DreamHost Review

Pros and cons of using DreamHost for more than 2 years...

Brad Smith  —  · Read user reviews

DreamHost hosting review

DreamHost hosts over 1.5 million sites and is nearly 25 years old.

Their performance hasn’t slipped during that time, maintaining above-average uptime (99.94%) and page speeds (648ms).

DreamHost’s main shared hosting plan comes with popular apps like WordPress, website builder options including their own, and others like Wix or Weebly. These plans have unlimited bandwidth and disk space. And you get a full 97-day money-back guarantee to test the service out.

Their customer support is a bit limited, however. Migrations are also a pain, not allowing any imports from other cPanel sites and charging you $99/each.

Here’s a transparent look at how DreamHost has performed over the last 24 months.

General Info & Hosting Overview

SPEED: 648ms (February 2018 to January 2020 average)
UPTIME: 99.94% (February 2018 to January 2020 average
SUPPORT: Ticket & Callback
APPS: WordPress, Blogger, Drupal, Shopify, Wix, and more
FEATURES: Unlimited bandwidth and storage, free SSL, free domain 1st year, automated backups
HOSTING PLANS: Shared, Cloud, WordPress, VPS, and Dedicated Servers
SITE TRANSFER: Not Free
PRICING: Starting at $2.59/mo (same renewal price)

Pros of Using DreamHost Hosting

DreamHost has above-average speed and uptime with lots of “unlimited” features.

They have a longer than average 97-day refund policy to make sure you’re happy with the service before getting locked in. And when your plan eventually does renew, you won’t have to pay a huge 2-3x price increase, like with many other hosts.

Here’s a deep dive into the results from our hands-on test:

1. Above Average Speed (648ms)

DreamHost’s 648ms average loading time over the past 24 months has been good. It puts them in the upper half of hosts we’ve tested, but well below the top five who have literally cut this average in half (between ~317-405 ms).

The silver lining is that DreamHost has been able to hold this average consistently. In September 2017, they posted a 1,316 ms loading time that had us worrying. But ever since then, things have been smooth sailing. So you should be able to expect the same.

DreamHost average load time:

DreamHost-2019-2020-statistics
DreamHost average speed 2019-2020 | See stats

2. Above Average Uptime (99.94%)

DreamHost’s 24-month average uptime is also above average at 99.94%.

That’s a pretty good result, but it’s not even the best part.

DreamHost has an uptime guarantee. Like other hosts, if your monthly average falls beneath that threshold, you’ll get a credit for the cost of the service.

Most uptime guarantees we’ve seen might hover around the 99.98% mark. So these hosts believe and stand behind their services, but they’re also giving themselves a little wiggle room in case normal fluctuations hit.

DreamHost, though, guarantees 100% uptime in their Terms of Service. Keep in mind that scheduled maintenance or user errors aren’t covered in this guarantee.

However, any other DreamHost issue that messes with your site, database, email, or webmail can trigger the guarantee. You’ll get a free day’s worth of service for each hour of service interruption. The only catch is that there’s a 10% max of your “next prepaid hosting renewal fee” (so it applies in the future, as opposed to a retroactive discount or refund).

Last 12-month average uptime:

  • January 2020 average uptime: 99.99%
  • December 2019 average uptime: 100%
  • November 2019 average uptime: 99.80%
  • October 2019 average uptime: 100%
  • September 2019 average uptime: 99.99%
  • August 2019 average uptime: 100%
  • July 2019 average uptime: 99.64%
  • June 2019 average uptime: 99.97%
  • May 2019 average uptime: 99.80%
  • April 2019 average uptime: 99.92%
  • March 2019 average uptime: 99.99%
  • February 2019 average uptime: 99.94%
dreamhost-performance-24months
Live test site: hostingfacts-dreamhost.com | Avg. uptime and speed: 24-months+

3. 97-Day Money-Back Guarantee

The vast majority of all 31 web hosts we’ve reviewed will give you a 30-day refund period. That gives you a full month to test out their services before risking your prepaid amount.

A few hosts, like WebHostingBuzz, will give you 45 days.

And then there’s DreamHost.

Their money-back guarantee is good for up to 97 days. That’s over a full three months to really make sure you’re happy.

DreamHost doesn’t have any hidden terms or hoops to jump through that might jeopardize your refund, either. There are only a few cases where your refund might be deducted or not given, but most are pretty standard.

The first exception is that only credit cards will be refunded. So other payment methods, like check or money order (yes, they accept those), won’t be refunded.

The second exception is that additional services and anything purchased through another party won’t be refunded, either. That includes things like domain names, SSL certificates, AdWords credits, and similar extras.

4. High Basic Plan Limits

DreamHost’s Shared Starter option starts at only $2.59/month. But it comes with a ton of features right out of the gate.

DreamHost features

You get one website with a free domain name, and SSL certificate included. This site can handle unlimited traffic (or bandwidth) and storage.

DreamHost has its own website builder called Remixer, but they also offer access to SquareSpace, Weebly, and Wix in their app library.

You’ll also be able to find Joomla, phpBB, Zen Cart, Drupal, Magento, Shopify, and Tumblr in there waiting for you, too.

WordPress also comes pre-installed. It’s pretty easy to set up on most servers with the one-click install option. However, the fact that it’s immediately ready when you signup is perfect for novice webmasters.

The final bit of good news on these plans is that there’s no longer a delayed verification system.

The first time we reviewed DreamHost, they required a manual verification that could postpone you being able to use the service for a few hours after signing up.

Thankfully, their customer support rep told us that they now only require extra verification steps if there’s a problem with your payment.

You should be able to hit the ground running now after signing up.

5. Unlimited Disk Space and Network Transfer Limits

DreamHost lists a lot of “unlimited” features on their pricing and plans, including disk space and bandwidth.

This means you don’t have to worry about disk storage or network transfer when your site gets popular.

There are a few caveats to this policy, but it’s mostly legit.

First and foremost, your site needs to be built properly. If it’s hogging server resources and causing issues with other sites, they might try to move you over to their private servers, instead.

DreamPress, VPS servers, and email do not fall under this unlimited policy.

Email is restricted to only 2 GB limits, while MySQL databases also need to stay under “a few GB in size.”

In other words, DreamHost’s shared servers are perfect for relatively small sites.

6. They’re Carbon Neutral (AKA Green)

You can add DreamHost among the list of web hosts who’re trying to be more environmentally conscious.

They’re going above and beyond just offsetting the carbon footprint of their servers, though.

DreamHost green hosting

Their data centers include “high-efficiency” cooling and processors. They’re also involved in state-level ‘clean wind’ programs to harness renewable resources.

Their offices are LEED and EnergyStar-certified, and everything from lighting to HVAC systems are also energy efficient.

7. No Higher Renewal Price Increase

DreamHost offers a lower monthly price if you prepay for three years vs. just one or two.

DreamHost Shared Hosting Plan Pricing by Length

Most web hosts do that, too.

However, the final piece of good news is that DreamHost doesn’t increase the price when it’s time to renew.

For example, some other hosts might give you a special discount of a dollar or two per month for the first few years.

But when it’s time for your plan to automatically renew, the pricing might jump up to anywhere between ~$7-10/month on the lowest plans.

So overnight you’re literally paying two or three times more for the same exact service.

DreamHost, in comparison, doesn’t do that. Your plan will renew on the same pricing that you originally signed up for.

That means you might not save a ton in the first few years, but instead you could save hundreds of dollars over the long term.

Cons of Using DreamHost Hosting

Almost everything from DreamHost is above average. That includes their uptime and page speed, as well as the default features on all of their shared plans.

Unfortunately, there were still a few drawbacks we ran into while testing out their services.

Here’s a complete list of the biggest cons to consider:

1. Good, but Limited Live Chat Support

DreamHost provides the obligatory knowledge base and discussion forums to help customers solve their own issues.

They also claim to offer “24/7 in-house support.” Although, our tests actually revealed the opposite.

In the lower right-hand corner of their screen is a little messaging icon. Click on it, and instead of being met with an open box, you have to select from a few pre-set answers:

DreamHost Live Chat Automated Bot

In other words, they’re trying to automate the live chat process with something that mimics a phone tree.

We tried bypassing these options to get a sales rep on as soon as possible. But at the time we tried, no one was available.

So not really “24/7” then. These hours overlap with business hours in most time zones in the U.S., but not if you’re in other parts of the world.

We had to come back later during these hours to test the process all over again. It took a few minutes for a sales rep to finally join, and they were both knowledgeable and helpful.

It is unfortunate that you have to jump through hoops (show up at specific hours) to get access to anyone in the first place.

2. No cPanel (Custom Panel)

DreamHost doesn’t offer cPanel access to customers. They’ve created their own panel to help you find all the features.

Most inexperienced site owners or bloggers probably won’t care about this fact.

But advanced users might for another reason.

DreamHost doesn’t provide an automated way to import .tar.gz files (the backup option for migrating sites out of cPanel).

So you’re going to have to manually migrate all of your files through FTP and MySQL.

3. Only Paid Migrations Offered

DreamHost does not offer any free site migrations on their shared hosting plans.

Instead, they’ll charge you a $99 one-time fee to move each site. This can really add up if you’re trying to move several clients or company accounts at the same time.

There are a few other limitations around how their paid migration services work.

Multisite WordPress sites cannot be moved. WordPress.com transfers will only grab content inside posts or pages. So you’ll have to reinstall and set up your theme and plugins.

Any website builder sites, on Wix, Weebly, or SquareSpace, cannot be moved, either.

They do offer some documentation to manually move your site.

But that’s still not very satisfactory when most other services will do all of the heavy liftings for you.

DreamHost Pricing, Hosting Plans & Quick Facts

Here’s a quick overview of DreamHost’s Shared Hosting plans:

Shared Starter Plan Shared Unlimited Plan
Pricing $2.59/month $4.95/month
Websites 1 Unlimited
Bandwidth Unmetered Unmetered
Storage Unmetered Unmetered
Email Accounts Costs extra ($1.67/mo) Unlimited
Other Features – • Unlimited Subdomains & MySQL Databases
• Unlimited FTP/SFTP/Shell Users

Beyond these two options, DreamHost also offers three Managed WordPress Hosting plans.

DreamPress Plan DreamPress Plus Plan DreamPress Pro Plan
Pricing $16.95/month $24.95/month $71.95/month
Websites 1 1 1
Bandwidth Unmetered Unmetered Unmetered
Storage 30GB 60GB 120GB
Email Accounts Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited
Other Features – • Unlimited CDN • Unlimited CDN
• Priority Support

DreamHost also has VPS, Dedicated, and Cloud Hosting options, too.

Quick Facts

  • Ease of Signup: Long and complicated sign up process. Signup should be easier.
  • Free domain: For the first year on all annual hosting plans.
  • Money Back: 97-day money-back guarantee.
  • Payment Methods: Credit Card, PayPal, Check, Money Order, Checking Account
  • Hidden Fees and Clauses: No major ones.
  • Upsells: A few upsells.
  • Account Activation: Account activation is quick unless you have payment issues.
  • Control Panel and Dashboard: Custom DreamHost control panel which can be a bit difficult to use.
  • Installation of Apps and CMSs (WordPress, Joomla, etc.): One-click installer for WordPress and other apps/CMSs.

Do We Recommend DreamHost?

Yes, we do.

DreamHost’s performance is pretty good across the board, from reliable uptime to quick loading times.

Their default plan limits are pretty high, offering a bunch of “unlimited” options for disk space, bandwidth, and more.

We also really liked that there’s no price increase when your hosting plan renews.

On the downside, the customer support was pretty limited to only a few certain hours throughout the week. And the paid migrations can really add up, especially when there’s no cPanel offered to automatically move sites yourself.

Visit www.DreamHost.com

P.S. If you want to see hosting providers that ranked above DreamHost, check our best performing hosts here.

Are you a satisfied (or unsatisfied) DreamHost customer? Please leave a review below! We accept all feedback (good or bad) in an effort to provide the most transparent and honest reviews possible.

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143 user reviews for DreamHost

Linda A

5 — 

Ideal for Non-Techies

I’m a novelist, not a techie, so how many times am I going to need to move domain hosts? Alas, one more than I thought. Asking for recommendations, Dreamhost came through as ideal for the non-techie: it gave me what I wanted in (almost) plain language, didn’t hide add-ons or charge extra for such as encryption certificates, and its Knowledge Base walked me through the steps necessary to make the move. If my webhost (Blogger) had been as transparent with DNS information I wouldn’t have needed to contact Dreamhost’s Support. Despite Covid, a complete and detailed response was back within hours and the operative even added a necessary code where it needed to be. I was up and running in no time, with no paralysing bills at the end of it. Highly recommended.

Shannon

3 — 

Getting less, paying more, than my previous host

Maybe I'm spoiled by the stellar service and features offered by my previous host Webfaction, but in comparison, Dreamhost is kind of a letdown.

I'm using their 1GB VPS service, priced at $10/month. I didn't realize at first that I would be billed for three years at a time. I could afford it and it's fairly cheap so it didn't bother me too much, but I was surprised.

At first I thought $10/month was a really good deal, but once I added a MySQL database, that added a little over $50 per month, billed monthly. Now I'm paying twice as much as I was paying for my previous host, and getting much less. (1GB RAM vs my previous 4GB RAM)

The ~$50 price point is without any real traffic and just a tiny database, and I'm a bit concerned about what it will be when I migrate my larger sites over. I'm strongly considering other hosting options and may just use Dreamhost for my static HTML sites, because $10/month is fine to me.

Dreamhost's documentation on deploying Django apps using Passenger is pretty thin, but I found a blog post by someone who walked me through the process, which helped a lot.

Unfortunately their documentation on deploying Django apps using FastCGI is even thinner and seems many years out of date.

Some good things: it's pretty easy to get everything set up, their first-party support for HTTPS is seamless to set up (though I haven't seen whether the renewals are as seamless, I expect it will be), and their customer support was responsive with a small problem I had during migrating one of my websites.

They seem to be more tailored to one-click WordPress installs. That's not what I'm using them for, but if that's you, you'll probably be happy here. Dreamhost has a good user interface, is pretty easy to navigate around, and seems like a good enough web host.

Unfortunately, I think my previous host was the real dream, and I'm frustrated that when GoDaddy acquired Webfaction, they decided to shut them down on very short notice (~45 days), which didn't leave me much time to find a new web host and do migrate all of my websites.

In short: Dreamhost is fine, but if I'd had more time to shop around and choose, I might have gone with a different host. A pox on GoDaddy's house!

Maria

5 — 

Couldn't be happier with Dreamhost

I've been using Dreamhost for my personal website, two websites for work (one is monetized), and a 501c3 non-profit guild website for several years now. I built them all with WordPress and I am by no means an expert! Three things stand out as to why I think Dreamhost is the best.

Firstly, when I took over the responsibility for our work websites, the original hosting company was a nightmare to get away from. They refused to release our domain name unless I called several times over the course of five months and gave me the heavy sales pitches, etc. and they made it so complicated. Dreamhost had NONE OF THAT. Simple language, up-front competitive pricing, and zero pressure.

Secondly, their Customer Service team is phenomenal! Every time I couldn't figure something out they contacted me promptly and either told me how to fix it or did it for me. No condescension and no nonsense. Every time.

And lastly, They host 501c3 non-profits FOR FREE. I belong to a small educational art guild and we are so grateful for this! Thank you, Dreamhost!

Tam

5 — 

The bar to measure against

I have been creating web sites for almost 30 years and have used several webhosts. When I find one I can rely on, trust, and consider a good value, I tend to stick with them. Dreamhost has repeatedly shown themselves to go beyond my expectations. They have all the resources I need and whenever needed, their support is timely and knowledgeable. I look forward to a long relationship with Dreamhost in my current and future projects. Thank you!

Amanda

5 — 

Excellent Customer Service

Over the last 3 years, DreamHost customer service never ceases to impress me both in work and person accounts. Their support staff goes above and beyond to help with issues I run into.

Rex R

5 — 

Great Service and Customer Support

I've been a customer for years and their service has always been great. I can get all of my hosting, registration, and various websites needs taken care of easily and with a well designed online tool too. I've used their customer support a few times and their quick and informative responses have always been very helpful in fixing or correcting my issues. I highly recommend DreamHost!

Aarón T

4 — 

Limited hosting with GREAT customer service

I have been using Dreamhost for a couple of years now since the beginning of my web developing career. All this time I have ALWAYS loved their customer service, they have helped me on countless occasions with care, love and professionalism, this is something I really appreciate from this company.

But as good as their client service is I am moving away from their hosting my webpages. There are a few reasons for it. As I am working in Europe and my clients are in Europe, I realized it makes no sense for me to host their webpages in a company that has data centres only in the United States. And I think this is a great limitation in their service. As all their activities are focused in the US, I can't get to talk to them via their live chat in my office/working hours. Also the performance of their servers, even in the VPS and DreamPress plans was always a bit disappointing.

Weblounge

5 — 

Horrible they digressed

I have been with other hosts for years, 1and1 20 years , siteground (horrible for wordpress) I have thousands of clients I develop and recommend, I am tired of 1and1 so you recommend Dreamhost

Started some hosting packages, and I was initially impressed they use Blog Vault to transfer your sites, so 30 some sites transferred with just a few minor problems.

After working out cloudflare issues, which was the start of problems, I started having 500 Service errors, and Dreamhost blames it on my small site , a database size of 10mb or less and not much on it then the blame it on number of users, turns out when I created a wordpress hosting domain, installed wordpress with their panel it installs orphan users 3,5, 10 random.. that is one of their issues they say causes errors, so I delete the orphan, still 500 server errors, but i change the php settings and memory settings still no luck on simple sites, only in the wp-admin backend

Then two weeks into my first month, one domain starts pointing to another domain. They said they had DNS problems that changed the user record to point to the files in the other domain. I had to find the user that had not been assigned to a domain and reassign to the correct domain. They would not fix it for me, I had to figure it out myself, their error, my problem

Then there were the email problems, they have no forwarding capabilities, except through setting up filters which do not work. Still unresolved today

Then this week another domain started pointing to another domain on the host, no response for 3 days, so i looked for the user, all users where assigned, looks like they had another issues and that user and files got deleted, luckily i still had backup on the old host and transferred again, after recreating a new wordpress install and user and mysql database myself, support would not help, then when i got it done they replied they see no issue, and can't explain anything, like they have no history or can't trace anything.

Today they want to fight and say it was my fault if i open up a wordpress login from their panel and have more than one tab in their panel open issues occur, but their own panel opens a new tab to log into wordpress and this is not explained up front, why should it, other hosting platforms don't have this problem

I have 10 other outstanding support issues, I am now into the first week of my second month, so how or why would I want to recommend or install any of my website projects on their platform, it would be embarrassing as a company.

Now I must hurry and backup all my sites on Dreamhost, before my old host package expires, otherwise I am probably really screwed if they make another problem.

Also are performance issues, with pingdom etc, even though I manually change the things pingdom says are problems, it does not change. and you guessed it, support does not help.

I really thought 1and1 sucked, well it does in capabilities and other issues, but never had so many problems with 1and1 in the 20 years that I had in the first week of my experience with Dreamhost.

And things are not really unlimited when you order unlimited hosting, users, memory, space and all hidden fraudulent advertisements.

Bob G

5 — 

Excellent Hosting

Dreamhost provides excellent hosting and support. I have never had an issue that was not resolved quickly, and in some cases Dreamhost proactively dealt with the issue before I was aware of it. I have four sites with them, and all work effectively. Updates are always handled promptly. I am very pleased with the service!

Mark

5 — 

Long time customer, first time reviewer

Dreamhost has hosted my website since, um, 2002 or so and I really like the cut of their jib. They are friendly, helpful, and professional. I've rarely had a problem with their service and when there is a glitch, they are on it, helping a not-particularly-computer-literate person fix the problem quickly. I dig them.

Mike

5 — 

Great support

Moved a Wordpress site, up since 1998, with 4000 + posts, to Dreamhost. Hacking has always been an issue. They resolved the problems, offered advice, and helped a great deal. Good team.

Frank B

5 — 

Very satisfied customer for 14 years

I've been using Dreamhost since 2006 and have always been more than satisfied. Their control panel is easy to navigate. Their support is highly responsive (best via email rather than chat). The pricing is perfect for a solopreneur like myself - around $15 per month. Uptime has been somewhere around 99.5%. They make it easy to migrate from shared hosting to VPS. My only quibble is that Cron Jobs don't always kick off. I highly recommend their hosting to anyone. Great job, Dreamhost!

Cameron

5 — 

Exceptional Service

Dreamhost has been my primary domain host for my company and project websites and it's been outstanding. What sets them apart -- aside from the ease of use -- is the exceptional service they provide when reaching out for support. I've found them to be real people (not just automated systems) and fast. I get complicated problems resolved quickly through a variety of means. I don't have the time to spend my days on tech support and they recognize that and respond with the right answer, politely, quickly, and effectively. I can't recommend them enough.

Baffled C

1 — 

Simply Never Worked

This review was one of the reasons why I decided to give Dreamhost a shot. I currently have a shared account on Hostgator, which, while it is easy to use and reliable, it's slooooooooow. I figured a VPS with Dreamhost would solve some of the speed issues. However, from the moment I signed up, there were nothing but problems. First, when I signed up there was an error so my account was not properly provisioned and I couldn't do anything. That required an hour chat with support to fix. Then, adding domains did not go smoothly either. Again, had to go to support. Using their automated SSL Certificate installer broke my sites. Once again.... had to go to support. Then using their automated cloudflare integration... guess what? Didn't work properly and broke the sites. Now I just spent 4 hours trying to import a domain from hostgator to switch it over to dreamhost. I know... I'm sure you can guess what happened. It didn't work. Compounding that, I had someone from their support team asking me to reset my modem saying that it had to be a Propagation issue or DNS caching issue. But, as I had explained to the rep several times, there were 3 of us in completely different locations with 3 different service providers using different machines and devices and browsers and OS's all experiencing the same problem. Whenever we would try and hit the site, we got a dreamhost page that said the site cannot be found. Now, it doesn't really take a rocket scientist to figure out that if we're getting a dreamhost page, not a hostgator page, it's not a propagation issue. *sigh* At that point I was done and just wanted to close the account and get a refund. Guess what. No refunds on accounts billed monthly. Even though each and every time there is a record in support that details each issue and the resolutions and it's obvious to see that I never actually had anything hosted on Dreamhost because it simply didn't work, they don't want to issue a refund. Needless to say, I would NOT recommend Dreamhost at all unless you're looking to receive service similar to Cox or Time Warner.

Ron

4 — 

Positive experience

I have used Dreamhost as a domain host for over 10 years and appreciate their low cost and consistency. I recently decided to revise and design a new site and they provide useful support to enable this. I recommend them to others with modest internet skills.

Teddi D

5 — 

Solid service since 2001

I've been with Dreamhost since 2001. I'm a creative person with dozens of my own websites, as well as a web designer serving clients. Dreamhost servers have served me and my clients well over the long haul. Their focus on security makes me more comfortable with their shared hosting than most. (Through my clients, I have experienced what it's like to be on Bluehost, Hostmonster, GoDaddy, and others.)

As someone who is relatively tech savvy, I find their tech support excellent. I don't need them to hold my hand, I use their excellent knowledge base to resolve a lot of my own issues, and I only come to them when something is really wrong. And they always come through for me. Their email support response within 24 hours, almost always resolves the issue with the first response (very knowledgeable), always friendly and professional.

Although the shared hosting servers aren't the speediest things for Wordpress sites, the solution to that is also relatively inexpensive: I use their VPS service for the handful of sites that need extra help with speed. (Any slowness on my sites now are a result of my own need to tweak the Wordpress theme designs to load better!)

There has been very little downtime over the years (seriously, very very little and never for long). The value I get for my money is excellent (their Unlimited policies are generous and fair).

Steve D

5 — 

Awesome Support

Very stable provider (I haven't noticed any downtime in the last 12 months -- WAY TO GO, FOLKS!). Reasonably responsive for technical and configuration questions, and they provide real answers. If it's something unusual, they take the time to look into things (including reviewing their logs when needed).

An awesome provider.

Roland

5 — 

Almost 15 years of excellence

At the beginning of my weblife, I passed through a bunch of hosting services until I found Dreamhost. That was 2006 and I needed the freedom to try several types of sites, tools and content management software online. Playing and learning was one objective, the other was to build and grow a multimedia website and a search engine based on CGI-scripts. Almost right from the start, visitor numbers went up to over 1000 a day and our ranking at Alexa went even below 700, which meant one of 700 most visited websites online. All those adventures worked out well with Dreamhost SHARED hosting, but finally I switched to VPS, which I maintain until today.
During all times, Dreamhost team was available for fast answers and helping out when a script did not work as expected - it did not happen often, but when it happened, response and solutions from Dreamhost were just around the corner.
Summing up:
Without Dreamhost, I doubt that our projects would have been as successful, thanks to powerful hosting even on a budget. Today we are preparing for new and bigger dreams, rebuilding our site for further challenges in the social media sphere.

John B

1 — 

Title

I've been a customer for over 10 years and have about 10 domains registered there. I used to like them - no more. They started using "captcha", and their implementation is broken. These days if I try to log into my account, I have to go through captcha - no intelligent options like 2-factor, just their infuriating captcha. Normally that's not too bad, but theirs is broken. I answer the questions correctly, and I just get another captcha problem - up to 10 times. It gets old. I went to go to support - and I have to pass captcha. No email, no phone number, unless I get through captcha. and after about 10 minutes of doing this over and over, it finally kicked me out completely - too many attempts. I used a VPN to change IP addresses and went at it again - finally got in, and went right to support to demand they fix their captcha - and run into a page that says their support is too busy right now, please use their "knowledge base". No wonder they're busy, their security doesn't work. UGH. I'm moving all my domains off of these clowns ASAP. It will be a pain, but not as bad as trying to get support from Dreamhost.

Dan

5 — 

Good hosting. Not the fastest, but good.

I have been with Dreamhost for about 10 years and have a heap of (25+) low-traffic small-business client sites hosted there. I got a bit nervous that hosting so many sites there a while back was a violation of their terms and conditions. But their chat team reassured me it was fine. Considering the large number of sites I host, I find the ease of spinning up a new site very helpful. Sites can be built without a domain name (helpful during rebuilds or with new site designs) and then a domain can be added later. It's a nice, simple workflow. And SSL and domain reg cloaking as all free, too.

The one Dreamhost con is that hosting can be slow. Some larger sites take 1+ second just to get a server response, with 4-5+ second load times. Utterly poor for the 1 or 2 sites that use a bloated theme/design. But for sites built with lean themes or templates, and with caching turned on and configured, I can get a load time of 1.5 seconds. Not bad for overloaded shared hosting.

FWIW, my high-load sites are on Vultr servers.

Nathan

5 — 

Value for the money is awesome

They give you everything. Unlimited bandwidth, domains, database, etc. And decent support. Plus they are kind to non-profits. Customer and community focus. Have used them for years and still love them.

Robert R

5 — 

Fantastic hosting company

I’ve been hosting all of my sites and all of my clients' dream houses for about five years. I have only had positive experiences with this host. their interface is clear and easy to manage. Their phpMyAdmin works very easily. Everything about their interface is excellent. The resources are good and clear.

Most importantly the service is excellent. if I have a question that I can’t solve after checking everything else I contact them. I then receive a notification that I will get an answer within 24 hours but usually it’s within A few hours that I got a personalized answer. Literally with links to research that has been done by the employee at the helpdesk. Highly recommendable.

Stacey

5 — 

Dreamhost is Solid

I am a total newbie at building websites and hosting them. I contacted Dreamhost multiple times with various issues along the way, and they were always courteous and available to help at a moment's notice through their live chat feature. Their customer service team members are very good about explaining what they are doing, so that you gain some insight into the resolution process. They also have an extensive knowledge base to help you troubleshoot any issues.

And my custom website loads instantly! I am surprised at the speed they offer on their very reasonably priced shared hosting plan ($15.99/year). Dreamhost is a great company, and I hope to work with them for a very long time.

Frank

2 — 

Cheap, flexible, but unreliable

I recommended Dreamhost for many years because you get a lot for the price. I use their shared and VPS plans.

Unfortunately they are not very reliable.

On multiple occasions, I have had issues with updating the web directory for one or more domains. Hours later a domain will be pointed to the old directory even though the panel shows the *new* directory that was "saved". If you remove the old directory, the site will show "not found". This makes it difficult if you want to have versioned directories, where you can switch back to the previous directory as part of a roll back strategy, or point different domains to different versions (which could be important for a SaaS setup.)

Even though I like the feel of their custom panel, I would prefer an ugly panel that actually does what I tell it to do.

I now recommend it with reservations and prejudice.

Support used to be awesome. Now it is terrible. They waste hours of your time rather than taking the relevant information and coming back with an ETA or solution.

William M

5 — 

Dreamhost Hosting Services

Since moving to Dreamhost in 2012 I have received reliable and consistent web hosting and email services. I maintain two personal domains on their systems. One is a self-managed e-commerce WordPress site for the artistic bronze sculptures that I cast and the other is a personal MediaWiki site to privately share historical information and family history among a limited number of people.

Dreamhost's values align with mine, particularly with respect to privacy and security. In 2017 Dreamhost took issue with the scope of a US Department of Justice request for information related to one of their customers and won. Dreamhost is a company that I can count on to maintain information rights that are important to me.

Dreamhost was also one of the first hosting providers to enable free SSL encryption services for their customers for information transfer across the internet.

As a computer scientist and certified information systems security professional I expect to manage my own systems. Dreamhost provides Linux systems that are open and capable, both with shared hosting and virtual private services.

Dreamhost support is knowledgeable, particularly when it comes to server configuration and software. Few are able to assist with issues on less common applications like MediaWiki and others that I use. Support is accessible and responsive, even during pandemics.

Dreamhost prices are reasonable. Their billing systems work. Their hosting services are working very well for me, a retired professional computer scientist.

Attila

5 — 

Reliable fairly priced with great UX

I have been using Dreamhost for domain registration, web FTP, email, DNS for the last 2 years and besides the user interface being amazingly intuitive and easy to use the customer service is not only free and available but also quick to respond, patient and helpful. The site has also great and well maintained documentation. All in all a user friendly, reliable and fairly priced service I can only recommend. Important to note: this is NOT a paid rating! ;) They are really this good.

David (

5 — 

14 Year Satisfied Customer

I have been a DreamHost customer for 14 years now. Their service has always been great. Their tech staff have always been knowledgeable and friendly and of actual use to an experienced Linux server admin. They are helpful to Linux gurus and casual users alike. As such, this is one of the few services I'd recommend to true power users.

Astia

1 — 

Avoid

I've used dreamhost for over 7 years, and initially chose them because they were straightforward, didn't shoot elephants for kicks, and weren't generally obnoxious. They're service was fine and I am a generally low-maintenance client. Easy to be when my company isn't hiding fees and randomly upgrading in the middle of an international travesty.

In January, I decided I wanted to start on a fresh server, and used my time off to accomplish this. Unfortunately, the promotional fine print did not mention that the deal wasn't for new customers. My domain was blocked for use on the new account and this was not fixed before I went back to work.

It then took several months to fix this, partly because I had to find time in my 80 hr week to answer their emails when they finally came. Even though I was a 7yr client, they wouldn't give me the same deal, and wouldn't let me move my account. So finally I had to pay about $100 more to stay on the old account.

About a week after this was fixed, sitting in the epicenter of the US pandemic, my site went down due to their php grade. I was able to fix this before they replied to my email, but they replied to my request that they not force an upgrade in the next few weeks (i.e. in the middle of a pandemic when some of us have 5x as much work as usual and others have none). Further, their reply was condescending and offered for me to pay them to "help."

I was very clear the fix was basic but time consuming, and I don't have time until June. I'd expressed that clearly since January. Beautiful way to treat long time customers in the middle of a crisis.

Avoid these people.

Aaron P

5 — 

Sweet sweet hosting dreams

I've been using dreamhost as a "nonpro" for years ... 20 years maybe? I make ugly websites for small community stuff - I'm not proud - BUT - they work! Anyway as a "nonpro" I have been able to find what I need because they do an AWESOME job of documenting everything. I think I have only contacted customer service 2 times in twenty years?!? I mean EXCELLENT documentation. Even a pea brained moron (like myself) can do anything they need - just look for it and then carefully follow direction. I have helped others with other hosting services that cost more and are down more and the documentation was terrible. (GoDaddy) 20 years and still happy ... maybe I should put a ring on it! ;)

Will

4 — 

Expert advice for novices

I have used Dreamhost since I became a freelancer five years ago. I offer design consultancy to start-up businesses primarily, many of whom request domains, hosting and help with email.

Dreamhost makes it really easy for me to manage this, despite having little technical expertise myself. They have offered support with custom DNS, SSL, and mailbox migration issues. Promptly and without any drama.

It's great knowing you can rely on somebody on the other side of the world to help you with something of vital importance to my business.

JAM

5 — 

At last a reliable hosting service!

For the last 5 years I have hosted my site in some of the best well-known providers. I had problems with all of them: performance, support, security... It seems that I have finally found a good hosting provider: Dreamhost is working perfectly. Good service, 100% uptime, excellent support... Price is just a bit higher than the previous hosting providers I used, but it is worth it.

My AdSense revenue also grew up 50% due to the improvement on site speed and uptime.

I recommend Dreamhost.

Tina

5 — 

Fantastic Service

I have had multiple websites in two accounts at Dreamhost since 2014. I have never had a problem. Disclaimer - one of the accounts is pro bono because it's a nonprofit. Highlight 1. their customer service is outstanding. Non-emergencies, I contact them by email and hear back within a day. When my site is down I chat in and they get it back up in minutes. I don't get passed around - the first person is always able to solve the problem. A volunteer doing my best, I'm a tad over my head in web admin, but they've never been dismissive - they can see I need a little extra help and they give it. They go above and beyond. Their wiki is really helpful, too - up-to-date and clear - helps me directly plus I can pass links to my users.

Highlight 2. they don't nickel and dime. Other hosts charged me extra for multiple sites, encryption, and masking my contact info. Dreamhost even includes a free domain name.

Ed H

5 — 

two thumbs up!

Install had a small glitch and when I reported it, it was fixed nearly immediately with a complete explanation and notification supplied as soon as they completed the work. And then I screwed up so bad setting things up that I couldn't get back to square one and they provided detailed help on how to restore my files and database from backups. That worked like a charm. So they have always been helpful and responsive.

I also have a legacy site that just keeps humming without issue and no downtime in two years.

Two thumbs up!

Eloise

2 — 

Support is abysmal

Not good for business to have customer support only via email if you're outside US and Canada and must wait hours for each response. They gave me a dodgy IP address and as a result, I've been unable to proceed with any work on my websites for over one day. I'm still waiting for them to proceed with migration. It would have been faster if they'd more clearly explained what needed to be done in their initial email. This might acceptable for a hobby site, but it's not good for business. I guess that's what you get for cheap, but ultimately not worth it in the end if you run into problems.

Kim S

2 — 

Very slow and rude customer service

I canceled my hosting mid-year because the speed was terrible. I had to take a credit. To use the credit, I kept my domain registration there. Now that my credit is gone, I wanted to transfer my domain to my hosting provider. I missed the auto renewal deadline by a week and customer service gives me all sorts of attitude.

KJ

4 — 

IT support better than ever

Recently had the pleasure to interact with a Dreamhost support rep - I've been a Dreamhost customer for nearly 15 years, and have worked in IT for about 20, and I know it's difficult to tease out information via text. MM did a GREAT job working with me to get some upgrades done on a CMS installation. I've been around long enough to remember when support from Dreamhost was bare bones at best. Domain registration is a little pricey, though.

Prajjidna D

5 — 

Great Service and Support

I have been using the Dreamhost Wordpress hosting service and am totally satisfied with it. The company provides a 97 days money back guarantee and this is the longest guarantee ever for a hosting service. The support team also provided a quick response and assisted me in solving my problem when I moved my wordpress site to their service. Overall, Dreamhost is a great and recommended hosting provider.

Susan H

5 — 

A Wordpress Host That Actually Knows Wordpress

After a year of living hell and lies from both salespeople and tech support with Wordpress Hosting through GoDaddy I made the switch to Dreamhost. I stopped believing to GD mantra that my site wasn't functioning because of my own mistakes or plug-in conflicts (except perhaps the biggie that GoDaddy doesn't actually support JetPack, and their servers are not up to snuff). After researching the reputation of WP specific hosts, I made the switch to DH. I finally have a fully functioning site of my own design. Tech support is awesome and salespeople have never steered me wrong. Everything works. I've been using Elementor for the site build, and have had no problems. It is truly a Dream.

Gian J

5 — 

Great for web developers

I have been using Dreamhost for more than 10 years. As a web developer their service is outstanding. Their platform allows configuration and website management that can be fine tuned how you just want it.

Their costs are much higher than other Web Hosting companies and I have looked at others but you can do much more with this company. I use the Shared Unlimited plan, $9.95 per month. I like that you can have unlimited websites and databases setup. And also you can fine tune user access for SSH/SFTP. SSL certificates are easily installed and are updated automatically and are free. Support is always quick to answer and have always managed to resolve any issue I have requested of them. I am also confident in the technicality of the company. They have support technical staff that know their stuff. A great Web Hosting company.

Steve B

5 — 

Nothing but awesome

Having used Dreamhost on and off for a number of years now, I can safely say that they are my go to host. I refer my clients to them all the time, the support is second to none, up time is perfect and quite frankly, I'd rather support these guys than a huge company. I have seen Dreamhost grow from a small group to a decent sized organisation that genuinely care about the work they do.

Travis M

5 — 

Exceptional value for nonprofits

My nonprofit organization moved our domain registrations to Dreamhost in 2009 when we were looking for a place that would support a Ruby/Rails application. Not only did Dreamhost provide excellent support for all of the back-end software that we needed, it also offered free hosting to nonprofit organizations! Over the years as we grew our organization, Dreamhost was always there supporting the backbone of our applications: WordPress, mySQL databases, Ruby/Rails, PayPal integration, email announcement lists, etc. The service has always been reliable, and the tech support is expert, courteous, and amazingly fast! Their web-based management tools make websites and databases hosting a breeze for novices, and support for shell access to their stable Linux servers is an added bonus for the experts. As a growing nonprofit organization, we can't imagine why anyone would go anywhere else, Dreamhost is simply amazing.

David J

5 — 

Happy Customer

Ever since we changed hosting to DreamHost, I've been happy with their service and pricing options. Everything is clear with an account management portal that is easy to navigate. But most exceptional has been their customer support. Most of the occasions when I needed support were emergencies, and they not only dealt with the issue but on the last occasion went further and resolved the underlying issue.

Martin G

5 — 

Excellent Customer Service and Web Tools!

An easy-to-use administration panel with web tools like one-click install, emails, users, cloud services, domain management, and security, that's what I call a complete solution for managing websites. I'm proud to say that I've been with Dreamhost since 2009, without any significant issue. Smaller issues are rapidly resolved due to their fantastic support team; I've never been left without a solution. Another great advantage with Dreamhost is that you never feel alone. I take chances with "risky" implementations and tests, knowing that if something goes wrong, I know that I can count on a team of experts to help me go through my ideas. I didn't expect that good of a service!

Michael

5 — 

Dream a Little Dream

Moved over from another hosting service about three years ago. During this time any time there was an issue, which has not been very often, Dreamhost has pulled through with flying colors. I'm a fairly savvy user and can do mysql db stuff and a bit of php coding, but even when the issue hasn't been on their end - I couldn't figure out the problem and as a last resort contacted them - they have always had a solution and helped me figure it out. And almost always within 24 hours, give or take a few.

Service has been fantastic and I'd highly recommend them.

Fritz S

5 — 

Excellent Rates & Best In Class Support

I have been so impressed with Dreamhost. Not only do they provide excellent rates, but their support is best in class. They answer technical questions quickly, and concisely, and clearly, they have helped me identify issues and get my site back online within minutes every time, and are incredibly responsive. I actually feel like I have a whole team supporting my website, which is amazing. I couldn't recommend them more highly.

J B

5 — 

Smooth migration to DH

We switched from our host of 16 years to Dreamhost--and should have done it sooner. It was easy. The only difficulty was updating our website for security. Our former host let us get away with risky practices that DH does not tolerate. (However, we never had any breach at the old site.) In contrast with the former host, DH support staff actually know something about websites. They seem interested in solving problems and getting our site working well--not just closing out a ticket. BTW, I rarely give a top rating to anything. I think DH deserves it.

Darwin S

5 — 

Honesty, Integrity and Sensible Pricing

Every hosting provider gets a down time at least once a year, the difference is, how honest they are about it and how far they're willing to go to fix what went wrong. Before moving to Dreamhost I used another provider for almost 11 years, every time something went wrong, no one had a clue, no one. I was always in the dark with them, I am a web developer and I make websites and web based software, the down time is acceptable, because it happens, what is unacceptable is not knowing why or even worse having your provider not taking any responsibility for their service. If I can put it in my truest words, Dreamhost has been my ticket out of poverty. Their basic plans are packed with free tools that most providers charge for, from git to ssl certificates and everything in between. I have more than a dozen clients on the Dreamhost servers which have been with me for more than a decade, they have their needs taken care of and the certainty that their future growth will be encouraged instead of stifled.

Val

5 — 

Exceptional Tech Support

I've been a Dreamhost customer since 2006. As a whole they provide very good service. However, what they really stand out (for me at least) is their exceptional tech support. Their tech personal is very knowledgeable, professional and also friendly. They make you feel they really care. Not only all the problems I contacted them about got fixed in a timely manner, but they always explained what exactly was causing the issue and gave tips on how to avoid it in the future. I need to maintain a site with quite obsolete PHP code. After upgrades, inevitability things get broken. Thanks to the tech support, I'm able to extend the life of the site.

Val T

5 — 

Exceptional Tech Support

I've been a Dreamhost customer since 2006. As a whole they provide very good service. However, what they really stand out (for me at least) is their exceptional tech support. Their tech personal is very knowledgeable, professional and also friendly. They make you feel they really care. Not only all the problems I contacted them about got fixed in a timely manner, but they always explained what exactly was causing the issue and gave tips on how to avoid it in the future. I need to maintain a site with quite obsolete PHP code. After upgrades, inevitability things get broken. Thanks to the tech support, I'm able to extend the life of the site.

Noah R

5 — 

10+ Years and Still Satisfied

I registered my first domain with Dreamhost in 2009. My websites have always been a breeze to access, and anytime I've had an issue, Dreamhost Support has taken very good care of me. I receive responses and information quickly, my websites are always performant, and Dreamhost makes me feel like their most important customer.

In these past ten years I've changed career paths from graphic design to web development, and it wouldn't have been possible without Dreamhost.

Thank you for everything!

Malcolm S

4 — 

Excellent service and response / Manuals need work

The site hosts Wordpress and has a great many free and paid options, some of which I have found extremely useful. There are many different designs available to choose from. It has been very quick to change and update my site. I had an issue with one app, not caused by Dreamhost, but they resolved this very quickly for me. I am a newbie at creating a web. The one thing I would recommend is further developing the basic instruction manuals for people like me. However, I would say to any other new developer - keep at it, the results are excellent.

Eli S

5 — 

Personal experience

I have been using Dreamhost services for more than 10 years now. Customer support is very good and has improved dramatically over the years as well as the user interface(control panel). Pricing for shared hosting is reasonable to good.

Frederick P

5 — 

Excellent Service

I chose DreamHost for our web site two years ago and have never regretted it. I have access to all the technology and features I want, the pricing is good, and the support has always been excellent. They are there for you, and they solve problems. The knowledge base is also actually useful, as I frequently find answers there.

Chandana M

5 — 

Dreamhost Review

I became a Dreamhost customer only a short time ago. Before that I had used a few other hosting services. According to my experience, what makes Dreamhost apart from the competition is their customer centric approach to hosting. I had two issues during the initial period but the Dreamhost Customer and Technical Support attended to my problems within less than one hour and they were also very helpful. My previous web host gave me a very professional service but they took more than 12 hours to respond. I recommend Dreamhost to any web developer who expect a true personalized service from their webhost.

Esteban V

5 — 

New Dreamhost client

Recently, I hired Dreamhost web hosting service, I had a mishap at the beginning when I went to pay the bill. I was stuck on a screen, unable to complete the payment. I asked for help and the customer support department helped me to finish the process. After that I got a problem when I had to reset my password, and again I asked for a hand. The support team gently helped me with this problem, and finally I could get back access to my account. On the whole, I highly recommend this web hosting company because they are clear with prices (no hidden charges) and their services. If you have any trouble they don't let you down. The price is the best one I found after a long research.

Joe G

5 — 

Excellent hosting and support

We have been using Dreamhost since 2009 to host a number of domains. Several of the domains use Wordpress. We have VPS for one of our domains; but not for most. Our experience with Dreamhost support has been very good. We access support through email and the web. Both the online knowledge base and the support from humans has been quite good. Our only issue has been with Dreamhost email server IP's being blacklisted so that we are unable to use our mailing lists while this is addressed. Sometimes this can take days - Spamhaus needs a better way for remediation, or Dreamhost needs a better way to stay off the blacklist.

Christian

5 — 

Best Host with great UI

I moved to Dreamhost from HostGator and need to say that Dreamhost is providing a great service at a good price. They provide me a good service and answer my questions very fast, it's affordable and managing my page is easy due to the well designed interface compared to the host I used before. Whenever I had a problem - just one or two times - Dreamhost's support reacted quickly and solved the issue.

MyVeryOwnWebSIte

5 — 

DreamHost, what a pleasant experience.

The overall service, support and uptime (never had any down other than scheduled and well warned of upgrading) is worth mentioning.

Being situated in South Africa and having frustratingly dealt with various local hosting providers in the past, I was rather hesitant to move to an “international” company, but I’m regretful I didn’t do it sooner. Any issues, and I must admit they’ve all been self-caused to date, have simply and speedily been addressed via email despite the huge time zone difference between us. They’re even willing to support me with matters not relating directly to their services like my coding errors and WordPress issues I encounter.

I honestly have no regret DreamHost and I’m pleased I made the move.

Brad

5 — 

The best by far

Dream Host is the best by far. They are regularly making improvements. Their custom web panel is better and easier than cPanel. They use free services like Let's Encrypt for SSL wherever possible, which keeps prices low for customers. I was pleasantly surprised to find that their chat support is better than phone because they can instantly share directional, informational, and problem solving links. And their chat support reps are truly outstanding! I’m always amazed. I built my first website in 1998. I've had two other hosts, including BH for more than 10 years, and I can say without reservation that Dream Host is the best by far.
Brad
Enjoying the Dream... Host

Bob N

5 — 

Dreamhost Review

After originally being with Dreamhost when I stopped hosting my own web and email services, then being a customer to another company, I was thrilled to be able to return to Dreamhost. Their customer service is responsive and specific to my needs. Their servers are fast, and their software is easy to use. My only suggestion would be to ask them to boost their installation options, but given that you can install most anything yourself anyway, it's a minor request.

Stewart

5 — 

Excellent Support at Dreamhost

I use Dreamhost for several websites that I have set up for myself or for nonprofits, and even a small city. I have been very satisfied with the service and the value. They donate web hosting for 501(c)(3) nonprofits and that has been a blessing for some very small organizations that don't have much money to spend. With another nonprofit, we had to upgrade it to a virtual private server in order to meet the needs of the organization because their use of the website was extensive and the shared hosting that is provided for nonprofits at no charge just can't handle that kind of utilization. However, they were very honest about it and when we ran into that problem we decided to do the upgrade and everything has worked out great since then. It is still very affordable and we have had no problems.

Their communication with me has been clear and often entertaining. When I have had need of support, I usually opt for email support and they have always been able to resolve the issue or answer the question in a reasonable timeframe. Their online help and the DreamHost Community Forum has also been very useful. The process of moving domain registration to DreamHost (which is not required but makes for less work later) was fairly simple.

I have sometimes had trouble navigating some of the menu items and the different levels of users and their permissions has been a bit confusing at times, including knowing where to set the contact preferences. This resulted in one of my websites going down for a couple days because the email notification of a credit card issue went to a dead email address. I never got the notification to warn me about it, even though I was getting notifications about other things going on with the hosting through another email path. I gave them that feedback and I am confident they will make improvements in that area.

Jameson

5 — 

I recommend DreamHost highly at every opportunity.

I've been with DreamHost since 2004, which means I was there for that bumpy summer when growing pains contributed to a bit more downtime than usual (fortunately it hasn't been like that for years!) and even through the trouble DreamHost was transparent, proactive, and engaged in providing the best possible service. Luckily, most days it's not about putting out fires: I enjoy their phenomenal control panel with rich options for advanced configuration, along with their thorough wiki and friendly support team. But it's good to know that when things get tricky, they're a company I can trust. The prices are great, the options are unmatched in any shared hosting environment I've ever seen, and the whole thing is tremendously easy to use. I've primarily used their shared hosting plans, but I've spun up a VPS once or twice, and this was a really straightforward experience, as well—with great results! I recommend DreamHost effusively whenever anyone asks me about web hosting.

steve b

1 — 

Do not use them

For months I have not been able to access wordpress to edit my site. There is a consistent "HTTP ERROR 500". This is a server error not a user error. I tried to contact their almost nonexistent customer support. Most of the time there was no response. The few times there was, my problem was not fixed. I will never use them again. They really screwed me up. They have been worse than a waste of time.

Stephen

5 — 

Balanced Value and performance

In the years I have been working with Dreamhost they have provided an excellent value for the cost of services. I am working on their shared hosting plan, and for multiple domains and websites running PHP and MySQL the performance and Latency has been solid, better than other shared hosting plans I have tested. They have very easy to manage extensions to this service when needed. Their DNS tools are better than most I have seen in a web hosting provider. (And I have only found better at dedicated DNS service companies) Their support is well documented, and in the occasion my question was not available via their documentation their responses have been very quick.

I also love their dreamcompute product, this is a very reasonable extension to their shared web hosting to add a missing feature or need on the fly without spending more than you absolutely need, and quite possibly a better use case than working with a personal VPS (Which still has its place) and certainly a great value when looking for that space between VPS and shared hosting.

Michael E

5 — 

22 years and still a customer

I moved my first website to Dreamhost 22 years ago after it outgrew the university server it began in. Over that time I’ve had great service and fast response to problems and hacks and I’ve seen my hosting costs decrease, too. I’m currently hosting ten domains and web sites there and see no reason to look elsewhere.

Philip O

5 — 

Excellent host, excellent service, hugely reliable

I've had Dreamhost host my (small, simple) site for over a decade. There was a small blip during a hurricane which knocked out an entire data center they were hosting from in Florida, but that was understandable and they reacted well, distributing the servers throughout the country afterwards. In the many years since they've been extremely reliable, and answer any support questions professionally and promptly. They're good value too.

Krysty

5 — 

Loyalty Pays

I've been with Dreamhost since 2001! All this time, all my online experience using hosts and service providers for different purposes such as business, I have always recommended Dreamhost. Sometimes with my online job, I sit here dreaming and wishing we were with Dreamhost! They're considerate - check out their payment plans and options. They're helpful - EVERY email I've sent them has had a personal response, and I've been able to speak to someone who didn't try to talk over me OR under me. I've seen them go through the expected server and security upgrades, and they always warn customers in advance. You never get any nasty surprises. Have you seen their 1-Click installs? Wordpress and other software can be installed with next to no experience needed. That can't be beat! I'm a typical user of web services; I can use the ftp, I have had troubles in the past with payments, and I've had to fix content limits, etc. Every time, I've been treated like a valued customer and if anything, I've come out of the experience educated. I am beyond grateful for Dreamhost. I don't know where I'd be online without them!

Susan B

5 — 

Our go-to hosting recommendation

Our website has been hosted by Dreamhost since 1998. We are a graphic design agency that includes website development and Dreamhost is always our first recommendation to clients. Although there are some good hosting services out there, Dreamhost is the most reliable, economical, and responsive. They offer a great range of hosting options, pricing is comparable to other hosting services, and often much better when you look at what they include--presented as add-ons at other hosting services.

We specialize in WordPress development. Like the cobbler's children, at the moment our existing website is shoeless. It's in process for a major overhaul but one thing won't change: hosting through Dreamhost.

Christy

1 — 

Hosting Issues and Poor Technical Support

We've experienced many issues with Dreamhost's DreamPress product. It has crashed our site several times so it is down during the hours we recieve the most traffic. Additionally, while DreamHost claims to have 24/7 technical support and their chat hours are 5:30am-9:30pm PT, this is not the case. They are often not online and unresponsive to critical errors. We are based on the East Coast, so this makes it very challenging for us to operate within normal business hours.

Tom J

5 — 

The Best Host

My website has been with DreamHost since first going live in 2012. When ever there has been a problem, most often user error, the support team has responded quickly, often fixing the problem. I have recently left the shared hosting plan and moved to a different level of hosting- DreamPress. Again, the support team helped make this transition smooth and painless. With so many other hosting services available, I have found DreamHost to be the one I choose to remain with.

Stan

5 — 

The best around

Dreamhost technical support has been the best I have ever experienced, in my 20+ years of running websites. I migrated over 15 websites from one host over to DH. During the migration, I hit a few bumps in the road. The online technical support was more than happy to help. They went out of their way to resolve my migration 'bumps in the road'. When I had non-urgent questions, the email support was top notch. One of the support people went as far as explaining all the 'in's and out's' to one of my issues. Not your average, "Just change this value to that and you are all set". He gave me a background discussion on the subject.

Dream Host has been great to work with. They will be the last host you will ever need.

MusicTube

1 — 

Incompetent

What a horrible experience. We had so many domains and websites hosted with DreamHost with pathetic technical help. They botched our website(s) migration, forcing our Developers to spend 40 days repairing and completing functionality. Their support department is absolutely filled with incompetent fresh-out-of-school boys and completely clueless girls. After spending about 60 days to complete our migration(s), these self-righteous people send an unsolicited spam survey asking as to comment about our experience. We commented that their live-chat people were incompetent. So, these highly self-righteous amateurs gave us just a few days before terminating all our accounts. Fortunately we had backups and will go live after going with competent and always ready to help Hostgator. DreamHost is not a competent company and don't deserve even a single star.

Peter L

1 — 

New user and already ready to bolt

I moved from a good Wordpress host with my mostly Wordpress sites as it was getting too expensive and did not allow for a monthly subscription.

What initially attracted me to Dreamhost were very positive reviews of speed and the affordable VPS service as well as the idea that a simple CP like theirs would work better than the standard one. Their uptime seemed to be good.

However, in these last 4 first weeks my sites have been constantly down due to LetsEncrypt SSL certificate issues on their side, server down (error 521), mod_security blocking (never happened at other hosts).

Upon reporting the issue to support, I either get only a partial explanation (although they do fix some issues), or a referral to their horribly unreadable unstructured (often not specific to my query but generic hige document instead) online documentation.

Their one step Wordpress install is also a loose sand type, disorganized process and one also does not know intuitively how to access the Wordpress sites once installed (I suspect one cannot)

It is not like my sites are badly moved to their site. That was done by Wordpress professionals with a good reputations.

I'm afraid I'll have to move again if this persists too long. My sites are mostly business so I would lose revenue if I would be accepting their inferior uptime and the eating into my own time with issues I ought not to deal with.

This host I'm inclined call a "high maintenance, low uptime" host.

Deborah S

5 — 

Dreamhost is a Great Choice for Hosting

I've been with Dreamhost for many years and I never think about switching. I host about 25 WordPress websites on Dreamhost using the VPS service. It has worked very well for me. One of the best things is their customer support. It's almost always excellent. I get quick service through live chat, and they go the extra mile....responsive, friendly, and knowledgeable. I would say though, if you're wanting to host a WordPress site you'll probably find that Dreamhost's shared hosting will not provide you with enough server resources. I can't speak to Dreampress because I've never used it, but as I said, VPS has worked well for my WordPress websites. I highly recommend Dreamhost.

Dakota B

5 — 

Above & Beyond At Every Step

I use Dreamhost for four websites and multiple landing pages. Their service is unparalleled. Sure, many offer consistent uptime and customer service, but the KEY in a great hosting provider is how that customer service actually performs when you need it. Let's face it, no matter how good the provider, you're going to need support someday. Dreamhost, time and time and time again, provide extremely fast support with helpful and friendly operators who go the extra 10 miles to make sure your issue is resolved. I've never had an issue that wasn't able to be resolved, even if it meant support working multiple days to find the best solution. They've fixed problems I've created, bugs I've experienced, and helped me understand technical aspects I couldn't figure out myself. I'm a very tech savvy person, so I'm no stranger to working with code and server configs. When I can contact customer support and get someone who is capable of speaking my language, I know I'm working with a team of winners.

Carles T

5 — 

happy hosting!

Dreamhost has an awesome support team for non-technical customers in case you need help, but if you are an experienced developer/sysadmin the support team becomes your right hand, like having a team of coworkers in case of an emergency with the servers/connectivity. They share with you all the knowledge, and i can tell i learned a looooot of things that later i used at work and my boss thinks that i am a professional sysadmin, when really im just a developer.

Thank you Dreamhost!!!!!! choosing you at 2008 was the best i could have ever done for my professional (and personal) carrier!

K W

5 — 

Excellent support, great price

I've been with Dreamhost for nearly 13 years and have been very happy with the services they provide. The stability and uptime of their servers is excellent, and on the rare occasion when something goes wrong, their customer support is informative and prompt. Communication is great. Amazingly, I still pay the same price (~$190 for 24 months) that I did when I signed up in 2006!

Marc B

3 — 

Good hosting except for email

I've been a Dreamhost customer for 13 years. I use them for private and medium-size business websites. The website hosting works great. They truly offer unlimited bandwidth, SQL, and disk space.

My only 2 complaints:

1) Support is primarily by email and can be slow to respond as they only appear to be available during west coast business hours. When I first signed-up they offered free phone call-backs, now it is a pay-for option.

2) Emails hosted on DH frequently get marked as spam. I had to move my more important business clients to Outlook365 (with per-user monthly subscription) in order for business emails to reach the destination.

Would have given them a higher rating if it weren't for the email problems, but still recommend them if you need unlimited everything.

allanGEE

5 — 

Dreamhost is a Dream Host

When I first mentioned trying to build a website, a coworker recommended Dreamhost over some of the "more advertised" companies I had heard of -- saying their support was far better. He was right. Support is always quick to respond with detailed step-by-step suggestions. I am still a website novice, but they make it at easy as realistically possible. They've even helped fix a couple of problems that had nothing to do with their hosting.

Kel

5 — 

DreamHost has the Most!

I've been with DreamHost off and on for years, and they always have the best customer service, the best uptime, and the best product offerings!

the best uptime, and the best product offerings! The email hosting is primarily why I love them, as they give you unlimited mailboxes for any fully hosted domain! I use their VPS product and couldn't be happier with the flexibility.

Anytime I've ever needed to contact them, their responses have been prompt and accurate.

Couldn't recommend them more.

Todd H

5 — 

20 Years—And Still Happy

I've been a Dreamhost customer from nearly their beginning. I signed on with them back in 1999 and have been happy ever since.

At the time I signed up I chose a plan they called "Crazy Domain Insane" for $9.95/month paying monthly ( I was new to having a hosting site and didn't want to contribute to a full year plan. ) For $9.95 I got 1 free domain registration, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited email accounts, and unlimited domains and subdomains. Crazy, right.

They also offered a referral program at the time that gave me 10% of the value of any plan someone purchased through my referral. I had several folks sign up and for many years I never paid a cent for my hosting.

Unfortunately they no longer provide the "Crazy Domain Insane" plan, but I'm grandfathered in with pricing and my annual domain registration is still free. The referral program has changed and now it's a one-time $50 bonus they call "Give $50, Get $50". Still pretty generous.

If you sign up today, to get something similar to my plan you'd need to pay annually and your domain registration would only be free for the first year—then you'd have to pay for it after that. Still not a bad deal, and they have other options and tiers you might find to be a better fit for you.

Now for the nuts and bolts:

• Uptime: I have a small site for my freelance business, it's mostly informational and I don't need e-commerce. I have never had an issue with uptime. On rare occasions (very rare) there have been outages, but they were always resolved quickly.

• Load time: The load times could be better. They are usually fine, but I can see how for larger sites or businesses where speed is essential, how the speed might be considered slow. They do always seem to be making incremental gains.

• cPanel: Dreamhost has never had a standard cPanel. They have their own system called the "Web Panel" and it has gotten better and better over the years. I've deal with both traditional cPanels and Dreamhost's version and they both have their pros and cons. If you are new to self-hosting and you've never seen a cPanel then you're facing a learning curve either way. If you are used to a traditional cPanel then you will have to get used to a new approach. Once you familiarize yourself with the "Web Panel" you may even like it better.

• WordPress: like many other hosts, they offer a one-click install of WordPress that couldn't be easier to set up. You can choose a basic install or one that includes some additional themes, a few plug-ins, and extra security. It's fast, quick, and very easy to get your new WordPress site up and running.

• Documentation: There's quite a lot of it. If you are learning the ropes of self-hosting your own site there will be a lot to read. Their documentation has lots of links to additional information. And often there will be a link to additional pages with additional steps you need to follow. If you miss one of these links you can easily end up confused and not getting the results you wanted. Just remember, "Don't skip any steps!" that's very important. If you go through the documentation carefully you'll be fine.

• Customer support: Here's one area where they have greatly improved. They've always been helpful, but dealing with things only via email in the past was a bit of a pain. That said they are knowledgable, helpful, and trustworthy. As I said, I've been with them a long time and have the benefit of being grandfathered in to 20-year old pricing. I recently asked if they had a tier where I would get all of the same services at a better price and I got a well worded and thought out response explaining my options, but then suggesting I should stay with my old plan since I wouldn't be able to get all the unlimited benefits and free domain registration I currently enjoy. I appreciate that level on dedication and trustworthiness. It is a rare find these days.

My recommendation: I can't speak for large sites, or sites that are dependent on e-commerce; but if you have a basic site (a restaurant, a local service company, a real-estate agent, an accountant, etc.) then I think they are a great, solid, trustworthy hosting provider and you can't go wrong. If you have the luxury of putting up a site and testing it first they have a 97-day money back guarantee. Personally I'm still very happy with Dreamhost, even after 20 years.

Sandy M

5 — 

Great technical support!

I had a major snafu finding out my original web designer had mistakenly hosted my webpage on WordPress instead of DreamHost. I cannot begin to tell you how much of a nightmare this was to a business manager who does not understand code or anything remotely close to it. DreamHost migrated my information over and while there were little bumps in the road, we pressed on and yesterday it was handled completely by Andrew P in the span of a few hours. Now I can edit with WordPress through DreamHost seamlessly. I could not be happier or more impressed with their technical support. I am sure they all giggled behind the scenes at me and my helplessness but knowing DreamHost has staff who can handle anything with professionalism and fantastic customer service tells me I made the right choice using their services.

Kenichi S

5 — 

I want everyone in the world to use.

*** This sentence was translated from Japanese to English by Google's translation service. ***

I will introduce you to DreamHost with confidence.

1. The helpful and excellent staff sincerely solved my technically immature problems. (And, quickly!)
2. The custom control panel was built in detail and was intuitive to operate. (If you are technically unskilled, you are safe!)
3. Plans are abundant and easy to upgrade. (But not complicated!)

I am using DreamHost from Tokyo (Japan). However, the two countries are very far apart. This has a big effect on the communication speed. However, this problem was solved by using CDN (Cloudflare). I was able to easily increase the communication speed 10 times on average.

There are many companies like DreamHost in Japan. However, there is no DreamHost. It is very sad. If DreamHost is born in Japan, other companies will suffer great shock and damage.

I love DreamHost staff and DreamHost. My hope is that DreamHost will be born in Japan. And, sharing the happy feelings that you can experience at DreamHost with everyone.

Thank you for reading it until the very end.

Quentin

5 — 

Simply the dream

Hosted by Dreamhost for the last 13 years, I must say their flexibility and reliability allowed me to first learn and experiment with the Internet hosting through its evolution. Having not to worry about the number of emails account, domains, sub-domains, etc, it offered the opportunity to launch numerous websites for associations, friends and small businesses. In case of question or issue, you do really get an answer within the next 24 hours and to be fair I would even say during the next 12 hours or less. I don't know how they manage it or if they have the last generation AI to take care of their customers, but they are really doing a wonderful job. Looking forward to working with them for the years to come!

Tania H

5 — 

Excellent Web Hosting

I've been using Dreamhost for years now and they have always been so helpful whenever I've had any problems. They are always fast to reply to questions even though I live in the UK and they answer my questions in a way that I can easily understand.

I couldn't ask for a better company

April

5 — 

Awesome support for fifteen years

I joined Dreamhost in 2004, and have never had any issues with my hosting. Anytime I had a question or concern, their customer service was very quick to answer and directly helped my problem (no script monkeys). I love that my hosting plan comes with a free domain name. I always recommend Dreamhost to everyone.

Jon S

5 — 

Dreamhost Rocks

Dreamhost has been my consistent and reliable hosting provider for about 7 years now. They provide a phenomenal service and excellent support. I have contacted them numerous times with questions/concerns and have always received quick response and quick resolutions. Definitely recommend!

Manja A

5 — 

Excellent service by DreamHost

More than three years ago I chose DreamHost for my Web Hosting Provider, as it was especially recommended for Mac users in both my web design books (I have a MacBook Pro). I’m a one-click-WordPress-installation customer, and I added useful Plugins, and customised my Theme. DreamHost was always quick to help me solve any ‘problems’ I experienced with the program or Plugins. I really appreciated how they always explained to me why something happened. Therefore, I learned more about the technical aspects of a website and knew what to do in case the same ‘problem’ occurred again. Because of their excellent service, I always felt that I could rely on them to come back to me very quickly. I already recommended DreamHost to my friends.

Tom S

5 — 

Found shelter from the larger, incompetent hosting companies.

Thank goodness. When I could get zero help, over several months, for my VPS at Hostgator, my IT guy recommended I try Dreamhost, and it has been a complete relief. My IT guy had told me that Dreamhost was for professional computer folk, but I have found that whenever I have a doubt at Dreamhost, I can easily write a ticket, and I get caring, competent and complete answers within an hour or two, and now I'm saving a lot of time and preventing headaches. I found the VPS tech help at HostGator to have grown incompetent over the past few years, and previous to that I was with GoDaddy. At Dreamhost, I'm running small amounts of fast IOT data on their regular hosting package! I've moved all my stuff now to Dreamhost, and I'm hoping to expand that by about 100X. Dreamhost is very fast, easier to set up, and their unique CPanel is 10x easier to navigate. Their mysql is quick and easy, too. So, don't buy Dreamhost or they will grow too big and incompetent, just like GoDaddy and HostGator did. Leave Dreamhost just for me.

John M

5 — 

Great support

The techs at Dreamhost give fabulous support and not just on hosting. They have helped me with Wordpress issues and with php-admin questions. Best of all they don't treat you like an idiot!

Yardell

5 — 

I've been with them for years. I feel no need to go anywhere else.

I came to them from another hosting platform that I only left because I simply outgrew them. Since signing onto an unlimited shared hosting plan at Dreamhost, I've never felt a need to go anywhere else for any of my own professional or personal hosting needs. As my own web design and development abilities have grown over the years, I found that I was able to quickly apply my new skills to the tools that I had in my account; often times just lying in wait somewhere for me to find them when I learned enough to know where to look. The support system is also well done as it give you the option to call them directly, do a live chat, or just shoot them an email; depending on what you need or just want to do. Even if I was the kind of person that just needed to be critical, nitpicky, and always find something bad to say of someone or something - and i'm really not - I just have nothing bad to say of Dreamhost, their service to me, or the people behind it.

Tracy V

5 — 

after 20 years, I love Dreamhost

Message Body: I'm stunned at all the negative user comments here. Compared to my experience, they could be describing some other company. I suspect that most, if not all, of these folks are on the econo-shared-hosting level. I have a dedicated server, and that may account for the difference.

That said, I have found service prompt and incredibly good. The people bend over backwards to help. Because I have a dedicated server, I also have access to phone support, but have always been happy with chat. Contrary to other comments, I do indeed get unlimited bandwidth and data.

I just wanted to add a datapoint that is counter to all the complaints I see here. If I wan't a happy camper, I would not have been with them for 20 years, eh?

Karen

3 — 

Changing Tides

I use my DH shared server account to create site mock-ups for clients to approve before purchase. Basically I have an average of 10 sites in various states of development and have about 15 to 20 domain names on my account.

The Good

I've had the DreamHost ~$11.00 a month shared server plan for about three years now and for the most part have been satisfied. I've found customer support easy to access and reply times to be quick. I've also experienced very limited site downtime and often the problem is fixed by the time I submit a ticket, so very FAST return to up-time (which should be a metric also). I have put clients on DH VPS accounts without any angst, vps loading time are fast with one of the best pricing options for small businesses available. I'm also very happy with the zero up-sell. I had to migrate a client from another hosting provider and I COULD NOT BELIEVE the constant stream of spammy up-sell that continued to flow for months following the move.

The Bad

I have to agree with other reviewers in saying that historically the control panel hasn't been very intuitive and finding information in the knowledge base is far more difficult than I think it needs to be. Basically, to find a simple answer you go from page to link to another page and then link to another page until you finally get the big picture of what you need to do for your specific set of circumstances. Now, this being said, it isn't much different than how everyone else sets up a knowledge base, but honestly, I think they all do a poor job and should spend the time and money to create adequate resources which would probably decrease their live support by at least a third, if not more. It is also fair to mention that the control panel has undergone improvements in the past few months and is indeed improving. I know many people are fans of Cpanel, but Cpanel has had some serious security issues in the past and may continue to fall victim to vulnerabilities, so in some circumstances, even bad may be better.

The Ugly

I choose to pay extra to be a month to month customer so I have options should I become dissatisfied. The time has come, which is why I stumbled upon this article. While I am seeing improvements in the layout of the control panel, just about everything else about my experience has gone downhill in the recent ~six months. My sites load WAAAAAY too slow, I (like others) am constantly getting server errors to the point it is almost impossible to work and there has been something completely screwed up with their security certs, causing me hours of extra work. Now, I've been around long enough to understand growing pains and I get that it takes some time to iron out wrinkles, BUT, BUT, BUT the true egregious error made by DH (imho) is the constant denial, misinformation, and lack of communication. I've been on this server for years and am very familiar with how it should perform, and yet support will basically tell you it's all in your head, not investigate an issue to resolution, or sometimes it seems they just outright lie. THIS!

The Wrap-up

I think DH is worth a look if you are just starting out and need to learn the ropes of self-hosted websites. They have fast customer service, great up-time and some of the best pricing in the industry for a non-spamy, non-cult-like hosting provider. I also believe DH will work through the issues and get back on track, but likely not in enough time for me to stay, which is heartbreaking.

Tim

5 — 

Dreamhost has been great to us for 10+ years

Our agency has been using Dreamhost for our clients for over 10 years and we have had little to no problems. I gave a 90 score because no web host is perfect, there has been some downtime but barely any in our experience. If there is anything going on they do an excellent job of letting their customers know while other hosting providers will not say anything in hopes you simply do not see that your site is down. They offer Let's Encrypt for free (as it should be but many hosts charge for that free option) and auto renew the certificate every three months.

I agree with some of the reviews here that not having a number to call for support can be frustrating but their live chat support has always worked great for us.

No web host is ideal for all developers/clients but Dreamhost has been a great solution for our clients. From small non-profits (did I mention they offer FREE hosting to non-profits!?) to large state association websites, they've been top notch.

Joshua D

1 — 

Dreamhost, a snake in the grass

I have been a Dreamhost customer since 2012. Since then it has been okay, some weird stuff around what can be hosted where and their 'unlimited' storage advertisement they had at one time was a complete lie... start using more than a few gigs and get shut down.

I should have known at that point that the lies would continue, but I soldiered on with all my content being hosted at Dreamhost.

More recently they removed the ability to use catch-all email accounts, which I understand their decision to do so. Yet, this forced me to start looking for another hosting provider. I found one... well two... a combination of Amazon web services and Microsoft Office 365 is where I landed. I migrated all my content away from Dreamhost and tried to cancel.

LIES LIES LIES LIES LIES.

So at the time I registered in 2012, there was a promotion, get a free domain when you sign up for hosting. This is a pretty normal promotion so I took it. In the fine print, it did say if I canceled my hosting plan or transferred that domain in that 'free' first year I would be required to pay the cost of the registration.

Guess what, it is now 2018 and they are trying to get me to pay for that free registration from 2012... saying that I owe it because I transferred the domain that they gave me for free in 2012.

They want a whole $13 but are holding my account hostage. (Also the cost for the domain in 2012 was not $13... it was closer to $9.99 if I remember right... but they want today's cost).

Anyway, if you want to avoid being hassled, stupid rules that make no sense, lies and trying to squeeze you for everything your worth... Go with ANYONE other than Dreamhost. ... wish there were negative numbers in this rating system.

Joe

1 — 

Not fit for purpose

Signed up based on the above review only to discover you are not able to alter the DNS A records for the site. Which means it is impossible to use this service for my needs - unable to link to various social media services, such as easylinks, etc. SSL setup also rejected, since my site is not (yet) hosted with them... so I can't apply SSL until fully hosted, but I can't fully host over to them without having DNS ready to go with appropriate CNAME records. Requested support and was left waiting for a long time. That is the real problem -- support is very slow.

Based on my experience so far, I am looking for an alternative supplier.

Art

1 — 

Dreamhost makes everything hard

Not sure about this author's experience, but as new customers of this host with experience with other hosts, they make EVERYTHING much harder.

Their custom control panel seems very restrictive. Claims by their staff and fans that it is more powerful and feature rich are rhetorical. I'm counting 41 tools here compared to 114 useful tools at my current host, and I've used many of those. There are a few more tools buried in pages off of sub menus, but you'll notice right away that a lot are just missing.

The buried ones you find by searching, sometimes through fairly non-intuitive locations. Or worse yet, you search all those locations only to find that the simple tool or info you need doesn't exist there at all and you've wasted your time. BTW, 11 1-click installers compared to 75 at my current host.

When you start trying to figure out how you're going to accomplish the most common tasks you did easily in cPanel, you're in for a shock. Want to get to your files? They recommend an FTP client. I did find their newer tool, not under something intuitive such as "Files", but buried in "Manage Domains." No real loss though, it's INCREDIBLY limited. Guess that's why an FTP client is recommended instead.

Want to get to your email configuration information? Start searching support articles and visiting pages / comparing tables and taking notes. Turns out you were supposed to figure out that info was tucked away under "panel/support/datacenters." Didn't matter, there's not a link to that from their control panel anyway. Not only is the info not available from the email section of their control panel, the help article that would direct you to the info isn't even linked from there. Just start searching.

What exactly is the point of having a control panel in the first place if you can't access all of the elements of your site and domain from it?

Migration, which is offered free at a large number of hosts, you do it yourself or pay $99.

Support? The author claims it's second to none. Chat and email? Seriously?

Lack of phone support, this incredibly limited control panel, and the maze of support articles required to accomplish what should be simple tasks, have us feeling like we've made a mistake.

James G

1 — 

Transferred.US domains are down (in Limbo)

I've transferred 23 domains to them. 12 of the domains are lost in limbo. They use ENOM to register the domains. According to whois.us (the people in charge of .US domains), ENOM has received the domains in the transfer. ENOM refuses to release the domain to Dreamhost. Dreamhost has no ability to fix this. I have 12 domains that no longer work thanks to ENOM and Dreamhost.

You're rolling the dice. I wish I never made these transfers.

James Y

4 — 

Love it Most of the Time

Overall, DreamHost is a fantastic hosting service. They'll respond relatively quickly to service tickets and servers are online and functional most of the time.

Email servers have not been good lately, however, they are moving the data to new hardware. I just wish it was sooner.

The ONLY thing I would really love to see is to get full mySQL access (like admin) and / or be able to have a user that can create databases from the command line instead of needing to do it through DreamHost's control panel. The panel isn't bad, it's just that with about *this* close to full automation of my site with minimal to no manual interaction to service clients.

Vladimir V

5 — 

The Best Value for my Money

I was a WordPress newbie when I started with Dreamhost some four years ago. They have been incredible patient with my experiments and mistakes.

They are clear about ther policies, their pricing and their working. Dreamhost support is the best I have found so far.

If you are ready to make the jump to a hosted website. This is your best option.

ITP M

5 — 

When You've Read All the Fine Print...

...and you've tried the renown hosting companies, but you're tired of doing it all-on-your-own. So, it's decision time: you can do-it-yourself and try to become an instant techy guru, OR you can do what we did and switched to DreamHost. They have always been there for us, on our side. They periodically reviewed our usage and made suggestions to remedy problems that we were experiencing. We didn't want to lose customers, so we welcomed their advice. Then, their tech experts did all the behind the scenes html tricks within an hour, so that we could attend to our business while they made our daily, weekly, monthly stats available to us. Gone are the days of not getting service refunds, not understanding the geek mentality, and not getting support. They have a broad spectrum of services that are not financially prohibitive for new or small businesses. But, best of all they respond! It can be a chat or an email query that gets responded to overnight. Never again will you feel clueless, uncared for, or disgusted.

Russ B

5 — 

Absolutes Are Unattainable, but...

I've been with Dreamhost since April, 2007 and it's almost always AWESOME. The few times it's not, I just say so and BOOM! It's fixed within 24 hours - almost always! I have friends who complain about their host and how slow it is, how it's always down, how it's... But I just can't join in because Dreamhost has been truly phenomenal to me and domains I host with them for over a decade. Man, who can say that? Over a decade of damn near perfection. And no, they're not paying to me say anything here. They really are that good.

Derek L

3 — 

Not quite a sinking ship, but they're taking on water

I've been with Dreamhost for a number of years, and they're my go-to solution for clients who would like a website. They're typically a good company with minimal problems.

The last couple weeks have been a technical nightmare. They've had trouble with everything from emails losing data, databases being inaccessible, security certificates failing to install, or extensive downtime. Contacting support has been equally dreadful as they let tickets linger for days without responses, and these issues haven't been addressed at all.

I don't know what the future holds for Dreamhost, but it does not bode well that they not only have all these technical problems, but they can't even staff their support team with enough bodies to adequately address the mountain of issues they've been having. This is definitely a hosting provider trending downward right now.

Alan

2 — 

Page loads slow or fail

The overall picture is not bad, but I have to admit our site has been slain with 500 Internal Server errors on not just page loads but also on movements within the dashboard. We've done all we can with plugins, using their advice, and following best practices on design. It works fine some days, but mostly very irritating since mid-2017. We were on eHost and might jump back. I'm not disputing everything they're known for and do well, but the experience lately is analogous to walking through a minefield to go from page to page or function to function. Their main response to our failures when they see them is to take several options of which they tend to promote their paid for feature - DreamPress. I'm not impressed any longer.

Barbra B

2 — 

Not a good hosting service

I am a web developer and I have only seen one hosting service worse than this one in all my time in business. They force you to use their expensive WP platform by slowing WP sites not hosted there to a crawl. Even image uploads time out. However, on the WP platform you cannot have a standard HTML site, so if you have a site composed of both you need 2 hosting plans.

To make matters worse, the tech help people are the worst ever. I just spent an hour on the chat with them while they troubleshooted an issue. They did not resolve the issue though, and the guy just told me that I can submit a help ticket if I want to. How is getting tech help on the line and them not solving their own issue not a trouble ticket in and of itself? Why do I need to fill out a separate form, explain the issues all over again, and start from scratch?

Steer clear.

Michael C

4 — 

Not acceptable

The number of times my monitors tell me the sites are down is far too often.

The up time for the last 30 days has been over 99%, but the times it goes down is always in the PRIME time evening hours when most of my users would find my site.

Sites are much slower to load, and I'm pretty sure they're bottlenecking it by putting too many users onto the shared servers.

They're practically punishing people who don't get virtual or dedicated servers.

The icing on the cake was today's fiasco. Email has been down for hours. HOURS. It took them over two hours to even realize there were problems after the problems were being reported actively. It's still down even now, nearly a full hour after they said "We're working on it."

***You had one job. You fail at it far too frequently.***

Jeremy

1 — 

Worst Company - Stay away

Worst support ever and slow servers, That’s the main thing about them. I used them a year or so ago and cancelled within a month, even then it was a nightmare transferring my sites off they wouldn’t help me at all.

Tom M

1 — 

Stay Away

I purchased 3 years of shared hosting from Dreamhost about a month ago. Since then my site has continually been down, returning 500 Internal Server errors and has often taken 20+ seconds to load when it’s “up”. I’ve spoken with their support team about the issue on multiple occasions and have been assured that the issue is “being worked on”, but the fix never lasts for more than a few hours. To top it all off, the customer service representatives have been rude and dismissive, making it blatantly obvious that they couldn’t care less if they keep my business or not. Do not host your site here.

Emiliano

1 — 

Staff doesn't help

I have 5 different Dreamhost services and file upload doesn’t work well almost 50% of the time.

When I ask Dreamhost Support, they tell me they have technical problems on their end and that they will be fixing it soon.

This happens almost once a week and it’s infuriating to see that you have to wait 3 hours to upload a 50mb file through SFTP.

When I asked on Dreamhost community about this issue, lots of people with the same problem as me replied.

I am just waiting for my hosting plans to expire in order to migrate to a more efficient hosting.

Michael

1 — 

Useless

Absurd migration processes if you want to move a WordPress site to them and actually preview it. It’s either hacking the hosts file or setting up mirrors – which go down minutes after you’ve set them up! No warning, no edits done – nothing. The site is working – and then it isn’t. Completely absurd.

I can only assume these reviews here are paid for spam.

Just save yourself time and frustration and pay more for a proper managed hosting elsewhere. You’ll thank me later.

LOUIS P

3 — 

Terrible to communicate with

We’ve lost access to our account. We’ve been emailing for a week to gain access and they haven’t done a thing. You can’t call these people. Emails need to go to a special address or it gets rejected and the response ends up in your junk mail. No wonder they are rated as they are.

Mike B

1 — 

Monrygrab

Got a bit money grabby lately. I’ve hosted here since 2004 approximately. Never had a problem until recently when they kept bombarding my control panel/email with messages to buy a fixed I.P. for the website. I declined several times. Eventually the buggers flogged my card without me knowing and I had to just remove the ‘service’. Never used to be this way, but maybe stay away!?

Gia

5 — 

Much Better than Comparable Companies

Dreamhost is my all-time favorite web hosting site. I’ve tried other web hosting companies in the past such as 1&1 and MediaTemple, but I always seemed to have problems and the customer support for these companies was rather disappointing. However, with Dreamhost, I’ve never even needed to contact support for any reason because their service allows for such a seamless experience! Plus, they offer competitive prices so you don’t have to break the bank. I’m 100% satisfied with Dreamhost and now that I’ve discovered it, I’m never going to use any other web host. I’d highly recommend it to anyone interested!

Dallas

5 — 

Easy set-up, slow complete registration, smart-semi-slow support, and no worries

I started with Dreamhost in August 2016, been very happy with the service. Sign-up took a while with activation of the accounts and so on, but for a new, do-it-yourself developer their setup has been wonderful. I’m on the shared plan, paid $6 a month for a three-year deal, and haven’t looked back. The fact that I know millions of other sites are hosted takes a lot of my worries away: no scams, good support once you have a problem, and so on. It was easy to setup https for e-commerce, and their hosting stack is great for old-school PHP sites (mine). If you are a budding developer and want to get your own site up to show off and play with, this is where you want to be.

Khing E

3 — 

NOT SO GOOD FOR A BIG COMPANY

I work for a human resource company (viclawrence.com) based in Nigeria with over 5,000 outsourced staff. We have been using DreamHost for about 2 years now. The experience is not interesting.

First, we lost hundreds of emails with no valid explanation from dreamhost. Sending emails to all staff is a problem as individual email accounts cannot send more than 100 emails per hour. The announcement list which is an alternative for this bulk emailing does not support adding attachments while sending. Login issues sometimes occur.

None of these was an issue with our previous host.

Their uptime is great, really great. But their custom panel makes using the platform difficult especially for a company like ours.

I will recommend dreamhost for a small company company but definitely not for a big company with hundreds or thousands of staff.

David

1 — 

Worst Hosting Company You Could Use

STAY AWAY FROM THIS COMPANY. The hosting is absolutely horrible. They don’t provide technical support in a quick fashion. Literally if your business depends on dependable hosting DO NOT USE this company. We lost thousands of dollars due to constant issues with this company!

Mikey

5 — 

No cPanel, Hallelujah

Dreamhost’s custom control panel is a dream. With cPanel on other hosts, I always felt that there were mysterious files being made all over my account—things felt like they got cluttered and confusing quickly. Dreamhost’s panel doesn’t have as much going on, but it is transparent. I suppose their panel tries to be more of an automated sys admin rather than a webmaster, although they do still have some one-click installs and site builders.

Tatum

1 — 

Dreamhost is HORRIBLE

Dreamhost disabled my site, without warning, because they noticed a lot of bot activity. They disabled my site at 11pm and have not contacted me for 8 hours. Their support is horrible. You have to pay $9.95 if you want them to call you. (Hint... they don’t actually call.)

I cannot begin to express how angry I am with Dreamhost.

Sean

3 — 

Service is terrible

Terrible service. Website was down for over a week. No support number to call. All you can do is email or submit a trouble ticket while your company is bleeding money. They call you back, but if you’re away from your desk or on another call they won’t leave a voicemail. Their number comes up as anonymous so you can’t call them back. One of the supposed owners was emailing me. Didn’t work on a business day (Monday) so I had to wait yet another day before he would call me back. Then he was rude and nasty on the phone. After making me wait a week, he couldn’t understand why I was frustrated and kept making snarky comments. Don’t use them. Plenty of other options out there.

Peter

2 — 

Used to be Good

Been with Dreamhost since 2010, finally switched. They used to be rock solid, with fast and friendly support. I also liked that they were a local company.

Things have gone downhill, support is terrible, and the server outages got to be too much. Happily moved to a new comapny.

Dany P

5 — 

I really like Dreamhost

I’ve used Dreamhost for many years hosting my own domains and some for friends and family. I’m a developer with limited server admin knowledge and I find the control panel extremely helpful and easy to use. Whenever I’ve needed support I’ve got the answer I needed within a few hours although UK/US time difference affects the wait. One thing I love is that you can reply to their automated emails and support will get back to you directly – why can’t everyone do this? So much more customer friendly than “Do not reply” emails. The domain registration is simple but could be enhanced by allowing multiple domains to be registered simultaneously – maybe the answer is to prepay some money to my account? Overall I’m very satisfied although I am a probably a pretty light user of the service.

Danny H

5 — 

Exceptional quality and value

I have been using Dreamhost for about a year now, I moved over our 8 sites from our last host which was a WHM/VPS server.

The simplicity of running multiple domains and stores on Dreamhost is a breath of fresh air. You have to be willing to get used to their custom dashboard, but it is worth it.

I have heard complaints about the email system, which I cannot comment on as I use Google for Business instead of their servers.

I never write reviews, but I have been so impressed I wanted to so that others could have the confidence to give them a chance.

Pros: Speed, reliability, good support, ease of use
Cons: No phone support (which doesn’t matter to me)

Joel M

1 — 

Never again...

We recently moved from GoDaddy to Dreamhost after reading reviews about a lot of companies out there. With that, we chose DreamHost. I will start by saying, THE WORST IDEA EVER! If you are small company with maybe 5-10 employees. Great, use them. Anything bigger, would never recommend them to anyone. Their email is clunky, slow, and pounded with SPAM. Their filters are crap, their customer support is the worst, and the knowledge base (which they brag about) is meant for people that have a degree in Computer Science, not for the casual web user just starting out (which again, they brag about.) In the end, WORST DECISION EVER!

Treffiletti D

5 — 

Everything is perfect

I use Dreamhost services for many years now and have never had any issues that they are unable to solve.
Their systems are fast and efficient, very responsive and with many possibilities of configuration and customization for the experts, but with excellent guides that explain to beginners how to juggle.
The domain management panel, the spaces, the mailboxes and databases is very simple to use and contains useful function “One-Click Install” which allows you to configure in a few seconds the most common software like web forums, wiki, blogs, etc.

Finally, their customer service is one of the best in the world for any problem you contact them, there is always someone helpful and courteous ready to help you in the best way!

McLean

5 — 

My experience has been great...

I used Dreamhost to set up my personal website when I wanted to learn more about web development. I found a great deal (less than $10/month). Their managed WordPress option was surprisingly simple to set up and I love the fact it auto-updates WordPress so I don’t have to every couple of months.

About 1.5 years later I helped my friend make his personal website and I set him up with a Dreamhost account too. It had been a while since I did it and I was running into an issue installing WordPress on his hosting (an issue on my part, not theirs – I had simply forgotten how to do it). I had to contact customer support. I opted to do the chat support and my customer service person was able to point me in the right direction within probably 5 minutes.

As a comparison, I now manage my company’s website and their hosting provider is Godaddy, and when I have to deal with their support staff it usually takes a LOT of explaining so they fully understand the problem. This was not an issue at all with Dreamhost. Overall my experience with Dreamhost has been great with the minimal amount of features I take advantage of; I’m sure others would find its other features just as helpful and easy to use.

Dylan

5 — 

Reliable host, confusing pricing...

I’ve been with Dreamhost for 2 or 3 years now, and I’ve never had any problems with the hosting. It’s been fast and reliable, two things you expect most from a hosting provider.

Sean C

4 — 

OK for beginners; web vets, not so much

I signed up with Dreamhost a few years ago because it was cheaper than my then-current host, and because unlike said host, it offered Ruby On Rails, which I really wanted to learn.

Well… except that the version of RoR that Dreamhost supported was outdated and to this day has not been updated and requires user hacks to be able to use a current version — user hacks that may or may not work.

E-mail is a huge issue. Delays in receiving e-mails — especially over the web — can be a major hindrance, and Dreamhost can go weeks before resolving issues, or often be dismissive and say that they don’t see any signs of problems on their end.

E-mail filters leave much to be desired; unfortunately no way to block e-mails by top-level domain.

Matt L

5 — 

Long term betterment for small bucks

I’ve been with Dreamhost for 16 years, hosting multiple sites on a shared environment. I host multiple sites with multiple needs, from SMF to WordPress, archive file storage, and more. The flexibility is great. The customer service is top notch. The availability is high. And, added bonus, whenever there’s a better deal, they’ve lowered my fees to match.

Patricia W

5 — 

Most dependable hosting I've ever had

I started hosting 1 site at Dreamhost in February 2007, and this morning, April 18, 2015 I just hosted my 14th and 15th sites! I love the reliability of the support staff, the ease with which I can control certain features and the fact that in over 8 years I have had little to no downtime that I did not cause for myself.

The cost of the hosting plan that holds all 15 of my domains is so affordable and with multiple payment options I can always do what works best for me at the moment.

Tim J

5 — 

DreamHost is, well, a dream

I have hosted various websites with DreamHost for about one year, during which time I have dealt with many other hosts used by my clients. As an overall value, DreamHost is really hard to beat, even when stacked up against big name hosts like SiteGround and WP Engine. I can host unlimited sites, with unlimited storage, and unlimited free SSL certificates. Like I said, they’re hard to beat.

My experience with DreamHost’s customer support has always been top notch. If it’s a low priority issue, I’ll send an e-mail and they usually respond within a few hours. If it’s a higher priority issue then I open a live chat, which always connects me to a qualified tech within a couple minutes. One way or another, my issues (which have been very few) have been resolved promptly.

Keith M

5 — 

Thoughtful, intelligent support

I have a number of different sites in my Dreamhost account. I’ve hit problems here and there, mostly of my own making. The most telling example of the great support was when I needed to use a specific version of PHP for a particular experiment, one that Dreamhost had moved beyond as part of their normal process of keeping things up to date. The response I got was first the expected “we don’t offer older builds”, but then an unexpected “here’s how you can install it yourself”, followed by detailed specific instructions!

I’ve had similar experiences over the ten years I’ve been with Dreamhost; thoughtful consideration of the question followed by intelligent answers or suggestions. It’s not perfect, but this shows why it is actually very, very good.

Nat

5 — 

Customer for 8 years - great host

I’ve used Dreamhost over the last 8 years to casually host ~8 websites on shared hosting. This clocks in at about $200 per two years, which while is perhaps a little pricey for what I’m using it for, I always have the option of adding more sites whenever, switching to VPS/cloud etc.

Why I stick with Dreamhost mainly is because whenever I’ve had issues (my fault or otherwise) their support is fast and knowledgeable and can be relied upon to sort you out.

Good job Dreamhost!

Paulo A

5 — 

Best value for a developer's site hosting

At Dreamhost, the cheapest shared hosting plan offers the usual stuff all others do (phpmyadmin, databases, ftp, etc), plus unlimited domains, storage, bandwidth and 99.9% uptime.

Since I’m developer, one of the main pros is having SSH access (with tunnel support) along a good set of tools (e.g. git, java, gcc, crontab). That makes me a lot easier to manage sites, deploy, automate tasks and work on prototypes. When they find suspicious files they send a warning e-mail, and when the files are 100% sure malicious they are quarantined (and the user advised). The support staff is kind and really willing to help.

Highly recommend it to all my fellows developers. The panel interface is not brilliant but quite good compared to the majority.

John P

4 — 

A solid B+ host

I’ve been on Dreamhost since 2010, and I haven’t had any major problem over that time. The machine I’m on doesn’t appear to be oversold and when the migrated my sites to a newer server it was seamless. Their interface is a bit dated (some part look like they are straight out of the 90’s) and it’s sometimes difficult to find what you’re looking for.

They are generous with space, domains and bandwidth, and technically I’ve found it good. Some downside are I’ve found their support sometimes to be a little less knowledgeable than I would expect, and their backups aren’t the best.

Overall I would say they are a good hosting company that you can trust but they don’t meet the bar of outstanding.

Jérôme

5 — 

Value for money

I host around 20 sites/domains, and I chose Dreamhost 6 years ago, and I’m happy! They provide a very reliable hosting, with lots of services and options, for a simple price. Unlimited domains, one-click installs, I don’t give 100% rating because it will sounds strange, but 95% seems honest, regarding the services I used during 6 years. Support is always available, always smiling, and I never had to complain.

Robin W

5 — 

Great and easy to use hosting provider

I use DreamHost for my personal (and business) web hosting. Everything is always quickly set up.

I have used one-click installs for WordPress that have worked beautifully, as well as installed on my own (which meant, creating databases!) and that went smoothly too.

If I’ve ever had issues, DreamHost is always very attentive and quick to assist in any way they can. The price is a steal too.

Joe M

5 — 

Cheap and reliable. Highly recommended if you don't need Ruby

I’m using Dreamhost to host a few personal websites, my blog, and a couple of landing pages for mobile apps. I’ve been paying $10 per month for unlimited bandwidth and storage for nine years now. Their service is reliable, the admin panel is easy to use, and I’ve never had an issue with speed.

That said, it works best for WordPress or PHP websites. If you are looking to do host a Ruby on Rails site then turn elsewhere.

Hans S

4 — 

Host of dreams

I’ve used Dreamhost for 8 years. They were relatively inexpensive, but with new cloud providers, they have lost that edge. Their interface is outdated. But their core service is solid – a C+ service.

Richard

4 — 

Premium level service for a premium price...

I would like to start off by saying that the service (both, the actual servers & customer support) is excellent. That, though, comes at a somewhat premium price tag. As a student it’s hard to find a hosting provider that gives 100% of what I have to offer them in exchange. It’s 21’st century and I feel like the price we pay for a premium service today is a bit odd. I get it that people have to pay their bills, but so does everyone else as well.

Rob

5 — 

Good prices, OK hosting

I used Dreamhost for several years and never had any issues with downtime or outages. They offered loads of space and bandwidth, but their entire control panel system is all proprietary software. I was used to the industry standard of cPanel, but got used to their system eventually.

Their support teams were very responsive and quick to resolve minor issues and answer my questions. Additionally, their referral system allows you to offset the cost of your hosting, or even pay for it entirely.

Gezim

4 — 

Love the admin UI - don't love speed issues

I love how simple the Dreamhost makes to install WordPress, manage domains, or anything really. Their email support is quite good as well (if you choose the critical option when emailing).

I don’t love the speed of my sites and how they go down quite frequently... thought not for long. That’s the only reason I wouldn’t recommend Dreamhost.

Lewis P

5 — 

Great support, but lacking some features

I signed up to Dreamhost around 8 months ago, after being suggested by other friends in the design/development industry. I liked their modern interface (which is hard to come by compared to other hosts), which provided quick and easy access to the main features across their site. Their support is second to none, however the waiting times for a live chat session can sometimes peak at 15 minutes, which can be a little hectic if something goes wrong.

Their hosting services are speedy and their newly released one-click SSL certificates (courtesy of LetsEncrypt) make it very easy to get up and running securely and quickly.

Marco

4 — 

Great, but no cPanel...

I find Dreamhost to be a definite place for you to start your website endeavors. But it’s not perfect.

To start out, it provides an excellent speed coupled with a very reliable uptime that you can count on every single day of the week. It’s customer support isn’t bad as well, as they certainly know what they are doing.

And the good ends there. The price isn’t exactly targeted towards a very large customer base, and by that I mean that it may not be that expensive but there are cheaper web hosts out there. And the final thing that holds Dreamhost back is that fact that it is not very user friendly. Its' interface is complicated and it lacks key features and tools especially for a beginner. I just wish that it had a cPanel.