HostGator vs DreamHost
HostGator (review) and DreamHost (review) are among two of the most popular shared web hosting companies. They are both well established companies with excellent reputations. The companies are pretty close in size (about 150 at HostGator, 70 employees at DreamHost) and host a comparable amount of domains (700,000 at HostGator, 500,000 at DreamHost).
HostGator and DreamHost have slightly different company cultures. A review of HostGator.com’s web site reveals it’s personal and informative approach. The HostGator web site doesn’t venture into humor or carefree talk. HostGator.com has few jokes. On the other hand, DreamHost likes to laugh at itself and sports a web site that contains obvious jokes and light hearted comments among more serious information. Some web hosting customers like the jokes, others don’t. Both web hosting companies, though, are highly technical and know when to take their work seriously.
HostGator’s shared hosting plans are competitively priced and offer a lot of space and bandwidth. Dreamhost has always offered vastly oversold (they admit it) and very generous plans. The entry level plan offers 500 GB of disk space and 5 TB of monthly bandwidth. Both numbers increase by the gigabytes each week. Both companies include plenty of email accounts, databases, etc with all of their plans.
DreamHost’s cheapest plan will cost you $7.95 per month if you pay for three years in advance. HostGator’s cheapest shared hosting plan is $4.95 per month if you pay three years in advance. HostGator’s next plan up (the Baby plan) offers more space and bandwidth than DreamHost’s comparably priced plan, but does not increase weekly.
Both web hosts offer lengthy money back guarantees. HostGator’s is 45 days. DreamHost’s money back guarantee period is 97 days.
It is important to note that HostGator uses cPanel exclusively whereas DreamHost uses a custom control panel. DreamHost’s control panel offers all of the expected features and is very powerful, but it is not cPanel. If you have a particular affinity for cPanel, DreamHost won’t be the choice for you.
As far as customer support goes, HostGator provides more options. All of HostGator’s plans come with unlimited, toll free phone support. DreamHost only offers 3 call backs per month for an extra $9.95 per month. HostGator also offers 24/7 live chat, which DreamHost does not. Both companies have active communities forums and extensive knowledge bases (a wiki in DreamHost’s case). Both companies provide 24/7 email support, though. At DreamHost, you have to be logged into to your control panel to send in a ticket. While it is purely a personal pet peeve, DreamHost does not publish its office address (they publish a PO Box).
Which web host you go with is entirely up to you. As always, spend time researching both companies. Since both companies have such generous money back guarantees, you can even give them a try and see which one you prefer.
www.hostgator.com vs www.dreamHost.com
February 18th, 2008
[...] HostGator vs DreamHost [...]
April 19th, 2008
i would like choose hostgator.com because it provides reseller accounts
July 9th, 2008
Dreamhost: website running in one hour.
Hostgator……… 30, and counting yet.
PS: You can Setup “reseller” accounts on dreamhost too.
October 2nd, 2008
Would like to say, the dreamhost control panel whups on cpanel. cpanel is clunky, dreamhost control panel is sexy!
December 16th, 2008
I am using dreamhost for 2 years now and it’s really fast compared to my previous plans (bluehost.com and powweb.com). It kills them in speed. However, dreamhost tends to have speed issues in mysql I think.
I’m pretty happy with dreamhost overall. But wish performance was better in mysql.
Some sites you can see that’s hosted on dreamhost are:
http://www.bargainscent.com
http://www.instantnamebook.com
January 15th, 2009
[...] I’ve just purchased a domain/webhosting from Hostgator.com. Trying the cheapest package for a while, I’ll upgrade it later when necessary and feeling good with it. I decided to try Hostgator instead of Dreamhost after reading this review. [...]
January 16th, 2009
i’m still confused to choose the host, huff…
April 22nd, 2009
Confused?
Avoid dreamhost…
Simply google “dreamhost sucks” and “hostgator sucks” (with the quotations).
You’ll get 4850 results for Dreamhost and 543 for Hostgator.
If you take under consideration that Hostgator has many more clients than Dreamhost, then you can see that the numbers talk for themselves.
But besides numbers… I’ve been a dreamhost customer for 5 years and I was always tolerant to their delays in providing support, their downtimes, their slow servers but I had enough and I moved to hostgator.
Good luck with deciding!
August 15th, 2009
I like to use Dreamhost, and my blog is on dreamhost
January 14th, 2010
Dreamhost customer for over 5 years. I also have clients on Host Gator. cPanel sucks in comparison to Dreamhost’s panel.
Google searches, as mentioned above, are a terrible way to determine who is good. The best part is both have a money back guarantee. Try them both, and choose what you enjoy.
As for me, Dreamhost it will be. I recently upgraded from oversold, shared Dreamhost hosting to Dreamhost PS (private server) and it is absolute bliss. I tend to enjoy their humor, too, and their support has been excellent – I have only used email/support tickets.
May 2nd, 2010
I don’t understand why none of these comparative reviews don’t say anything about server performance. You would think this is quite important, no?
How many sites are hosted on one server? How does rich media perform on the servers?
June 6th, 2010
I’ve a site crickethighlights.org which was running with hostgator. My only problem with them is that their servers couldnt handle high traffic spikes sometimes. Anyway, I’ll vote for hostgator all the time.
July 10th, 2010
For mid-range websites that are not business mission critical (churches, clubs, personal/family), I’m not sure you can beat Dreamhost. It helps to know what you’re doing, but their custom panel should be a big help to someone that doesn’t.
I recently dumped 1and1 for Dreamhost (note: 1and1 doesn’t make that easy). Main reason was that Dreamhost can handle TYPO3 on shared hosting and 1and1 can’t. Once I switched, I wished I had found Dreamhost a lot sooner.