DreamHost is a website hosting service with features such as managed VPS hosting, public cloud computing, and dedicated servers. Managed options include WordPress with the DreamPress upgraded service with staging and coaching, WooCommerce hosting, as well as dedicated server hosting.
$3.95
per month
Namecheap
Score 9.6 out of 10
N/A
Namecheap is a website domain name service offering providing easy domain name registration, and affordable hosting plans.
$5.98
per year
Network Solutions
Score 1.3 out of 10
N/A
Network Solutions is a website domain name registration service that offers no-code website, hosting, and security for hosted websites. It includes services of the former iPage (acquired in late 2025), which was simply folded into Network Solutions.
IT Specialist, Legal Videographer, Marketing Specialist
Chose DreamHost
Dreamhost had previously been a significant upgrade over our previous host, Arvixe. We switched after repeated technical issues and cutbacks of the Arvixe staff forced us to move quickly, and Dreamhost accommodated us tremendously. Performance-wise they compare well with GoDaddy…
Namecheap is leagues above Network Solutions in terms of UI experience and online support. Network Solutions lack of cPanel and access to databases really limits the ability to customize and take control of the website you need to make for your business. Network Solutions has a …
Namecheap is the best. Best price. Best service. Best UI. Best documentation. Best customer services. What impresses me the most about Namecheap is that they are there to do one thing really well. And they do it excellently. Unless something drastically changes, I will be a …
Namecheap wins hands down on cost and ease of use. I have experienced zero compromise with using Namecheap. There was no trade-off to enjoy the cost savings. Namecheap does everything the other registrars do and more in some cases.
Prior to using Namecheap, I had primarily used GoDaddy or Network Solutions. However, both companies sites and service left a lot to be desired. Outside of winning on price, in some cases, Namecheap's offering is far better in every aspect than what GoDaddy has to offer. And in …
IT Specialist, Legal Videographer, Marketing Specialist
Chose Namecheap
Namecheap is great in that they don't try to up-sell you like so many companies. My limited experience with Bluehost was notorious for them trying to pile on add-ons and features that, even after I cancelled my accounts with them, auto-renewed years later. Namecheap is …
Dreamhost was previously a great web host with reliable service and top-notch features, but I can no longer recommend them. If you're looking for web hosting on a Linux platform (such as running PHP or platforms like Wordpress, Jooma, or Drupal), with simple pricing services, then this is the great service for you. One big downside is lack of phone customer support. This is especially frustrating because of their many issues the last few weeks, which aren't easily resolved or addressed by their team.
Namecheap is the absolute best domain registrar that I have used, and I have used just about all of the big names. They are priced right; they offer excellent customer service, their FAQs and documentation are excellent. They don’t spam you with offers for things you don’t want, and they don’t have misleading practices like hiding that the first-year fee is 1/10 of the regular annual cost. They don’t try to sneak in a change to your bill and charge you for multiple years when you’ve already set it to a one-year renewal. The only negative of Namecheap is its brand name. I have had a few raised eyebrows when I have told executives that we are using Namecheap. It doesn’t sound like a professional service. It sounds like a consumer service. This is terrible because they are the MOST professional service and reliable service of all the services I work with on a daily basis.
My experience with using Network Solutions hasn't been great. At best, it has almost feature parity with its competitors at a higher price. But when you tack on all the minor annoyances of being given interstitial ads for their other products or discount offers when logging in or performing a transfer, the all too common bugs where a feature doesn't work, and in my experience support takes at least a half-hour to understand your problem before even attempting to fail at a resolution. It just isn't worth it in my opinion. Go with a service with better support, features, security, and lower price.
Domain registration is easy. This is big because when finding the perfect domain name, you have to do a lot of domain checking to see what is available. Namecheap not only makes this easy, but they recommend other domains that you might like instead, if the one you want is taken. They also allow you to sell domains and buy premium domains from other sellers if they are already registered to them.
Free Whois Guard & privacy. This is HUGE. All those annoying phone calls and emails you get the second you register a domain, they will stop when you start using NameCheap to register your domains. This is because they provide free Whois and domain privacy with all domains, for the life of the domain as long as it is registered with them. I love this and it is a huge selling point.
Easy updating and management of domains. This is a must. At many time, I need to update the nameservers of multiple domains at once. Namecheap makes it extremely easy to do this and allows for bulk updating. Things also seem to propagate quicker than other domain providers.
There appears to be no cPanel. This is something that is standard across just about every hosting company and it makes it easy to quickly find what you're looking for however I have not been able to find one in iPage. This makes it a less than attractive option for me.
Very slow tech support. Getting someone on the phone takes ages and then once they do put in a ticket for you, it might be weeks until the problem gets resolved. Really unsatisfactory in this regard.
We have every intention of staying with Dreamhost, but we are a tad concerned with the company's recent involvement in high profile litigation and controversial topics. While we don't take a position one way or another on what type of content they should host, one concern we have is that repeated attacks on their infrastructure have caused significant downtime during business hours for us, and that's something we'll have to take into consideration going forward.
Personally I find it really easy to use and getting everything set-up and sorted is no problem at all, from initial account set-up and purchasing to the technical aspects required
The backend for managing your domain is very easy to work thru once you learn where everything is and what it is for if you want to do it yourself. The company has toll free phone support 24/7 that can also make changes for you if you are away from your desktop or have an emergency situation where you can't make the change yourself. This is peace of mind knowing that there is help out there should you need it. You don't have to learn the backend if you want to have the Network Solutions customer support team help you. They are secure and won't make changes for anyone who calls, they authenticate you for your protection every time
Whether we're calling in on the phone, live chatting or emailing, we get immediate high-quality, native English-speaking support. This cannot be overstated when it comes to hosting, because support tickets are usually time sensitive and high stress. I've always had great experiences with the limited times we've needed to use DreamHost support. We've dealt with support for many other providers and no one comes close to DreamHost.
We very rarely have to reach out to customer support because the service is so quick, easy and intuitive to use. But when we have had to use it, the customer service was quick, reliable, answered our questions and addressed our problems without too much back and forth, and was native English speaking.
For the most part I've had excellent interactions with the customer support team I've dealt with at Network Solutions. When I've needed help with something like Wordpress, it hasn't always worked out so well but you can pay their techs for 1 on 1 help with these offerings, you just won't have the support for free. I've often been talked to on upsells for services that I particularly didn't need and found the offers to be annoying when the agents kept pushing me on an upsell instead of addressing my issue. It's hit or miss on that, perhaps it depends on the department you speak with.
We've tried a few other WordPress-specific hosts, as well as other shared hosting providers (Rackspace, WPEngine, and others). We have found that DreamHost gives the best balance of cost, performance, and features, for our needs. All vendors have their own pitfalls and shortcomings, and DreamHost isn't without its own, but it works for us.
Namecheap wins hands down on cost and ease of use. I have experienced zero compromise with using Namecheap. There was no trade-off to enjoy the cost savings. Namecheap does everything the other registrars do and more in some cases.
Based on my experience to date, I would rate Network Solutions easily at the bottom of the list. I have not previously and would not select Network Solutions, but have worked with it as related to sites and clients previously set up there.
The service can really be a positive value with its very solid performance and lack of downtime issues found with other services.
For those with limited hosting or web development knowledge, the service can be a challenge to fully utilize. Sometimes this may mean additional training.
The service also provides a number of expansion opportunities for growing with greater functionalities.
Namecheap has saved us hundreds of dollars a year on services that we were required to pay extra for by NetworkSolutions that Namecheap provides for free.
Namecheap has made managing our domains simpler, saving us dozens of labor hours a year.
Namecheap has encouraged us to experiment with new domain names to see which ones work best. We couldn’t do this with our previous registrars because it was too hard to change from one domain to another.
