Want to go online with a bang? Think you can handle it all yourself? Wrong! There is already so much to tackle that outsourcing this responsibility will make life easier.
For this, looking for a server is the toughest task at hand, because your website is as good as the host you hire. Reason being, it is a dedicated server for WordPress sites.
Moreover, it is one of the best web hosting service in that is recommended by WordPress itself. That speaks a lot for their quality, doesn’t it? We've put together this Dreamhost review and researched so you don't have to.
DreamHost Review – Learn More About it
Founded in 1996, DreamHost has quickly climbed the stairs of success. The reason is pretty simple, consistent performance over the years. In two decades, they have more than 400k customers and hosts more than 1.5 million websites worldwide. Phew, that is a lot, isn’t it?
Packages and Services– What Does It Offer?
Whenever you search online for the best web hosting services for WordPress sites, the first name to pop up is DreamHost.
The reason is simple. They offer the best features for the lowest price, hence lead the market when it comes to providing the best hosting packages. The four types are as follows:
- Shared Hosting
- VPS Hosting
- Dedicated Hosting
- Cloud Hosting
- WordPress Hosting
Shared Hosting
DreamHost is a market leader when it comes to shared hosting. So, if you are looking to make a website and don’t want to spend a lot of money, this plan is best for you. Unlike the others, Dreamhost offers unlimited email accounts, free domains, bandwidth and storage.
For WordPress users, you get one-click installations and pre-installed options. Nice, isn’t it? Shared hosting is for smaller websites which expect less traffic. They offer different shared hosting plans to choose from.
VPS Hosting
If your website is getting more traffic, you can upgrade to the VPS hosting plan. Every website has a specific number of resources allocated to them and they are fewer websites sharing the same server.
Dreamhost offers 4 Linux-based hosting plans for VPS. With this, you get unlimited domains and monthly data transfer. The basic plan starts for as little as $13.75/month.
Dedicated Hosting
If you think your website is going to get high and unexpected traffic spikes, dedicated hosting is a good option to go for. The server is entirely yours and you can leverage all the resources yourself. Hence, the site is seldom down.
Of course, it is priced higher than the other plans. The standard plan starts from $169/month.
Cloud Hosting
Unlike traditional hosting plans, cloud hosting spreads the resources for a single website over multiple servers. In this way, you can always increase consumption whenever the need arises. It has 3 plans that provide from 512 MB – 8 GB RAM. The plans start from $4.50/month.
WordPress Hosting
Dreamhost also offers special plans for hosting WordPress websites. Best of all, DreamHost also offers Managed WordPress Hosting for people who don’t want to take any headache of managing their website. The price range varies as follows:
- VPS WordPress Hosting - $13.75
- Shared WordPress Hosting - $3.95
- Managed WordPress Hosting - $16.95
Are you still confused? No issues. You can easily avail the option of going with the website builder. Yes, leave all your hassles aside. There are multiple options you can choose from. All you need to do is to drag and drop options and your website is up and running in a matter of minutes.
Pros of Using DreamHost – How Does It Stand Out from the Rest?
If you look at other DreamHost reviews, you will get to know they have so much to offer. Apart from the initial introductory price, the renewal price is also one of the lowest in the market.
Loading Time – How Fast Does It Go?
When it comes to website loading speed, it needs to be quick. All the high-end hosts offer load speeds of less than one second. Yes, this means that a website should load in less than a blink of the eye. Otherwise, you may lose traffic.
DreamHost offers an average load speed of 648 ms. This quick load speed is one of the best being offered in the market right now. Even though they did have their little ups and downs recently, they have been consistent with this load time for some time now.
Affordable Prices – Know What You Pay For
First of all, the prices are very economical to start with. The basic shared hosting plans start from $2.59/month. Mostly, you can see that the web hosts offer some introductory price for a few months and once your initial package ends; the renewal is on the new price.
Other hosts charge anything from$7-$10. This increases the price of the package significantly and you end up paying much more than you anticipate. But, with DreamHost, this is not the case. There is no renewal price. You don’t even have to pay a penny extra when you renew the package.
This gives you high transparency and you know EXACTLY how much you are paying for the services you will avail. Hence, you hardly go out of budget and there are no surprises with DreamHost.
100 Guaranteed Uptime – It Does Not Get Better Than This
Uptime is the time your site is up and running. The higher the uptime, the better the web hosting service. You will hardly come across any host that provides a 100% guaranteed uptime. The market average is 99.99%.
Again, DreamHost has left everyone behind and offers a 100% guaranteed uptime. This means your website will NEVER be down. NEVER! They even go ahead and offer a simple solution: you get one day of credit for every hour of downtime.
The catch here is that your downtime is calculated from the time you open a ticket till the time the issue is resolved. Moreover, it is applied in the next plan you renew and not right away! They have a solid average uptime of around 99.94%.
Control Panel – The Holy Grail
DreamHost plays solo. They do not depend on external control panels like Plesk or cPanel. They have their system. Their proprietary panel is free in each plan you opt for and provides the same functions like cPanel etc.
The only downside to it is that it does not allow you to migrate automatically from cPanel to their panel. You will have to do it manually and that can be tedious.
If you don’t want to go through all this hassle, just pay $99 and DreamHost will do it for you. For the higher end plans, this is offer is free.
Data Centers – Where Are They Located?
If you are located in America, this is the best for you. They have data centers located along the West and East Coast of the USA. For people near these locations, there is no lag. On the other hand, for users away from these locations, they can face lag issues.
Customer Service – How Good Is the Support Team?
No doubt, DreamHost is a great web hosting server. Still, there are times when you need to contact tech support. It can be for anything.
Maybe you are not facing any technical difficulties and just need to upgrade your plan. Therefore, customer supports play a big role in the performance of a web host.
Dreamhost support could easily be one of the best if they did not lack one important element; Phone support. Sadly, they do not offer any phone support.
On the other hand, the excellent chat support compensates for the lack of phone support. We tried the chat support on Wednesday afternoon and the weekend got an instant reply on both occasions.
Money-Back Guarantee – They Got Your Back
All the hosts we have tried till now (which are more than 40) offer a 30-day money-back guarantee. Some even went so far as to give a 45-day money-back guarantee.
DreamHost has broken all records and offers a whopping 97-day money-back guarantee. Wow! That is a solid 3-month money-back guarantee.
Best of all, there are no hidden terms and conditions associated with the guarantee. The dealings are crystal clear. They even tell you beforehand under what conditions your refund will not be allowed.
If you haven’t paid on credit card ONLY the original amount will be refunded. You will not be liable for any refund on additional features you buy like another web hosting service.
No Carbon Footprint – As Green as Can Be
DreamHost tops the list of “Green Web Hosts” their data centers are high-efficiency and they produce and use renewable energy. Hence, they have a very low carbon footprint.
Not only are their data centers following the “Go Green” policy, but the offices have also incorporated HVAC systems to make them energy efficient.
Other features include:
- One-click installers for WordPress
- Easy account setup
- Free domain for the 1st year
- Automatic Backups
- Unlimited storage and disk space
- Free email address.
- Pre-installed WordPress
- MY SQL
No Need To Buy Add-ons
You don’t have to buy any more add-ones. The basic plans are enough for a small website and that is all you need!
It offers the best prices you can find in the market. Moreover, for the features they are offering, you will not get the same price anywhere.
Discounts
They frequently offer different discounts and special prices you can avail.
Security
They offer a lot of security features like Multi-Factor Authentication, SSL certificates, SFTP and free secure hosting because of the Let’s Encrypt option.
Cons – What Does It Lack in?
Every coin has two sides. Similarly, we have included the cons in our DreamHost Review (We had to dig a lot to come up with these cons, we could find any)
No Phone Support
As we have already mentioned, Dreamhost does not have any phone support. For some people, this may seem a big issue, but we were pretty okay with that. The chat support is fair enough. But again, it is only available from 5:30 AM till 9:30 PM Pacific Time.
Less Data Centers
They do not have data centers worldwide. Even though they do have enough data centers inside the USA to cater to the entire continent, the European and other customers can face latency issues.
Complicated Control Panel
Unlike the other hosts that offer cPanel, DreamHost has come up with their control panel. Many people won’t even think of this as a problem.
But, for people who are migrating from some other host, things can become a little complicated. There is no option of importing the.tar.gz files. This means you can’t automatically migrate your data from cPanel to DreamHost. All of the migration processes need to be handled manually.
This can be a BIG hassle for people who have well-established websites. DreamHost has a solution for this also. All you need to do is hire them and they can do all this for you at a very minimal free. Interesting, isn’t it?
Our Final Verdict
Do we recommend DreamHost? Yes. Without a doubt. We have covered all the pros and con in this DreamHost review.
It offers an amazing 100% guaranteed uptime, excellent performance and very quick page loading times. From unlimited bandwidth to unmetered disk space, the basic plans offer a lot of features which other hosts don’t.
Another outstanding feature is the transparency they have in all the dealings. They don’t even charge any renewal fees when you renew your package.
Apart from the lack of phone support and fewer data centers around the world, DreamHost is one of the best servers you can find.
If you are specifically looking for a server to host your WordPress websites, DreamHost is recommended by WordPress itself. It can’t get better than this, can it?
So, what are you waiting for?
Go ahead and pick your plan today!
