DreamHost is a well-established hosting service provider with 18 years of experience. Currently, it hosts 1.5 million websites on its servers and is recommended as one of the hosting providers by the official WordPress website. It’s also one of the highest-rated virtual hosting service providers on the authoritative foreign website PCMag.com.
If you want to create an English website, DreamHost can certainly meet your needs. It offers free domain registration, free SSL certificates, one-click WordPress installation, and more. What’s even more surprising is its 97-day money-back guarantee, which is something most hosting providers don’t offer. Within 97 days, if you’re not satisfied with the hosting, you can get a full refund.
In addition to virtual hosting, DreamHost also offers VPS, dedicated servers, domain registration, domain parking, and other services.
Advantages of DreamHost:
- Extended Money-Back Guarantee: DreamHost provides a 97-day extension for new users to try their services risk-free. If you’re not satisfied with their services, you can request a full refund within 97 days.
- Free Domain: Building a website with DreamHost is super easy. Just choose a new domain you like, and you can use it for free for a year.
- Free SSL Certificate: Using free SSL encryption to protect your website is essential nowadays.
- Website Builder: DreamHost offers a user-friendly website builder called Remixer, allowing you to quickly build beautiful websites in minutes instead of weeks. It comes with various built-in templates to help you bring your dream website to life.
- Web-Based Control Panel: Unlike many other popular hosting providers, DreamHost doesn’t use the cPanel dashboard. Instead, they have their own web-based control panel, which is user-friendly and doesn’t require complex command-line tools to manage your hosting account.
- One-Click WordPress Installer: Every DreamHost package comes with a one-click WordPress installer for easy WordPress website setup. Additionally, DreamHost supports one-click installation of many other website scripts and web-based applications.
Disadvantages of DreamHost:
- No Professional Email Setup: The entry-level package doesn’t include professional email setup, so beginners should be aware of this when choosing a plan.
- No 24/7 Support: DreamHost doesn’t provide 24/7 support through live chat. They offer live chat support only from 5:00 AM to 10:00 PM Pacific Standard Time daily, but this should suffice for most users.
- No Phone Support: DreamHost doesn’t offer free phone support for entry-level packages.
DreamHost Speed Test and Uptime Guarantee To test the performance of DreamHost’s services, we followed the usual procedure: we created a WordPress site with the default theme and uploaded some articles and images.
After setting up the test site, we used Pingdom to perform speed tests on the site.
As seen in the results, the DreamHost test site loaded in less than half a second. This is faster than 97% of the test sites, which is quite impressive for a site with no performance optimization plugins.
In addition to Pingdom, we used a tool called Load Impact to determine if DreamHost’s website can remain stable under sudden increases in traffic.
Load Impact sends virtual users (VU) to our site, gradually increasing the number of visitors up to 100, to test how the server handles it.
In the chart, you can see a gradually increasing yellow line representing the number of virtual users sent to our DreamHost site (increasing up to 300 visitors), and a blue line (load time), representing the time it takes to load the webpage for users.
Throughout the testing process, the website’s load time remained stable as visitor numbers increased, indicating that the server’s performance is quite reliable.
DreamHost Server Response Time We know that even with identical servers, different websites may load at different speeds due to variations in content, such as the number of articles and images.
To obtain more accurate test results, we decided to completely ignore page content and use Bitcatcha to test the actual server response time.
Bitcatcha works differently from Pingdom. It ignores the page’s content and records page load times from eight different global locations: New York, Los Angeles, London, Brazil, India, Singapore, Japan, and Australia. Speeds at each location are measured three times, and the results are averaged.
From the results, it’s clear that DreamHost’s server response time is less than half a second for all geographical locations, especially in the United States.
This indicates that DreamHost’s server response time is indeed very fast.
DreamHost Customer Support DreamHost offers free live chat and ticket-based support. The main drawback is that live chat is only available from 5:00 AM to 10:00 PM Pacific Standard Time, seven days a week. The DreamHost support team strives to respond to all submitted tickets within 24 hours.
DreamHost Pricing Plans Currently, there are two plans available: $2.59/month (Shared Starter) and $3.95/month (Shared Unlimited). The difference between the two is that the former allows you to build one website, while the latter allows you to build multiple websites.
It’s important to note that to get the $2.59/month price for the Shared Starter plan, you need to make a one-time purchase for three years. If you choose to pay monthly, it’s $4.95/month. For the Shared Unlimited plan, if you want the $3.95/month price, you also need to make a one-time purchase for three years. Monthly payments would be $10.95, with an average monthly cost of $6.95 if you opt for yearly payments.
Frequently Asked Questions
- How should I choose a DreamHost plan?
- If you plan to create a blog website, it’s best to start with the cheapest shared plan and upgrade later when traffic increases. If you want to create an e-commerce website, consider using the WooCommerce plan designed specifically for e-commerce sites.
- Can DreamHost handle high traffic?
- DreamHost can handle high traffic, but if you choose the cheapest plan and your daily visitors reach over 300, it’s advisable to upgrade your plan.
- Does DreamHost offer monthly payments?
- Yes! DreamHost offers monthly payment options. However, keep in mind that annual payments often come with a more favorable price.
- Do I have to register my domain on DreamHost?
- Does DreamHost provide free SSL?
- Yes, DreamHost offers free SSL for all plans. The e-commerce plan includes a dedicated IP and dedicated SSL.
- Does DreamHost really offer unlimited disk space and bandwidth?
- As the saying goes, you get what you pay for. If your website’s traffic is consistently under 300 daily visitors, then choosing the cheapest plan should suffice. If you exceed 300 daily visitors, consider upgrading your plan.
- Can I create an e-commerce website on DreamHost?
- Absolutely! DreamHost’s WooCommerce plan is specifically designed for e-commerce websites.
I believe DreamHost provides a highly reliable hosting service with excellent website stability and speed. Their reputation has consistently been positive, and I encourage you to give them a try.
DreamHost Official Website: www.dreamhost.com