Reviews of DreamHost
DreamHost : User ReviewsWeb Host Site: http://www.dreamhost.com/
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Host Multiple Domains on 500GB space and 5TB of transfer for as low as $7.95/mo
DreamHost web hosting plans listed at Best Host Ratings:
- DreamHost
$9.95 / month, 500000 MB Space, 5000.0 GB transfer
DreamHost average Uptime 99.634%
Based on 2237 days of uptime monitoring of 3 web sites hosted with DreamHost
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A good host
posted on Feb 25, 2007 by AkbarUser email: Hidden
Web site: www.path-to-peace.com
Used the services of DreamHost for: 1 year - 3 years
Date when last hosted by DreamHost (as of Feb 25, 2007): Current customer
DreamHost Web Hosting Plan used: Hidden
Customer support rating: 7
Webhost Technical quality rating: 6
DreamHost Web hosting services Cost/Value rating: 10
Web hosting provider Overall rating: 7
A lot of people tend to get over emotional after having a bad experience and start writing really bad comments or vice versa based on their experience.
I would however like to present a hopefully helpful review of this host for everyone to decide upon.
I have had my hosting account with Dreamhost.com for the past 2 years on their basic shared hosting plan which has been more than sufficient. I have hosted several websites, both live as well as test sites.
The Pros of this host are undeniably the huge amount of webspace that you get and the amount of bandwidth and unlimited SQL databases, subdomains and domains. This was extremely helpful for me since I was able to set up multiple websites with ease, each using its own database. It also allowed me to be able to test differen free scripts from around the net with ease.
Another good feature is the one click installs available which allow you to install popular web scripts with ease. Apart from this they offer streaming media options from your server and also allow you to be in full control of you DNS and MX (mail server) settings.
As far as the cons are concerned, there is quite a bit of downtime at different intervals. Dont get me wrong, its not like they are down all the time. But to give you an estimate, in a period of 6 months, expect atleast 3 to 4 days of downtime in total. Various reasons including power outages, attacks on servers, hardware failure are presented as the excuses. Overall it is not as bad as one would expect really, but it can be pretty frustrating at times. Especially when it coincides with the launch of a new site or produce on your website.
The customer support is over all OK. It takes up to a day for them to reply in most cases but you can expect an occaisional reply within the hour. But over all they do reply every single ticket and in majority cases present you with the solution. They also offer a support forum where you can ask questions. All that being said, I would also like to say that one of my queries was never solved however, in which case their reply was simply that they cannot figure it out at all. I let it go eventually because atleast they were honest about it. One thing I will say is that they are honest in their replies to you and dont make stuff up just to cover up.
Anyways, My over all rating for dreamhost is: Good
I would recommend it to anyone looking for a good cheap host offering tonnes of features, space, bandwidth and databses.
Lastly I will just say that I intend to move hosts from dreamhost, but this is not beause I dont like them. But it is because my website has grown considerably and now requires a VPS server. So since dreamhost no longer offers VPS, I have to shift :)
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Terrific for me
posted on Oct 01, 2006 by The NajdorfUser email: n/a
Web site: n/a
Used the services of DreamHost for: N/A
Date when last hosted by DreamHost (as of Oct 01, 2006): N/A
DreamHost Web Hosting Plan used: Hidden
Customer support rating: 7
Webhost Technical quality rating: 8
DreamHost Web hosting services Cost/Value rating: 10
Web hosting provider Overall rating: 10
Looks like dreamhost is a bit a hit or miss. Can't say for the others, but for me it was a terrific hit: Been using them for 5 months, ended up using 850 gigs/month, not one problem! Well maybe the forums were down once or twice...
Server response was pretty fast on average and download speed was terrific! 10 MB/sec!
Questions get answered in about 24 hours which is ok in my experience.
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Great Service
posted on Sep 29, 2006 by Joe FavianaUser email:
Web site: http://www.interseed.net
Used the services of DreamHost for: over 3 years
Date when last hosted by DreamHost (as of Sep 29, 2006): Current customer
DreamHost Web Hosting Plan used: Hidden
Customer support rating: 10
Webhost Technical quality rating: 10
DreamHost Web hosting services Cost/Value rating: 10
Web hosting provider Overall rating: 10
Been with Dreamhost for over 3 years. Always quick responses on any techical issues I had, ususally within 2 hours response. What they offer with their plans is incredible and the web panel is so user friendly. No restrictions. I know they had some issues lately but they keep everyone informed.
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Unfortunate Downtime
posted on Sep 13, 2006 by MattUser email: Hidden
Web site: www.acsdish.com
Used the services of DreamHost for: less than a month
Date when last hosted by DreamHost (as of Sep 13, 2006): Current customer
DreamHost Web Hosting Plan used: Hidden
Customer support rating: 2
Webhost Technical quality rating: 6
DreamHost Web hosting services Cost/Value rating: 6
Web hosting provider Overall rating: 2
We just launched our company website on Dreamhost.com last week. I can safely say that over 50% of my attempts to visit our site www.acsdish.com were unsuccessful. This is due to the overwhelming site outages at all hours of day. Our site is a commerce driven site. Every minute/day of downtime equates to many lost sales. If you are looking to start an e-com business, I would recommend looking elsewhere. The amount of problems in the past week is not only costly, but also embarrassing when you invite all of your industry colleagues to visit your site and have it down. Go figure. Dreamhost.com should consider changing their name to Nightmarehost.com.
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Good host for non-professional use
posted on Aug 03, 2006 by JohnUser email: Hidden
Web site: Hidden
Used the services of DreamHost for: Hidden
Date when last hosted by DreamHost (as of Aug 03, 2006): Current customer
DreamHost Web Hosting Plan used: Hidden
Customer support rating: 8
Webhost Technical quality rating: 8
DreamHost Web hosting services Cost/Value rating: 10
Web hosting provider Overall rating: 9
The webspace, bandwith and additional features this host offers for the pice are quite outstanding. However, you should note that such low prices have to have some sort of foundation, in the case of Dreamhost it is very likely that their webspace is oversold a lot. So if you've got a site where uptime is mission critical, using this hoster probably isn't such a good idea.
It is advisable to sign up for the site with one of the many available coupons, which allows you to save money on your first bill. Without doing this, the prices won't be nearly as attractive. You could for example use the code GIGA777 when signing up to remove the setup fee for all monthly plans, and get 80$ off your first bill for yearly plans.
In addition to the high webspace and bandwith limit, Dreamhost offers some neat goodies such as Quicktime streaming, your own SVN and Jabber server, and even support for Frontpage extensions. Overall, I am quite content so far. On the one occasion that I needed it, support feedback has been quick. The panel, while it is not CPanel and a bit slow, is still easy to use and offers all crucial features decently organized.
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Dreamhost are unreliable
posted on Jul 29, 2006 by MichaelUser email:
Web site: Hidden
Used the services of DreamHost for: 1 year - 3 years
Date when last hosted by DreamHost (as of Jul 29, 2006): Current customer
DreamHost Web Hosting Plan used: Hidden
Customer support rating: 2
Webhost Technical quality rating: 1
DreamHost Web hosting services Cost/Value rating: 5
Web hosting provider Overall rating: 3
Dreamhost may be ok for personal use, but it is far too unreliable for business use. Their servers, their routers constantly go down in the middle of the business day. So we had to get a third party web host monitoring service and send Dreamhost an email when it went down! Their response was usually like "oh we didn't even notice it was down"! We had a better idea of our site uptime than they did.
Support is bad. There's no number to call and although they have an option where you can for support to call you back (up to 5 a month), they rarely actually call back and when they do, the people on the phone have no power to do anything to correct problems in the long term. It's cheap and you get what you pay for. They received an "F" from the California Better Business Bureau.
http://www.labbb.org/BBBWeb/Forms/Business/CompanyReportPage_Expository.aspx?CompanyID=13131294
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outages are a bummer
posted on Jul 17, 2006 by AnonymousUser email: n/a
Web site: n/a
Used the services of DreamHost for: 1 year - 3 years
Date when last hosted by DreamHost (as of Jul 17, 2006): Current customer
DreamHost Web Hosting Plan used: Hidden
Customer support rating: 5
Webhost Technical quality rating: 3
DreamHost Web hosting services Cost/Value rating: 6
Web hosting provider Overall rating: 6
Outages are a real problem. Things are allegedly up and running again tonight, but my stuff still isn't working. I'm considering switching hosts, because my business can't afford to lose all of this time.
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All hosts have problems, DreamHost least of all
posted on Jun 10, 2006 by Alex HalavaisUser email: Hidden
Web site: http://alex.halavais.net
Used the services of DreamHost for: 1 year - 3 years
Date when last hosted by DreamHost (as of Jun 10, 2006): Current customer
DreamHost Web Hosting Plan used: Hidden
Customer support rating: 10
Webhost Technical quality rating: 10
DreamHost Web hosting services Cost/Value rating: 10
Web hosting provider Overall rating: 10
I've paid for hosting at four or five web hosts over the last few years, and all had problems. 1 & 1 was by far the last, ICDSoft was pretty OK, DreamHost has been excellent.
The bad:
They have had screwy email problems. To be honest, these haven't affected me, but I know they have affected other customers, and nothing hurts more than downed email. Again, I've heard some bad stuff (even in the reviews here), but have done a lot with DreamHost without ever running into difficulties.
The good:
I effectively have no limits. I have been able to do just about anything I want to with my space, and have hosted some giant files there reliably. If you just need a little space for a blog, a DreamHost account may be overkill (though the pricing is good enough that it need not be). But if, like me, you are hosting a handful of domains, it's great.
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Bad Support
posted on Mar 19, 2006 by hiddenUser email: Hidden
Web site: Hidden
Used the services of DreamHost for: N/A
Date when last hosted by DreamHost (as of Mar 19, 2006): N/A
DreamHost Web Hosting Plan used: Hidden
Customer support rating: 1
Webhost Technical quality rating: n/a
DreamHost Web hosting services Cost/Value rating: n/a
Web hosting provider Overall rating: 2
The support at dreamhost is lousy. If you are ok with waiting 1-4 days for a response, then go with DreamHost. I am now moving my site to a hosting provider where I get support responses in under 15 minutes 24/7.
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You can control everything!
posted on Jan 09, 2006 by Mandy HarrisUser email: Hidden
Web site: Hidden
Used the services of DreamHost for: over 3 years
Date when last hosted by DreamHost (as of Jan 09, 2006): Current customer
DreamHost Web Hosting Plan used: Hidden
Customer support rating: 9
Webhost Technical quality rating: 10
DreamHost Web hosting services Cost/Value rating: 10
Web hosting provider Overall rating: 10
The best thing about Dreamhost is that you have near complete control over your site(s) from the excellent control panel. It is not a dumbed-down wizard, but a fully integrated cockpit from which you can administer aspects of your site that other hosts require you to submit support requests for. You are in control with Dreamhost.
My only complaint is that I wish there was a support phone number for the rare times when I need a bit of assistance.
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