DreamHost vs. RWS Tridion Sites

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.

Incentivized

Love the product and I really like how we use it for public sites. The only negative aspect is that it is just hard to find Tridion devs that understand the tool, grasp .net, react, and understand the blueprint, etc.

• Customer service is industry-best. We've never had a problem that wasn't solved by them almost immediately.
• Their dashboard is extremely easy to use and doesn't cause any confusion at all.
• Their website speeds are good but not great. In an age when speed is important, they are good enough, especially for the price.
• They have a great backup feature.

Incentivized

• Makes it easy to spin up a new site quickly
• Allows for numerous users to work on the same site without conflicting with each other's changes
• Allows you to unpublish changes or revert to old versions if you make a mistake
• Allows you to time publishing actions (for example, you can set it to happen overnight)

Incentivized

• They could have better deploy solutions for not so experienced users
• More integration with external services to automate some tasks
• Better ways to track hosting performance
• The user management could be easier to understand

Incentivized

• Tridion is complicated in enough ways that it makes it difficult to train new users. Therefore, we have to limit the number of people with access to the system since we have not yet implemented Workflow.
• When something goes wrong (items fail to publish, or there is unexpected behavior with components), there is little explanation provided that would point us in the right direction to troubleshoot. As a result, content Authors and Editors have to frequently ask for IT assistance.

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.

Incentivized

I am giving this a semi-high rating because we have already got Tridion up and running and we are still in the process of moving the sites over to Tridion. It is unlikely we will be moving things to a new CMS AGAIN in the near future as the cost to get Tridion was high.

The editor user interface is very user friendly and in-site editing makes simple updates fast and easy. The extensibility of Tridion is a big plus and the ability to add our own options into the default Tridion interface helps us integrate with external systems. Finally, the user permissions and security system helps us deploy it within our large organization.

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

It is a nuclear missile compared to the other handguns and knives on the market today. But it also requires nuclear technicians and expertise that a handgun doesn't require. Do you need to decimate your competition and you have the investment capabilities necessary to put a nuclear missile into the sky? Then definitely do it. Especially if you need a very good multi-lingual blueprint provider like Tridion.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• SDL is a very complex system. Creating custom components by external vendors turned out to be expensive.
• The learning curve is very slow, so training takes a lot of time and cost.
• The revamped corporate site looks clean, modern, and is mobile-friendly.

Incentivized