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Are you looking for a new web host?
Dreamhost is a popular option, but is it the right choice for you?
In this Dreamhost review, I’ll take a look at some of the pros and cons of using Dreamhost to host your website, and also all the products that they have to offer for you.
Dreamhost is one of the oldest web hosts around, and they have a lot to offer their customers.
They do have competitive pricing and seem to be a great option for small businesses and individuals who are looking to get their website up and running without spending a lot of money.
They also offer unlimited storage space, bandwidth, and email accounts, which is excellent if you have a lot of data or plan on growing your website in the future.
But do they have what it takes to be the best web host for you?
So without wasting time let’s find out Is Dreamhost the best choice for your website?
DreamHost
Products Offered by DreamHost- Wordpress Hosting Starting - $1.99/Month
- Shared Hosting Starting - $1.99/Month
- VPS Hosting Starting - $10/Month
- WP Website Builder Starting - $1.99/Month
- Dedicated Hosting Starting - $169/Month
- Cloud Hosting Stating - $0.0075/Hour
About DreamHost Company
Before getting into the review and all the other aspects of the company, let me tell you a little about the company.
DreamHost is a leading web hosting and domain name registrar company.
Founded in 1997, DreamHost is one of the oldest web hosting companies in operation today.
Headquartered in Brea, California, DreamHost serves customers in over 100 countries around the world.
DreamHost offers a variety of web hosting plans to fit the needs of any website, from small personal blogs to large enterprise websites.
The company offers a wide range of products and services, including shared hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated servers, WordPress hosting, e-commerce hosting, and more
With over 20 years of experience in the industry, DreamHost is a company you can trust for all your web hosting need
Products By DreamHost
WordPress Hosting
Dreamhost is a web hosting company that offers a variety of services to its customers.
One of these services is WordPress hosting.
WordPress is a popular content management system that allows users to create and manage their websites.
Dreamhost offers a variety of WordPress hosting plans, which are designed to meet the needs of different types of customers.
For example, the company offers shared WordPress hosting, which is ideal for small businesses or individual users who need a simple and cost-effective way to host their website. For larger businesses or organizations, Dreamhost also offers managed WordPress hosting, which provides more features and support.
You get three different types of products here: Basic-$1.99 and DreamPress – $16.95/month.
In addition, Dreamhost also offers a WordPress VPS plan-$27.50/month, which is designed for high-traffic websites.
Shared Hosting
Shared hosting is Dreamhost’s most popular type of web hosting.
With shared hosting, your website is stored on a server with other websites.
This is a great option for small businesses or individual users who need a simple and affordable way to host their websites.
Dreamhost offers two different shared hosting plans:
- Shared Started-$1.99/month
- Shared Unlimited-$3.95/month
VPS Hosting
VPS hosting is a type of web hosting that allows you to have your own virtual server.
With VPS hosting, your website is stored on a server with other websites, but you have your own dedicated resources.
Dreamhost offers Four different VPS plans:
- VPS Basic For new & small websites-$10/month,
- VPS Business Built for Small Business-$20/month,
- VPS Professional For resource-intensive sites-$40.00/mo,
- VPS Enterprise For resource-intensive sites-$80/month
WP Website Builder
Dreamhost also offers a WordPress website builder, which is a great way to create a professional-looking website without any coding knowledge.
The WordPress website builder is easy to use and comes with a variety of features, such as templates, drag-and-drop functionality, and more.
Dreamhost offers three different plans for the WordPress website builder
- Shared Starter
Great for new WordPress sites or small sites without much traffic that are just getting started.
Starting at-$2.59/mo
- Shared Unlimited
Perfect for supporting lots of WordPress sites, and larger sites, and even includes email hosting @ your domain.
Starting at-$3.95/mo
- Managed WordPress
Specifically designed for WordPress — high-performance and hassle-free so you can focus on building your business.
Starting at-$16.95/mo
Dedicated Hosting
Dreamhost also offers Dedicated Hosting, which is a type of web hosting that allows you to have your own server.
This is a great option for businesses or organizations that need a lot of resources and support. Dreamhost offers four different dedicated hosting plans:
- Standard – $149/month
- Enhanced – $270/month
Cloud Hosting
Dreamhost also offers Cloud Hosting, which is a type of web hosting that allows you to have your website stored on multiple servers.
This is a great option for businesses or organizations that need a lot of resources and support.
DreamHost Shared Hosting Features
Shared Starter
- 1 Website
- Unlimited Visits Per Month
- Unmetered Bandwidth
- Email - Available For Purchase
- Free Domain
- 50 GB Site Storage
- 5 Sub Domains
- 6 MYSQL Database
- SSD Storage
- Wordpress Pre-installed
- New Free Automated WordPress Migrations
- New WP Website Builder
- Automatic WordPress Updates: Core & Security
- FREE SSL Certificate
- Automated Daily Backups
- Free Domain Privacy
- Custom-built Control Panel
- Advanced Features: SFTP, Shell Access, WP-CLI & more!
- 24/7 Ticket Support
- Live Chat Support
- Phone Support Callbacks
- Money-back Guarantee
Shared Unlimited
- Unlimited Website
- Unlimited Visits Per Month
- Unmetered Bandwidth
- Email - Available
- Free Domain
- Unlimited Site Storage
- Unlimited Sub Domains
- Unlimited MYSQL Database
- SSD Storage
- Wordpress Pre-installed
- New Free Automated WordPress Migrations
- New WP Website Builder
- Automatic WordPress Updates: Core & Security
- FREE SSL Certificate
- Automated Daily Backups
- Free Domain Privacy
- Custom-built Control Panel
- Advanced Features: SFTP, Shell Access, WP-CLI & more!
- 24/7 Ticket Support
- Live Chat Support
- Phone Support Callbacks
- Money-back Guarantee
DreamHost has a variety of features that make it a great option for web hosting. Let’s take a look at them
Automated Backups
Automatic backups are a lifesaver, whether you’re a website owner, web developer, or just someone who wants to be extra safe when it comes to their digital files.
DreamHost’s web hosting plans all come with automatic backups at no additional cost, so you can rest assured that your data is always safe.
The backups are taken nightly and stored off-site, so even if something happens to your server, your data will still be there.
And if you ever need to restore from a backup, DreamHost makes it easy with just a few clicks.
Control Panel
DreamHost’s Control Panel is one of the most user-friendly and feature-rich web hosting control panels available today.
Not only does it allow you to easily manage your website and email accounts, but it also provides a wide range of tools to help you troubleshoot and optimize your site.
One of the most useful features of the Control Panel is the Site Health Checker.
This tool will scan your website for common problems and provide you with a report that can help you identify and fix any issues.
In addition, the Control Panel also includes a number of powerful security features, such as two-factor authentication and password recovery.
Overall, DreamHost’s Control Panel provides everything you need to manage your website effectively.
CDN
DreamHost’s CDN is a great way to improve the performance of your website.
CDN, or content delivery network, is a system of servers that are used to deliver content to users based on their geographic location.
The main benefit of using a CDN is that it can help to improve the speed and performance of your website.
When a user tries to access your site, the request is routed to the nearest server in the CDN, which then delivers the content to the user.
This can help to reduce latency and improve loading times. In addition, a CDN can also help to protect your site from attacks, as it can distribute traffic across multiple servers.
Dreamhost’s CDN feature is powered by Cloudflare, which is one of the leading providers of CDN services.
With Cloudflare’s Anycast network, Dreamhost is able to offer its users high-performance CDN services with robust security features.
Data Center Locations
DreamHost have their data center located only in the USA in the city of Ashburn, Virginia (US-East) Portland, Oregon (US-West)
So if you are targeting only a USA audience then DreamHost is a good option but if you want to target a global audience then you should look for other hosts who have data centers located in multiple countries.
Staging Site
The Staging Site feature in Dreamhost Webhosting is a great way to test out your site before making it live.
You can create a separate staging site, which is an exact replica of your live site, and make changes to it without affecting the live site.
This way, you can test out new features or changes to see how they impact your site before making them live.
Once you’re happy with the changes, you can then push them to the live site with just a few clicks.
The Staging Site feature is a great way to ensure that your site is always operating at its best.
SSD Storage
Dreamhost’s SSD storage feature is one of the major reasons why it is such a popular web hosting provider.
Unlike traditional hard drives, SSDs (solid state drives) store data on interconnected flash memory chips.
This enables them to provide faster data access speeds, lower power consumption, and greater reliability.
However, the biggest advantage of SSDs is that they allow Dreamhost to offer unlimited storage space to its customers.
With an SSD, there is no need to worry about running out of space or dealing with slow data access speeds.
This makes Dreamhost’s SSD storage feature an essential part of its web hosting service.
DreamHost Performance
Load Time
Load time is an important factor to consider when choosing a web hosting provider.
No one wants their website to take forever to load, and thankfully, Dreamhost Webhosting delivers on speed.
I tested load times using Pingdom, gt matrix, webpage test, and page speed insights and found that Dreamhost Webhosting consistently loaded pages faster than the average web host.
In addition, DreamHost Webhosting offers a variety of features that can help to speed up your website even further.
So if you’re looking for a fast and reliable web hosting provider, Dreamhost Webhosting is definitely worth considering.
| Tool Used | Load Time |
|---|---|
GT Metrix | 1.15 sec |
Pingdom | 1.82 sec |
WebPageTest | 2.43 sec |
PageSpeed Insights | 1.87 sec |
UpTime
UpTime is a measure of how well a Webhosting company’s servers are able to stay online and running.
In the last three years, DreamHost’s UpTime has been consistently high, averaging 99.96%.
This means that DreamHost’s servers are almost always online and running, and when they do go down, it is usually for a very short period of time.
This is an important metric to consider when choosing a Webhosting company, as it can indicate how reliable the company is.
DreamHost’s high UpTime is impressive, and it is one of the reasons why I continue to use their services.
| Year | UpTime |
|---|---|
2019 | 99.99% |
2020 | 99.96% |
2021 | 99.95% |
Server Response Time
When you are looking for a web host, one of the things you want to consider is the server response time.
This is the amount of time it takes for the server to respond to a request from your browser. The faster the server response time, the better.
There are a few different ways to test the server response time. One is to use GTmetrix. Another is to use Pingdom.
And yet another is to use PageSpeed Insights. Each of these tools will give you a different number.
But the important thing is to look at the trend.
If the server response time is consistently fast, then you know you have found a good web host.
If it is consistently slow, then you know you need to keep looking.
For DreamHost, I did the test on four tools and found that the server response time was consistently fast averaging 305ms.
| Tool Used | Server Response Time |
|---|---|
GT Metrix | 308ms |
Pingdom | 309ms |
WebPageTest | 303ms |
PageSpeed Insights | 301ms |
Global TTFB
Global TTFB or ‘time to first byte’ is a measure of how long it takes for a web server to respond to a request from a browser.
The time is measured from the moment the browser sends the request until the first byte of data is received from the server.
A high TTFB can be caused by many factors, including slow database queries, poor server performance, and large files that need to be downloaded.
There are a number of tools that can help you measure your TTFB, including GTmetrix, Pingdom, and PageSpeed Insights. WebPageTest is also a useful tool for measuring TTFB.
To test Global TTFB I used these tool on different location servers and the results were as followed
| No | Location | Global TTFB |
|---|---|---|
1 | Mumbai, India | 692ms |
2 | Singapore | 453ms |
3 | Cape Town, South Africa | 987ms |
4 | Tokyo, Japan | 316ms |
5 | Virginia, US | 312ms |
6 | London, UK | 337ms |
7 | Sydney, Australia | 589ms |
8 | Sao Paulo, Brazil | 567ms |
9 | Dubai, UAE | 674ms |
10 | Frankfurt, Germany | 417ms |
Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals are a set of metrics that measure the speed and responsiveness of a website. They were introduced by Google in May 2021 as a way to help webmasters improve the user experience of their sites.
The three metrics that makeup Core Web Vitals are Largest Contentful Paint, First Input Delay, and Cumulative Layout Shift.
All three metrics are important for measuring the loading speed and interactivity of a website. However, each metric has its own unique importance.
Largest Contentful Paint is the metric that measures how long it takes for the largest element on a page to load.
This is important because it is the first thing that users see when they visit a site.
First Input Delay measures how long it takes for a page to respond to user input.
This is important because it affects how usable a site is.
Cumulative Layout Shift measures how much content shifts around on a page during loading.
This is important because it can cause users to click on the wrong thing or have to wait for content to load before they can see it.
All three of these metrics are important for measuring the speed and usability of a website.
Google has said that they will use these metrics to determine whether or not a site is eligible for ranking
I did the test on DreamHost servers to check the Core Web Vitals and the results were as followed
| Largest Contentful Paint | First Input Delay | Cumulative Layout Shift |
|---|---|---|
598ms | 21ms | 0ms |
DreamHost Shared Hosting Pros & Cons
Pros
-Powerful Performance
-Affordable Pricing
-Free SSL Certificate
-24/7 Support
-97-Day Money-Back Guarantee
-Modern-looking backend
-Unlimited bandwidth
-User-friendly interface
Cons
-No email account for the starter plan
-No servers outside the USA
-no built-in caching
Pricing
Do I Recommend It?
Yes, I recommend DreamHost for shared hosting.
But there is a catch here, if you are getting started then I would definitely recommend DreamHost as it is cheap and affordable.
It is best for small to medium traffic websites.
If you have a high-traffic website then I would recommend DreamHost VPS hosting which is more powerful and can handle high-traffic websites.
The basic gist of this product is it is cheap and has good quality.
But if you are mostly going to operate outside the USA, then I would not recommend DreamHost as they don’t have servers located outside the USA.
Other than that, DreamHost is a good web hosting provider with all the features that you need to get started with your website.
My DreamHost Alternatives
Final thoughts
I hope you liked this DreamHost review and that all your queries about DreamHost are cleared.
DreamHost is a good web hosting provider with powerful performance, affordable pricing, and many features.
The only downside of DreamHost is that they don’t have servers located outside the USA.
Other than that, DreamHost is a good choice for shared hosting.
I hope you found this Dreamhost review helpful in
Frequently Asked Questions
Whether you're building your business or your brand (or both), you want to put your best foot forward. An exclusive email tied to your domain can give you a professional edge as you work to grow your website. With DreamHost's Shared Unlimited plan, you get a dedicated email @ your domain. Additionally, DreamHost offers paid email plans, so anybody — even Shared Starter customers — can add professional email from their domain, up to five mailboxes with 25GB of disk storage each. And hey, you don't have to pay a pretty penny for these services; they start as low as $1.67 a month!
A domain name is the unique .com (or dot whatever) address where your site can be found on the web. But in order to get your website online, you'll also need a web host to provide the server space necessary to store your site. For a fully-functional site, you need both a domain name and a good web host. Like peanut butter and jelly, they're better together. To make things simple, you can keep your needs in-house, letting one provider supply both your domain name and web hosting needs. Let DreamHost multitask for you — at a great price.
Totally. We know your ultimate goal is probably to grow your website over time. We want that for you! When your site's traffic reaches rush-hour levels, is overflowing with content, or simply needs more high-powered tech and features, you can upgrade to a plan with extra bells, whistles, and performance power. While Shared Hosting is a smart, budget-friendly option when you're a beginner, a content-rich and heavily-trafficked site may demand a larger-scale plan, meaning additional server space, specially-dedicated resources, advanced security, and accelerated speeds.
Wondering when to upgrade? If you notice diminished site performance or lack necessary space or resources, it's time to consider bumping your site to the next level and choosing a better-fit hosting package. No matter the current size of your website, DreamHost offers a perfectly-matched plan. We adapt to match your needs, making upgrading easy.
Yep! Forget about packing up virtual boxes or worrying about a forwarding address— we'll handle the transfer tasks and make moving to DreamHost E-A-S-Y. By transferring your domain registration from your old provider to DreamHost, you can easily manage all aspects of your domain from one convenient location.
Just getting started? With a Shared Starter plan, you can host one website — a great place to begin! If you're looking to manage a handful of sites, a Shared Unlimited plan allows you to host any number of websites (we say unlimited and we mean it!). Whatever flexibility you need, DreamHost offers it.
