Solid, reliable web host despite lack of phone support and recent downtime with attacks.
Updated March 26, 2018
Solid, reliable web host despite lack of phone support and recent downtime with attacks.
Score 3 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with DreamHost
Dreamhost currently hosts my company's website on a virtual private server using the Wordpress platform. We've also used Dreamhost as our web host of choice for client websites. Dreamhost has provided us fast and reliable space on the web for prospective customers to find us, for eCommerce and online payments, and other web-based integrations and applications.
Lately they've been off their game in a lot of ways. I have six websites with them, and five of those sites have had major issues in which my clients have experienced major downtime or data loss. Their support staff has been unable to answer tickets in a timely manner, sometimes taking days to respond I assume because of the volume of tickets. They've gone from being a steady force in the web hosting world to an unreliable average provider trending downward.
Lately they've been off their game in a lot of ways. I have six websites with them, and five of those sites have had major issues in which my clients have experienced major downtime or data loss. Their support staff has been unable to answer tickets in a timely manner, sometimes taking days to respond I assume because of the volume of tickets. They've gone from being a steady force in the web hosting world to an unreliable average provider trending downward.
- Linux-based Web Hosting
- Wordpress one-click installs
- Security certificate one-click installs
- Webmail Servers
- Customer Service
- Telephone Support (or lack thereof)
- Email reliability
- Recent uptime
- Delay in resolving issues
- Extensive downtime due to database server errors
- Lost emails due to webmail server outages and errors
- Inability to install security certificates due to system errors
- Recent web-based attacks have affected reliability and caused server downtime, and they'll need to improve their infrastructure to handle attacks in the future
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, who we switched from because we no longer use Windows-based hosting (which is not provided by Dreamhost). The pricing structure is significantly more straightforward with Dreamhost, which I appreciate. Bluehost has a similar issue where every little thing added on is an extra charge, which we found to be extremely complicated unlike Dreamhost with its straightforward pricing. However, due to recent issues, we'll have to reevaluate our working relationship with Dreamhost going forward.
Using DreamHost
1 - Dreamhost provides a web hosting platform for myself, the developer, to deploy our website, make changes, edit databases, and more. Many of our potential clients find us through the web, so having a fast and reliable website is of paramount importance. Dreamhost provides the platform we need to create the website we want.
1 - I primarily administer the Dreamhost account for our company. This requires some expertise for setting up and configuring the settings within the virtual private server as well as managing our FTP account, Wordpress platform, and its pages and posts to add, remove, or modify content as seen fit. Dreamhost requires someone with working knowledge of web development to administer.
- Web site
- FTP access
- MySQL Databases
- Credit card processing
- File sharing
- Application platforms
- Expanded server usage
- Greater variety of applications installed
- DreamPress hosting with greater dedicated resources