Looking for DreamHost Review? This is where you will find every detail about the DreamHost platform.
DreamHost is a renowned web hosting provider and domain name registrar, founded in the year 1996 in Los Angeles, USA.
DreamHost provides its hosting services in more than 100 countries and has hosted over 1.5 million websites with 400,000+ customers and 750,000+ WordPress installations to date.
One of the biggest reasons for the company's success is that they use open-source technology.
You might have read or heard about many different hosting providers, or you might have tried many different hosting companies, but DreamHost has something unique that sets it apart from other hosting providers.
The best thing about DreamHost is that it also offers month-to-month payment plans.
Its advantage is that users are not bound by any long-term commitment.
Thus, users can upgrade the plan or switch to another hosting company whenever they want.
If you are looking for a web hosting provider that offers the most affordable and reliable hosting, you will not find a better option than DreamHost.
In this article, we will take an in-depth review of DreamHost web hosting below, and also go into detail about its pros and cons, plans, features, and pricing.
DreamHost Web Hosting Review: Complete Guide
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| DreamHost Review - Is It Reliable Web Hosting Provider? |
Is DreamHost better than other Web Hosting Providers?
Many people often remain in this dilemma that from which hosting provider they should buy hosting for their business or website.
Choosing the wrong web hosting can spoil all your hard work, due to which you have to repent later.
That's why we have been researching, testing, and analyzing many different web hosting providers over the last few years to overcome this biggest dilemma of users.
DreamHost was also a part of our research. We came across DreamHost while researching several different hosting providers.
After which we started researching DreamHost. We got great results when we tested DreamHost.
Of course, DreamHost offers web hosting at the cheapest price in the web hosting industry, but despite being the most affordable hosting provider, it also delivers results that rival the top hosting providers.
Due to this, it makes its place in the list of our top web hosting.
If you ask us which is the best web hosting in our research? So our answer would be Hostinger, as it is affordable and suitable for everyone from beginners to experienced.
In our research, we have come across many such features in DreamHost, which makes it better than other web hosting providers, which we have shared below.
What Features Does DreamHost Offer?
Here we will discuss what amazing features DreamHost provides with its hosting plans.
- Free Domain Name Registration
- Unlimited Traffic
- WordPress Pre-Installed
- Free Automated WordPress Migration
- Free WP Website Builder
- Fast SSD Storage
- Free SSL Certificate
- Unmetered Bandwidth
- Automatic WordPress Updates
- Automatic Daily Backups
- Free Domain Privacy
- 24/7 Ticket Support
- Live Chat Support
- 97-Day Money-Back Guarantee
- 100% Uptime Guarantee
- And much more
So as you can see above, DreamHost offers a lot of incredible hosting features. So are you ready to give DreamHost a try?
What are the Pros and Cons of DreamHost Web Hosting?
So let us discuss some of the pros and cons of DreamHost below, which will help you to know whether DreamHost is the right web hosting service for you or not.
Pros of DreamHost Web Hosting Service (Advantages)
1) Most Affordable Web Hosting Service
The first thing that we liked the most about DreamHost is its month-to-month payment plan model.
The best thing about its month-to-month plan is that it offers the most affordable hosting among other web hosting providers available in the industry.
Most hosting providers charge a lot of money on their monthly plan option, but DreamHost offers its monthly plan at a very cheap price, starting at just $4.95 per month.
Whether you choose the monthly plan or the annual plan, you are provided with the same features.
Most of the users who opt for web hosting on DreamHost initially opt for the monthly plan.
Once users are impressed with DreamHost's services, they tend to opt for longer-term plans.
Let me tell you that there are many benefits if you choose the monthly billing option, such as:
- If for some reason you are not satisfied with your hosting provider, you have the freedom to change it.
- You can upgrade your hosting plan as and when required.
- This is the best option for those users who are not able to spend on the annual plan at once.
- Users are not required to be bound by any kind of long-term commitment.
2) Industry's Longest Money-Back Guarantee
You must have seen that most of the hosting providers offer a 30-day money-back guarantee over their hosting plans.
But DreamHost is something that leaves no stone unturned to impress the users.
Does DreamHost provide a 30-day money-back guarantee? no, 60 days? no, 90 days? no, 97 days? Yes, DreamHost offers a 97-day money-back guarantee, which is the longest duration in the entire web hosting industry.
However, one thing to note is that the 97-day money-back guarantee is only offered on shared web hosting plans.
But you can avail of this money-back guarantee only if you have paid with a credit card to buy shared hosting.
So all in all, your 97-day trial on DreamHost's shared hosting plans is completely risk-free. If you are not satisfied with the services, you can cancel the plan and get a full refund.
DreamHost offers a 30-day money-back guarantee on all other web hosting plans except shared hosting.
3) High Uptime Guarantee
Before taking hosting from any hosting provider, we should take care of all the small things. Even a single deficiency can badly affect the performance of the website.
Here we are talking about "uptime".
Many users do not pay attention to "uptime" before choosing web hosting. But it is very important for your website.
Users who know what uptime is, don't want their website to be down even for a short period of time. Even if it does, they want the recovery time to be quick.
If visitors are not able to access your website due to the server being down then it is not a good thing for you.
We know what's right for a user, so we continuously tested DreamHost's stability for several days. We got much better results than expected.
DreamHost proved to be a reliable web hosting in our testing. It was probably the only time the server went down during our testing, but it also had very fast recovery times, so you might not even notice the server is down for a while.
DreamHost offers a 100% uptime guarantee to its users. You even get a higher uptime guarantee in shared hosting as well.
There is hardly any hosting provider in the industry that gives a 100% uptime guarantee on their shared hosting plans.
According to the DreamHost Terms of Service, if you ever encounter a site being down, they will give you a refund (free hosting credit) for the time your site was unavailable to visitors on the Internet.
Here are the uptime results of DreamHost:
4) Fast Loading Speed
One of our team members has his website hosted on DreamHost. So let's check the loading speed of that website.
Let us tell you that we have used the Sucuri Load Time Tester tool to check the loading speed of the website.
See the results below:
However, here I would like to tell you that hosting your website on Dreamhost is only suitable if your target audience is from the USA.
You can also see in the above screenshot how fast the website is loading on the USA server.
5) Easy To Use
We love web hosting services that are easy to use. DreamHost has designed its dashboard in such a way that any user can use it easily.
You don't need any technical knowledge, nor do you need anyone's help to understand and use the dashboard. In short, it is user-friendly.
The hosting provider's dashboard has many such features, which are necessary and useful for hosting your website.
However, you will not find cPanel software in DreamHost. Instead, you get their own custom control panel, in which everything associated with your hosting account is available.
6) Free Unlimited Bandwidth
Imagine how cool it would be if you could find a hosting provider that offers unlimited bandwidth in its basic plan.
DreamHost is exactly that, which makes it one of our favorite hosting picks. DreamHost offers unlimited bandwidth on all of its plans.
Apart from this, you do not have to compromise with storage as well. DreamHost offers 50 GB of storage in its Basic plan, which is more than other hosting providers' basic plans.
Users who wish for unlimited storage will be happy to know that DreamHost offers unlimited storage on all hosting plans except the Basic plan.
However, there is something important that you have to keep in mind. If you want to create a file-sharing site, you are not allowed on a shared hosting plan as per DreamHost's Fair Use Policy.
7) Free Domain Name Registration
In the absence of correct information, many newbies choose a domain from a different company and hosting from a different company.
Due to this they also have to pay separately at the time of renewal every time and it also costs them dearly in the initial days.
DreamHost provides its users with a free domain name registration with all their plans (annual or long-term). However, this domain name is offered free of charge for the first year only.
After that, you have to pay every year at the time of renewal. Having the domain and hosting in one place makes it easy to pay each time.
8) Strong Security Features
DreamHost offers an SSL certificate with all hosting plans, which is very useful for users who sell products or services through their websites or collect personal information from their customers.
In fact, an SSL certificate provides an additional layer of security, which secures your website connection.
Next is the backup feature, here users will also get automatic daily backups with every hosting plan. It keeps your website data safe and secure.
The advantage of this feature is that if any untoward incident happens with your website in the future, your data will be completely safe.
You do not need to do anything manually to take a backup here, rather your WordPress website gets backed up automatically through this feature.
DreamHost also offers several other security features, such as Secure Shell (SSH) access, SFTP access, HTTP/2, PHP 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, and more.
9) US-Based Customer Support Service
DreamHost provides multiple support system modes to their users to stay in touch with their support team such as live chat, email support, 24/7 online ticket support, Twitter, and active forums.
Here users are offered a US-based support system, which is excellent and satisfactory as compared to other hosting providers.
We love their live chat support (available 24/7) to connect with their support team where we always get a quick response.
Well, another good thing is that DreamHost also provides a comprehensive knowledge base section where you can get proper guidance about almost anything related to their hosting platform.
I personally find DreamHost's knowledge base section very useful, as I prefer to access their knowledge base section first whenever I need to find any important information about their hosting services.
10) Officially Recommended by WordPress
WordPress is the most popular, largest, and widely used Content Management System (CMS) platform in the world.
But do you know that WordPress itself recommends 3 web hosting providers on its official website "Wordpress.org", DreamHost is one of them?
Yes, it's absolutely true that WordPress itself officially recommends DreamHost, and I think that's enough to show what a great hosting provider DreamHost is.
Cons of DreamHost Web Hosting Service (Disadvantages)
1) No Free Email Account with Basic Plan
Most hosting providers offer a free email account with their basic plan, but DreamHost may let you down in this regard.
DreamHost offers unlimited free email accounts with all hosting plans except the Basic one.
If you don't need a free email account with your hosting, then DreamHost's Starter plan is perfect for you.
But if you want an email account with the Starter plan, you'll need to pay an additional $1.67 per month. Otherwise, you can go with the Shared Unlimited plan to get free unlimited email accounts.
2) Compromise with Telephonic Support
We are not satisfied with any hosting provider until we get satisfactory customer support service.
We have already discussed above how excellent DreamHost's customer support service is. But there are some things in which we expect some improvements.
Users who expect DreamHost to have a phone support system may be disappointed. Not that DreamHost doesn't offer phone support, but users have to pay extra to use this support system.
Actually, users cannot call DreamHost's support team by themselves. In fact, if you want the DreamHost team to contact you over the phone, you have to pay them upfront.
Once you make the payment, the company will call you and will gladly assist you.
Let us tell you that DreamHost has also set the time for the facility of callback. Their callback facility is available daily from 6 AM to 10 PM PST only.
If you want to avail the facility of callbacks then its costs are as follows:
- Users will have to pay $9.95 to receive a one-time callback.
- To get three callbacks each month, you will have to pay $14.95 per month.
Note: To book a call users need to submit a ticket each time.
3) Compromise with Server Location
There is no doubt that DreamHost offers great quality hosting services, but there are a few things that make it a bit weak in comparison to other hosting providers.
DreamHost's data centers are only located in Virginia and Oregon, due to which users in many other countries are not able to take advantage of it well.
If you are from a country other than the United States, DreamHost might not deliver the results you expect.
However, if your target audience is from the United States, then you should definitely go with DreamHost.
If DreamHost sets up its servers outside the United States in the future as well, it may come out on top, beating all the hosting providers out there.
DreamHost's Customer Ratings
Should You Go With DreamHost Or Not? It is important to look at actual customer ratings to know.
As you can see approx 3,500 real users on Trustpilot have rated DreamHost.
Real users rated DreamHost 4.7 out of 5 stars on Trustpilot, and 65% of users rated it 5 stars, which is excellent.
DreamHost Web Hosting: Pricing and Plan
So now we will discuss here DreamHost plans and pricing, which will help you to understand whether DreamHost is the right option for you or not.
DreamHost offers a wide range of hosting plans so that all users can avail of their plans according to their budget and requirement.
DreamHost Shared Web Hosting Plan & Pricing
If you are a beginner, or you want to start blogging, or you run a small website, shared hosting is just designed for you.
Apart from this, if you want to try DreamHost's services first and then upgrade the plan, then also shared hosting is the best option for you.
DreamHost offers two options in its shared hosting plans – Shared Starter Plan and Shared Unlimited Plan.
1. Shared Starter Plan: The name of the Shared Starter Plan itself suggests that this plan is for beginners. Users are provided with 3 payment options in the Starter plan – Monthly, Yearly, and 3-Year.
If you choose the annual billing cycle, this package will cost you $2.95 per month.
It will cost you $2.95 per month if you choose the 3-year billing cycle.
While opting for the monthly billing cycle will cost you $4.95 per month.
With the Shared Starter plan, users will get the following features:
- Allows you to host 1 website
- 50 GB of Site Storage
- Unmetered Bandwidth
- 1 Free Domain Name Registration for a year
- 5 Subdomains
- 6 FTP/SFTP/Shell Users
- 6 MySQL Databases
- Automated Daily Backups
- Free SSL Certificate
2. Shared Unlimited plan: This plan is recommended to users who want to host unlimited websites and also want unlimited SSD storage space. Here users will also get 3 billing cycles:
- 1-Year: $2.95 per month
- 3-Year: $3.95 per month
- Monthly: $8.95 per month
With the Shared Unlimited plan, users will get the following features:
- Here you get the same features as Shared Starter Plan, but everything is unlimited here.
- 1 Free Domain Name Registration for a year
- You can host Unlimited Websites
- Unlimited Email Accounts
- Unlimited Site Storage
- Unlimited Subdomains
- Unlimited FTP/SFTP/Shell Users
- Unlimited MySQL Databases
Note: No Free Domain Name Registration with month-to-month payment plans.
DreamHost VPS Hosting Plan & Pricing
VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosting is a type of shared hosting service, but it gives you more flexibility and control over your server because the number of other users you have sharing your server with is less as compared to a shared hosting plan.
By choosing VPS hosting, you also get to see more improvement in the performance of the website.
If you run a medium size or large size website or run your own eCommerce website, then you must take advantage of DreamHost's VPS hosting.
Let me tell you that DreamHost provides managed VPS hosting. Thus, their expert team will manage all the technical parts on your behalf.
In DreamHost VPS hosting plan, users get to see 4 different levels – VPS Basic, VPS Business, VPS Professional, and VPS Enterprise.
1. VPS Basic: The VPS Basic level starts at $13.75 per month on the yearly billing cycle and $10.00 per month on the 3-year billing cycle. If you choose a monthly plan, you will have to pay $15.00 per month.
With the VPS Basic, you get:
- 1 GB RAM
- 1 Free Domain Name (1st Year)
- 30 GB SSD Storage
- You can host Unlimited Websites
- Unlimited Traffic
- Free SSL Certificate
- Free Unlimited Email Account
- Unlimited Bandwidth
- Scalable RAM
- Free WordPress Installation
2. VPS Business: This level starts at $27.50 per month on the yearly billing cycle and $20.00 per month on the 3-year billing cycle. If you choose a monthly plan, you will have to pay $30.00 per month.
With the VPS Business, you get:
- 2 GB RAM
- 1 Free Domain Name (1st Year)
- 60 GB SSD Storage
- You can host Unlimited Websites
- Unlimited Traffic
- Free SSL Certificate
- Scalable RAM
- Free Unlimited Email Account
- Unlimited Bandwidth
- Free WordPress Installation
3. VPS Professional: This level starts at $55.00 per month on the yearly billing cycle and $40.00 per month on the 3-year billing cycle. If you choose a monthly plan, you will have to pay $60.00 per month.
With the VPS Professional, you get:
- 4 GB RAM
- 1 Free Domain Name (1st Year)
- 120 GB SSD Storage
- You can host Unlimited Websites
- Unlimited Traffic
- Free SSL Certificate
- Scalable RAM
- Free Unlimited Email Account
- Unlimited Bandwidth
- Free WordPress Installation
4. VPS Enterprise: This level starts at $110.00 per month on the yearly billing cycle and $80.00 per month on the 3-year billing cycle. If you choose a monthly plan, you will have to pay $120.00 per month.
With the VPS Enterprise, you get:
- 8 GB RAM
- 1 Free Domain Name (1st Year)
- 240 GB SSD Storage
- You can host Unlimited Websites
- Unlimited Traffic
- Scalable RAM
- Free SSL Certificate
- Free Unlimited Email Account
- Unlimited Bandwidth
- Free WordPress Installation
One thing that we really liked about DreamHost is that, if you choose the annual payment option on any level of the VPS hosting plan, DreamHost provides you an extra 1 month free.
And on payment of 3 years, an additional 1 year is given free of cost. This is something that you should not miss at all.
DreamHost Dedicated Server Hosting Plan & Pricing
Don't want to share the server with any other users? So be sure to try DreamHost's dedicated server hosting.
In dedicated server hosting, you do not need to share your server with any other user.
You have complete control over the server that is provided to you. The loading speed of the website and web page is also very fast.
Overall, you do not have to compromise the performance of your website at all.
This hosting plan is ideal for those who get a massive number of visitors to their website each month, i.e. for large or enterprise-level websites. But it costs you a lot compared to other hosting plans.
DreamHost offers two options in Dedicated Server Hosting – Standard Plan and Enhanced Plan.
DreamHost offers 3 different levels to the users in the standard plan - Standard 4, Standard 8, and Standard 16.
- The Standard 4 plan offers 4GB of RAM and 1TB (HDD) of storage space, starting at $149 per month if you go with a yearly billing cycle. If you choose the monthly payment option, you will have to pay $169 per month.
- The Standard 8 plan offers 8GB of RAM and 1TB (HDD) of storage space, starting at $189 per month if you go with a yearly billing cycle. If you choose the monthly payment option, you will have to pay $209 per month.
- The Standard 16 plan offers 16GB of RAM and 1TB (HDD) of storage space, starting at $229 per month if you go with a yearly billing cycle. If you choose the monthly payment option, you will have to pay $249 per month.
If we talk about Enhanced plans, DreamHost offers you 6 levels – Enhanced 16, Enhanced 32, Enhanced 64, Enhanced SSD 16, Enhanced SSD 32, and Enhanced SSD 64.
- The Enhanced 16 plan offers 16 GB of RAM and 2TB (HDD) of storage space, starting at $279 per month if you go with a yearly billing cycle. If you choose the monthly payment option, you will have to pay $299 per month.
- The Enhanced 32 plan offers 32 GB of RAM and 2TB (HDD) of storage space, starting at $329 per month if you go with a yearly billing cycle. If you choose the monthly payment option, you will have to pay $349 per month.
- The Enhanced 64 plan offers 64 GB of RAM and 2TB (HDD) of storage space, starting at $379 per month if you go with a yearly billing cycle. If you choose the monthly payment option, you will have to pay $399 per month.
- The Enhanced SSD 16 plan offers 16 GB of RAM and 240 GB (SSD) of storage space, starting at $279 per month if you go with a yearly billing cycle. If you choose the monthly payment option, you will have to pay $299 per month.
- The Enhanced SSD 32 plan offers 32 GB of RAM and 240 GB (SSD) of storage space, starting at $329 per month if you go with a yearly billing cycle. If you choose the monthly payment option, you will have to pay $349 per month.
- The Enhanced SSD 64 plan offers 64 GB of RAM and 240 GB (SSD) of storage space, starting at $379 per month if you go with a yearly billing cycle. If you choose the monthly payment option, you will have to pay $399 per month.
DreamHost Managed WordPress Hosting Plan & Pricing
If you are looking to buy hosting just to use WordPress, then you can definitely avail DreamPress Managed hosting plan from DreamHost. But keep in mind that this plan will be effective only for using WordPress.
DreamHost offers 3 options on WordPress hosting plans – DreamPress Basic, DreamPress Plus, and DreamPress Pro.
1. DreamPress Basic: The DreamPress Basic plan starts at $16.95 per month on a yearly billing cycle. If you choose the monthly payment option, you will have to pay $12 per month.
Ideal for users whose website gets up to 100K visitors per month.
With the DreamPress Basic, you get:
- 1 Free Domain Name (1st Year)
- 30 GB SSD Storage
- You can host 1 WordPress Website
- Free Pre-Installed Jetpack
- Free Pre-Installed SSL Certificate
- Free Unlimited Email Account
- Automated Daily Backup
- Free Pre-Installed WordPress
- Free WordPress Website Builder
- Free Automated WordPress Migration
- And more
2. DreamPress Plus: The DreamPress Plus plan starts at $24.95 per month on a yearly billing cycle. If you choose the monthly payment option, you will have to pay $24 per month.
Ideal for users whose website gets up to 300K visitors per month.
With the DreamPress Basic, you get:
- 1 Free Domain Name (1st Year)
- 60 GB SSD Storage
- You can host 1 WordPress Website
- Free Jetpack Professional
- Free Pre-Installed SSL Certificate
- Free Unlimited Email Account
- Automated Daily Backup
- Free Pre-Installed WordPress
- Free WordPress Website Builder
- Free Automated WordPress Migration
- Unlimited CDN
- And more
3. DreamPress Pro: The DreamPress Pro plan starts at $71.95 per month on a yearly billing cycle. If you choose the monthly payment option, you will have to pay $79.95 per month.
Ideal for users whose website gets more than 1 Million visitors per month.
With the DreamPress Basic, you get:
- 1 Free Domain Name (1st Year)
- 120 GB SSD Storage
- You can host 1 WordPress Website
- Free Jetpack Professional
- Free Pre-Installed SSL Certificate
- Free Unlimited Email Account
- Daily Backup
- Free Pre-Installed WordPress
- Free WordPress Website Builder
- Free Automated WordPress Migration
- Unlimited CDN
- And more
DreamHost Cloud Server Hosting Plan & Pricing
Most experienced users and bloggers choose cloud server hosting for their websites, as there is no possibility of their website and server going down at all.
When you choose Dreamhost cloud server hosting, you are provided with multiple different servers.
Thus, if one server fails, the other will take over all the responsibilities automatically immediately, thereby maintaining 100% uptime.
There are three options available in DreamHost's cloud server hosting plan.
The first plan offers you 512 MB RAM servers, 80 GB SSD Disk, 1 vCPU, and 100 GB Block Storage. The maximum price of this plan goes up to $4.50 per month ($0.0075 per hour). Ideal for Tinkering (running tests).
The second plan offers you 2 GB RAM servers, an 80 GB SSD Disk, 1 vCPU, and 100 GB Block Storage. The maximum price of this plan goes up to $12 per month ($0.02 per hour). Ideal for Websites.
The third plan offers you 8 GB RAM servers, an 80 GB SSD Disk, 4 vCPU, and 100 GB Block Storage. The maximum price of this plan goes up to $48 per month ($0.08 per hour). This plan is ideal for those who run websites like data transfer.
Final Verdict on DreamHost Review
Of all the hosting services we've tested, researched, and analyzed so far, DreamHost impressed us the most.
Both the price and service of DreamHost are so great that everyone should give it a try.
If users are unaware of DreamHost's services, then they miss out on availing of one of the best hosting services.
But the biggest drawback we found so far with DreamHost is that its data center is located only in the United States, due to which users in other countries are not able to take advantage of it well.
Whether you are a novice or experienced, we would definitely recommend DreamHost to users who are interested in monthly plans, as their month-to-month prices are quite low compared to other top-notch hosting providers.
This is something that you will hardly find on any other hosting provider.
So what are your thoughts about this in-depth review of DreamHost mentioned above, do let us know your opinion in the comment box below.
Also Read:
- Best Cloud Web Hosting Service Providers
- Best and Affordable Web Hosting for Beginners
- Best Virtual Private Servers VPS Hosting Providers
- Best DreamHost Alternatives and Competitors
- Things to Consider Before Choosing a Web Hosting? Checklist
- Comparison Between The Top Best Web Hosting Providers
- HostGator vs DreamHost Comparison: Which is the Best?
- Bluehost vs DreamHost Comparison: Which is the Best?
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