DreamHost Review
I had a site that took up quite a bit of space and even more bandwidth, and basically nothing else. I needed a host that could support it (for cheap) and I found DreamHost. DreamHost gives you an insanely huge amount of space and bandwidth for not very much money. I signed up with them and so far, I’ve been pleasantly surprised.
First impression of DreamHost is “Wow, this is a lot of space and bandwidth, for cheap.” Once you navigate through DreamHost.com’s slightly 2000-esque web site that’s kind of hard to navigate, you’ll find out that it’s true.
For $9.95 per month, you can get 200 GB of storage and 2 Terabyte (2,000 GBs) of bandwidth (per month). The resource quotas also increase by 160 MB (storage) and 8 GB (bandwidth), weekly. It’s basically as insane as fully unmetered bandwidth, but without as much legal stuff they try and hide. All of the other features (email, subdomains, FTP, etc.) are also quite plentiful and more than any average person would ever use. Their plans do have a $49.95 setup fee, but it’s not that big of a deal if you intend to keep your site simple.
DreamHost’s activation process is somewhat clunky and definitely not streamlined. Though the actual process is simple for a customer, when you throw in the free domain registration (included with most accounts), prepare your inbox! I think by the time I was up and running, they had sent me about 10 emails with various information about billing, passwords, control panels, and what not. Once you digest all of it, it does make sense and is helpful, but it’s not streamlined. It doesn’t taken very long for you to get up and running so DreamHost can be forgiven.
By far my least favorite thing about them is their control panel. It has the basics and a few nice extra features, but it’s clunky and difficult to figure out right away. The terminology is different than what a lot of web hosts use, but once you figure it out, it isn’t too bad. I’d definitely pick cPanel over this, but you can’t always pick. From their control panel you can view and manage all of your billing, domains, usage details, pre-installed scripts, emails, users, and all of that jazz. There’s a few nice addons like an ad-free version of DreamBook (a fancy guestbook application), a nifty affiliate system dubbed “Rewards” that lets you create your own promo codes and decide your payout, and quite a few other things.
Uptime and support has been good enough. For my simple needs, I only had to contact DreamHost once and I received a reply within a few hours. Uptime hasn’t been bad at all (I haven’t noticed any downtime, but I don’t pro-actively monitor it). All in all, DreamHost is great for a simple site that isn’t mission critical.
Pros: lots of space and bandwidth, cheap, some nifty addon features, awesome affiliate program
Cons: clunky control panel, lack of good statistics programs, phone support is limited to certain amount of calls per month, only shared hosting (no reseller or dedicated)
Bottomline: For a simple site that needs lots space and bandwidth, and not much else, DreamHost is probably as good as it gets.
Rating: 
Visit DreamHost.com
May 1st, 2008
By these posts on this site, all the hosts seem to be good (even best), but the replies to posts reveal the facts. I will prefer this host if this post get some replies.
Thanks
May 1st, 2008
Hamid, I count 16 web host reviews done here so far. 2 were given 5 out of 5 stars by the reviewer. 7 were given 4 out of 5 stars. The rest were 3 or below.
I too would like to see more DreamHost user reviews here in the comments. Please speak up DreamHosters!
October 17th, 2008
Five years with dreamhost. I was thinking on moving to another provider, but they have grat support (they realy answer after a few hours) also offer unlimited space and bandwith… but also have several downtimes (for a very short time) during a month. Also, if you have any problem, tey’ll fix it. I give them ****1/2.
November 4th, 2008
I tried Dreamhost but it went down at least once a week so I canceled and went to Hostgator. I’m way happier with Hostgator.
November 26th, 2008
The worst hosting company in the HISTORY of mankind. PLEASE stay away. It only gives you headaches. They never answer your email, they never fix the problem and your website will just not work. Nothing ever works.
Did you ever want to use a hosting company and have it just, work? That’s not Dream Host. Dream Host is known as Dream Disgrace. Possibly the worst hosting company on the face of this earth.
March 24th, 2009
I’ve used dreamhost for a year and a half now, i was well chuffed with them, infact that chuffed that i moved all of my sites (about 15) bar one which is on a private server across to them.
They’re support is great, everything is easy to use, loads of space and bandwidth. awesome. I just hope that they don’t bite me in the ass at a later date because i’d have a lot of stuff to move ;)
I think i’ve only had downtime for a few hours, and this was due to some punks trying to hack them, so they were straight on the case.
hope that helps!
May 8th, 2009
I am pretty happy the way they handle customer inquiries, so far so good. I am loving it!
July 4th, 2009
A word advice: Keep Away From Dreamhost! The only way to describe Dreamhost’s tech support team is that they are incompetent.
Dreamhost is the worst hosting company I have ever dealt with. I’m responsible for number of websites and by mistake I choose Dreamhost for the newest client (askdivine.com)!
They have disabled my website which is only two weeks old, and it is offline for well over 24hrs because of a security threat!
Apparently a phishing page was uploaded to the account. After removing the threat they also have disabled the website, which was absolutely unnecessary!
Their excuse was that the old versions of WordPress, PHPBB, etc. are the common causes for this sort of thing – the irony is that I have never used any of them!
Anyway, I went through the files and told them everything is OK and 10 hrs later came up with a new excuse that our web software itself is the threat – and we need to update Joomla. According to them Joomla 1.5.11 has potential vulnerabilities.
Cut the story short, I have upgraded to Joomla! 1.5.12. and the website is still down! I have submitted a new ticket support over 7 hrs ago and no response yet!