DreamHost Web Hosting Review- Is It Fast And Reliable?
Have you searched for hosting and found DreamHost or just simply came to know and want a detailed DreamHost hosting review, you are in the right place.
In this article, we are going deep into the features of DreamHost and its plans and pricing. So, let’s get started.
About DreamHost:
There are very few webs hosting companies as old as DreamHost. Even companies such as GoDaddy, Bluehost, and HostGator are widely popular which are contemporaries, nevertheless, DreamHost is less known to most people.
The Los Angeles-based company started its journey in1996. Since then, they are offering their world-class services.
According to the company they have their footprints in over 100 countries across the globe and have over 400k customers. The company offers various features that make it preferable for all these huge numbers of customers. Let’s see the hosting plans the company offers to the customers.
Now let’s have a look at the hosting solution of DreamHost.
DreamHost web hosting features:
Before going for the plans, it is important to understand the features of DreamHost hosting solutions. Below we are highlighting some of its notable features.
Custom Control panel:
Once you have your hosting, you need to know, how to connect your website with it and that is the first thing. After that, your second and continuous task starts; managing the website. But, managing a website is not an easy thing. To do so, you will need to know the commands. Otherwise, a controlling dashboard is required. DreamHost offers a custom control panel that will help you manage your website and its other hosting options. As per your preference, you can manage the panel.
SSD storage:
Nowadays most hosting providers offer solid-state drives for space. These are way faster compared to HDDs and DreamHost does not let you down on that too. They offer SSD for all of their hosting solution. The speed and performance of your website rely on every aspect. Using the SSD as the disk space truly boosts up the performance of your website. It reduces the loading time and quickly transfers the data to visitors.
100% uptime guarantee:
While you are making your decision on which hosting provider you should be going a major aspect you should look at is the uptime and downtime of the company. All the good web host companies offer uptime above 99% and above 99 percent is considered good website uptime. Surprisingly DreamHost offers an unbelievable 100% uptime. Can you imagine? They are committing to keeping your website up and running all the time. That is really impressive and quite unique because big players such as HostGator, Bluehost, and others are unable to do so. According to the company, they have multiple data centers, redundant cooling, emergency generators, and constant monitoring which help them offer customers 100% uptime.
Award-winning customer support:
Another aspect that is most important to check for a customer is customer support. For a web hosting service, customer support is crucial because online businesses should be up and running 24×7 and technical issues might take place anytime. So, once you encounter any error you would probably look for support. Thanks to DreamHost, they have an award-winning support team that is very supportive.
97 days money back guarantee:
With DreamHost another plus point is you get a 97-day money-back guarantee that is also quite exceptional. Typically, companies offer a 30 to 45 days money-back policy. During the period if you don’t like their service, you could easily take a step back and get the refund that you have paid. DreamHost is giving you 97 days to completely be sure whether you are fully satisfied with their service or not. So, if you are giving try to their service, we don’t think it won’t take long to experience their service and performance properly.
DreamHost hosting services:
DreamHost offers 5 types of web hosting solutions that are widely used. They are as follows,
- Shared hosting.
- VPS hosting.
- Managed WordPress hosting.
- Dedicated servers.
- Cloud hosting.
Let’s explore in detail each hosting plan and its features.
All the plans come in monthly, annual, and triennial prices. If you want to grab the lowest price of each plan you have to go with the initial three-year subscription. Before you purchase any of their plans, one thing you should be looking at is,
DreamHost shared hosting:
Shared hosting, is the most used hosting on the internet because of its affordability. If you are a beginner wanting to start your new blog or looking to start a lightweight website, most likely you would choose the shared hosting plans. It’s cheap and offers less power and features.
DreamHost shared hosting features:
Unlimited bandwidth and storage:
With any DreamHost shared hosting plan you get unlimited bandwidth and storage options. So, if your website suddenly gets a huge amount of traffic, it won’t be unavailable because you have unlimited bandwidth. Besides, you can store a big amount of data because the same unlimited feature is available with the storage too.
Intuitive Panel:
DreamHost offers a clear and easy-to-understand panel that is extremely helpful to manage your whole website. Apart from operating the website, you can create new email accounts, secure your website with SSL certificates, install WordPress, and many more. All from the simple and easy-to-understand dashboard.
One-click installs:
For newbies starting their first-ever website from scratch might be quite overwhelming. That’s the reason, DreamHost allows you to install various apps to your host with just a simple click.
Free domain:
Free domain is also a feature that most hosting companies are offering to their customers and thankfully DreamHost does not let you down here too. With any shared hosting plan, you get a free domain.
Free email address:
You can create your own professional email address. There are many platforms where you can grab your own custom email address but they charge and sometimes the charges could be high enough. DreamHost offers free webmail that states your business or website. Business email gains more trust compared to free email service.
Free privacy protection:
Privacy is a major concern for the internet nowadays. If you cannot safeguard your privacy online, you might end up losing your vital information to spammers and hackers. There are various tools that help you protect your privacy and misuse it by hackers. Privacy protection is a must-have feature for website owners that hides the actual information of the website owner. This feature is actually a paid service but DreamHost offers it to all its users for free. You do not have to spend any extra penny to avail yourself of that security feature.
Free SSL:
SSL stands for the secure sockets layer and shows up as a green lock when you visit a website. SSL-enabled websites are considered more secure compared to those that haven’t. If your site does not have any SSL, when someone visits your site, they are likely to see a warning that your site is not safe to visit and may be potentially dangerous. Like privacy protection, SSL is also a paid service that is offered by hosting companies. There are different types of SSL certification according to your website genre and purpose. DreamHost offers even with the lowest shared hosting plan a free SSL.
Automatic backups:
Where there is a technical portion present, anything wrong can happen. Whether you are integrating a new plugin or changing coding or something wrong done and your website won’t be the same again. But it can be in a couple of minutes if you have a backup of your website. Keeping your website backup is very crucial if you are running a business. Backups actually keep a copy of your website in a separate safe place.
In case, if your website faces anything wrong, you can use the backup and when you restore, your website is in the same place. Website backup is a paid and costly service. As per your website size and the contents on it, your backup cost rises. However, DreamHost offers free website backup for all shared hosting plans.
These are some highlighted features that DreamHost offers to users. Below, let’s see the plans.
Shared hosting plans in DreamHost:
If we go for the cheapest hosting, DreamHost offers two shared hosting plans which are quite good for starting a website whether it is based on WordPress or not.
Shared Starter:
That is the cheapest option one can find on DreamHost which is suitable for one website and comes with pre-installed WordPress. The aforementioned features are all included in this plan. With this plan, you can only integrate one website and if you want to add email, you have to pay $1.67 per month. This plan is only for the starters who haven’t their website before and have a very cheap budget.
Shared starter pricing:
The best price option you can have is, $2.59 per month if you pay for three years at once. The yearly plan attracts a price of $2.95 per month. The monthly price of the plan is $4.95 per month which is expensive and lacks features. So, if you are really on a tight budget, it’s better to choose the yearly or three plan so that you can avail of the least expensive plan.
Shared Unlimited:
If you could manage to raise your budget a little bit more, you can opt-in for the Shared Unlimited plan which gives you more features and more power. The Shared Starter plan is only for one website but As the name suggests, the Shared Unlimited plan can host unlimited websites, and additionally, you can get your own domain email for free. The features are quite the same.
Shared Unlimited Pricing:
The three-year initial plan can be availed of at $3.95 per month whereas the yearly plan costs $2.95 per month. If you go for the monthly plan, you have to pay $8.95 per month.
So, if you have made up your mind to start with the shared hosting plans, it’s better to go for the three-year initial plans. That will save you a lot of money indeed.
Moving on, if your requirement is higher and cannot be fulfilled by the shared hosting, you can go for the VPS.
DreamHost VPS hosting:
VPS stands for virtual private server and is perfectly suitable for people who want to make their application or a website that gains a considerable number of visitors. Besides the enhanced features, VPS offers more privacy and security to the users. DreamHost VPS hosting offers some excellent and powerful features that are extremely helpful
DreamHost VPS Hosting features:
If you are wondering whether you should be trying DreamHost VPS hosting or not then the below features might help you take your decision.
Scalable RAM:
You might have heard of the expandable virtual RAM feature on some latest smartphones and the same functionality can be availed if you choose DreamHost VPS, hosting plans. For the basic, you are offered 1 GB of RAM. But in case, you require more resources as well as RAM, you don’t need to worry. You can extend your RAM easily.
Unlimited bandwidth:
Once you select any of the VPS plans, you don’t need to worry about bandwidth. There are no caps on bandwidth usage. In case your website experiences a sudden traffic increase, your visitors won’t get any problems visiting your site.
Reseller and sub-account features:
If you have deep knowledge of managing web hosting and servers, why not use it to resell hosting? A VPS hosting contains lots of power and resources. You can even create many websites on a Shared Unlimited hosting plan. With VPS hosting, you can actually create so many websites. You can sell your VPS space to people and earn money from there. To make that simple, DreamHost offers reselling and Sub account features.
Pro-level VPS control panel:
If you are operating VPS, you are going to need a much clear and more intuitive dashboard. The DreamHost control panel is straightforward and simple.
Unlimited email accounts:
With a VPS hosting plan, you can create as many email accounts as you want. If you are running a business with your website, lots of people might be involved with it. For each post, you can create an email account for them.
Unlimited MySQL databases:
DreamHost offers unlimited MYSQL databases. Customers get a VPS option pre-configured to offer an optimized MySQL experience. Users can easily control their control panel.
DreamHost offers four different types of VPS hosting plans such as,
- VPS Basic.
- VPS Business.
- VPS Professional.
- VPS Enterprise.
VPS Basic:
VPS Basic is the entry-level VPS hosting plan in DreamHost. It is suitable for small and new businesses. It offers 1GB RAM, and 30GB SSD storage.
VPS Business:
If your business is set but still small in size, you can try the VPS Business plan. This plan offers double resources;2GB RAM, and 60GB SSD storage.
VPS Professional:
If your requirement is quite big means your site requires more power and resource, the VPS Professional might be a good fit. 4GB of RAM and 120kGB of SSD storage makes this plan suitable for almost all heavy usage.
VPS Enterprise:
The most powerful and resourceful VPS hosting plan offered by DreamHost is the VPS Enterprise which offers 8GB RAM and 240GB SSD storage. If you are thinking about something big on a limited budget, this plan is for you.
DreamHost dedicated hosting plans:
Dedicated hosting or servers are the most powerful and resourceful option you can have to build your own website or application. Dedicated hosting is actually the whole server. If you go for VPS or shared hosting, they are actually situated on a server. But when you need a huge amount of storage, privacy, security, and performance, you choose the Dedicated servers.
DreamHost dedicated hosting features:
The features that attract people towards DreamHost dedicated hosting are,
100% uptime guarantee:
One of the most important reasons people would like to give a try to DreamHost dedicated hosting is its claim of 100% uptime. No matter how reputed and old a hosting company is, they take a little time to maintain its service. But, not with the DreamHost. Once your website is live with its hosting, it remains uninterrupted.
24×7 support:
Servers are way more complex machines situated in a physical place by the company. You only get access to the server with an internet connection. You can manage the whole thing through your computer by sitting anywhere in the world. But, as the machine is so sophisticated, it might face trouble. Anything wrong can happen. So, you would require a responsible and supportive team. Thankfully DreamHost has a team of experts who always monitor your servers from their end so that you don’t face any issues.
Raid 1 Storage:
Raid 1 storage is mainly used to mirror data. That creates the same files in two or more disks and is extremely helpful for higher performance. Also, when your precious data is stored on more disks, it becomes safer.
DDoS protection:
Internet technology has become very advanced and so the spammers and hackers. To safeguard your server and website, DreamHost offers DDoS protection that prevents bot traffic from hitting your website. Spammers use AI technologies to continuously hit your website and make it down as too many requests at a time can make your website unavailable. The DDoS protection is a security feature that you might need to buy from somewhere else but you get it directly at DreamHost.
Reseller and sub-account feature:
Like the VPS hosting, users can easily resell and create sub-accounts. You can sell your server web space by dividing them into shared hosting.
There are many more features that you can have with the DreamHost dedicated hosting plans.
Now let’s have a look at the dedicated server plans.
DreamHost dedicated hosting plans:
There are mainly two server options according to the features,
- Standard.
- Enhanced.
However, according to your RAM and storage requirements, you get a couple more options to choose and no need to mention as your requirements grow so grows the cost.
So, let’s get started from the,
Standard:
The standard dedicated hosting offers 4GB RAM, 1TB HDD, Raid 1 Storage, Intel Xeon 4-Core 8-Thread, and more at $149 per month when you pay yearly. However, if you go for the monthly plan, you have to pay $169 per month.
If you choose the 8GB or 16GB RAM, you have to pay $189 and $229 per month respectively.
Enhanced:
As the name suggests, if your requirements are higher, you can choose the Enhanced plans. The basic 16GB RAM and 2TB HDD server cost $279 per month with an initial 12-month pay. The Enhanced plans offer a 12-Core processor and allow you to choose RAM up to 64GB.
If you choose the highest 240GB SSD and 64GB plan, you have to pay $379 per month. Other technical specs are quite the same as the Standard plan.
There are other plans too like
- 32GB RAM and 2TB HDD.
- 64GB RAM 2TB HDD.
- 16GB RAM 240GB SSD.
- 32GB RAM 240GB SSD.
DreamHost Managed WordPress Hosting:
No doubt WordPress is the most popular CMS around the world and for so many reasons. That’s why web hosting companies offer people WordPress-ready hosting where they especially ad some features, security, and performance-related tools for WordPress sites.
DreamHost offers an excellent managed WordPress hosting service that gives neck-to-neck competition to others in the market.
DreamHost Managed WordPress hosting features:
To offer users much speed and performance, DreamHost offers these features to users.
Built-in cache:
The cache is a clever technology that offers higher speed to a visitor. To put it simply they contain a temp file. Once you visit a website, all website content gets loaded to your browser. So, as you start reading the above section, the middle and bottom section is already loaded. So, when you scroll down, you don’t face any loadings. There are many cache plugins that enable website owners to offer higher speed to visitors but DreamHost has its own cache system.
One-click staging:
A reason people choose WordPress over other CMSs is the huge availability of plugins. No matter what your purpose is, you find plugins for every need. But, trying them on your site might be sometimes overwhelming because once you install them and if it does not meet your expectation, you need to again uninstall it. But DreamHost offers an excellent option of one-click stagging by which you can check a plugin without installing it on your website directly.
Robust backups:
Backups are an important part of your website security which restores your website in case it faces any problem. According to the size of your website, the backup costs vary. DreamHost offers backups for your WordPress website.
Auto WordPress updates:
Auto updates allow you to only focus on your part. Once you create your WordPress site with DreamHost, you don’t need to think about the rest of your part. When updates come to WordPress, you don’t need to take back focus from creating business strategies or awesome content.
From beginner to intermediate, there are three WordPress hosting plans you can choose for your WordPress site.
- WordPress Basic.
- DreamPress.
- VPS for WordPress.
WordPress Basic:
Like the shared hosting plans, in WordPress hosting there are two plans. WordPress Starter and WordPress Unlimited. The Starter plan is suitable for one WordPress site while the other is for unlimited sites. The Strater plan starts at $2.59 per month on the other hand the Unlimted plan costs $3.95 per month.
Dreampress:
The DreamPress plans are perfect to power up a WordPress site that is constantly improving and getting new visitors. There are three DreamPress plans you can choose from.
DreamPress:
It starts at a price of $16.95 per month and offers 30GB SSD storage and is capable of serving up to monthly 100k visitors.
DreamPress Plus:
This plan starts at $24.95 per month and can handle monthly 300k visitors. It offers 60GB of SSD storage.
DreamPress Pro:
This plan is for WordPress sites that need much higher performance and gets huge traffic into it. This plan can support monthly 1 million visitors and offer120GB SSD storage.
WordPress VPS hosting:
If you are looking to start a business on your WordPress site, you may consider trying the VPS hosting plans. DreamHost offers four VPS hosting plans.
- VPS Basic.
- VPS Business.
- VPS Professional.
- VPS Enterprise.
VPS Basic:
This plan offers 1GB of RAM and 30GB of SSD storage. The starting price of this plan is $10 per month.
VPS Business:
This plan is for small businesses and offers 2GB RAM, and 60GB SSD storage, and comes at a starting price of $20 per month.
VPS Professional:
This plan is suitable for resource-intensive sites where you get 4GB of RAM, and 120GB of SSD storage. The plan starts at a price of $40 per month.
VPS Enterprise:
That is the most expensive VPS hosting solution for WordPress sites offered by DreamPress. If you are running a big business or get tons of traffic to your site each month, you can embrace this plan. It provides 8GB RAM, and 240GB of SSD storage and the starting price is $80 per month.
DreamHost cloud hosting:
Cloud hosting is the next-generation hosting solution that is scalable. With traditional hosting after the configuration, you cannot change its specifications. But with cloud hosting, you can increase or decrease your hosting. You can upgrade the RAM, storage, as well as other components.
You get full root access to the cloud servers and install whatever operating system you wish.
If you are looking to host a website a cloud hosting in DreamHost, you can choose the Cloud Computing 2GB RAM server which costs max $12 per month. The 8GB RAM server which is ideal for databases can cost you up to $48 per month.
DreamHost is no doubt one of the best hosting providers on the market right now. Their 97 days’ money-back policy and 100% uptime are truly unbeatable. So, if you are looking to start a website and wondering which hosting company would be best, you can try DreamHost.
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