support a point of complaint.
Security Features- 4/5
Whether you use shared hosting plans, shared unlimited, or VPS hosting, you get a free SSL certificate which is key for website security in the modern world. DreamHost also allows users to edit their .htcaccess file, set up monitoring processes, and block spiders.
Pricing and Package Comparisons
Shared Starter | DreamPress | DreamHost VPS | |
Price per month | $2.95/month | $16.95/month | $13.75/month |
Websites | 1 Website | 1 WordPress Site | Unlimited Websites |
Storage | Yes/No | Yes/No | Yes/No |
No | Yes | Yes | |
24/7 Support | Yes | Yes | Yes |
SSL Certificate | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Technical / Product Details
Supported Languages | DreamHost supports English and Spanish through the panel, with more languages available for installation. |
Compatibility | Linux, macOS, and Windows. |
Restricted Countries | No country restrictions, but all server locations are within the United States. |
Customer Support | Primarily email and live chat. Users can request a phone call from the technical support team, however, they cost extra. |
Guarantee | 97-day money-back guarantee for Shared Hosting and 30-day money-back guarantee for DreamPress plans. |
Server Locations | Data centers are found in Ashburn, Virginia, and Hillsboro, Oregon. |
