DreamHost Reviews: 3.8/5 — Good for the Price

I can manage quite a lot through the dashboard -- including domains and subdomains,, email accounts, FTP site, and much more. The user interface is fairly intuitive. Above all, the price is very reasonable.

There are some things you just aren't allowed to do. I couldn't for example have multiple DNS servers. And there are occasional outages that are more than annoying if you're trying to conduct business with Dreamhost-hosted domains and email accounts.

Hosting of web sites, management of many email accounts, creation of FTP and SFTP sites.

The ease of use of setting up a mail account and getting shell access to a server

I feel like there are too many features that I don't actually need

It provides simple database and file hosting as well as me never having to configure an email server

I used it a few years ago, and even though it was a bit more expensive than their competitors they had so many good features for its value. I would describe it as the best hosting provider if using Wordpress or PHP. They have lots of one-click installation programs, and you don't really need much knowledge to install any popular script. I love unlimited aditional domains, subdomains, SQL databases, bandwidth and disk-space. What else can you ask for? Finally, and as far as I know they provide 100% up-time guaranteed in their hosting, which is rare, but it is amazing for this price.

When talking about Virtual Private Servers, I would definitely go for other service provider. I think they should be a bit cheaper. Let us be honest, right now if I had to hire a webpage server, I would go for a NodeJs, Django or Ruby On Rails solution. I guess their interface could be better, it is true, you can customize lots of things, but I feel a bit lost when playing around.

I had to host the typical university association webpage, so after studying all posibilities I decided to for this hosting service. The experience was great, I remember we hosted linux images, the webpage, some other personal files, photos, and I do not remember any problem during the whole experience.

Dreamhost's control panel allows you to customize and make changes for almost anything you ever need including handling domain records, web server configuration, etc. The customer service is excellent too, usually responding to major issues in a short amount of time without needing any kind of extra cost contract for quick responses.

The control panel looks archaic, it could use a little more redesign, maybe some options to hide advanced configuration for users that don't need to see everything. The monthly pricing for various services is good, but I think it could be lower these days with how much competition there is.

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Dreamhost is a pretty solid "classic" web host (by that I mean: Apache2, PHP, MySQL, FTP server). They give essentially unlimited space and bandwidth, and I've never noticed downtime (though I admittedly don't monitor it regularly). Now that most of my hosting needs are for dynamic apps not built with PHP, I largely use Dreamhost for registering and maintaining domain names and hosting custom-domain email addresses. This is easy and inexpensive with Dreamhost.

It's not the cheapest; I'm in the process of transitioning to different services (such as Github pages) for static files, and services like DigitalOcean for dynamic hosting.

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I love that I can keep everything in one place--domains, hosting, database management, etc. DreamHost's one-click installs are amazing. DreamHost provides free shared hosting and one free domain name to non-profits. DreamHost supports the new free Let's Encrypt ssl certificate authority. Generally speaking, DreamHost support is very good.

Setting things up in DreamHost can be tricky sometimes. Also, once I asked support to delete one of my virtual machines, and they deleted the wrong one. That was a really bad mistake.

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Great prices, great custom control panel

Sometimes support is slow. Shared webhosting website load times are a bit average or below average.

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Their dashboard is completely custom and not cluttered like other systems like cPanel. Their navigation makes sense and generally allows easy customization for whatever I need with my shared hosting plan. You can enable specific IP(s) to connect directly with your (shared) MySQL database server. This is very useful for external applications and/or using your own database administration utility; large backups or restores, etc. You're allowed UNLIMITED sub-domains on any of your hosted domains. This is very useful for logical segmentation of your web application. Or binding a sub-domain like 'svn.yourdomain.com' to a freely hosted subversion repository. Which, is another great feature for anyone wanting their own private revision control system. Cron jobs are fully supported. Fair warning: it requires a little knowledge with Linux file system, being that everything is hosted in a Linux environment. It's not that difficult to figure out once you have something up and running. However, if you're getting nowhere fast, they do have a decent and somewhat consistently updated wiki that gives you basic instructions on how to setup virtually anything in your account. There is also a decent status dashboard page you can use to monitor degraded services or subscribe to their twitter support account for updates.

Whenever you setup a database host name, they force an instance of phpMyAdmin to load if a connection is established on port 80[/443]. This may be desirable for some novice users, but I see it as a serious security risk. This basically invites hackers to attempt a brute force attack on the ENTIRE shared MySQL database server(s). Sometimes settings are not fully applied to your account if you're making rapid changes to similar services. This may require hitting Save on some settings, again. This can be a pain when you're not sure if the changes not taking affect are because of a misconfiguration on your part or because of the aforementioned. Despite being on a shared hosting plan, service can still be somewhat slow. Response times are pretty quick, but overall system resources on the server processing any of my PHP scripts seems constantly taxed. So, it would seem that their could be more policing of other users that may be abusing shared resources.

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I’ve only used their shared hosting option. File access through FTP is slower than what I’d like, and their clusters seem to go down every couple of months or so. I scored a bunch of free credit from them a while ago when they were having major issues with the file server my account was on (it was down more than it was up for a good month or so). Customer service is actually easy to deal with, and they are surprisingly helpful. The best feature is the shell access though. For shared hosting, this is rare.

It’s a little on the pricier side (a few $ more a month compared to others). They get you to bite on the new customer deals, but once those expire you are stuck with an above-market rate.

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I started using DreamHost early on and found them reliable and good customer service.

I've found that site speeds lag a little behind the industry norm.

I use DreamHost's shared hosting to host a number of websites affordably.

Dreamhost makes it easy to work with custom email addresses.

It's a complicated process to view thread emails between multiple people, and to format your own emails.

Working with custom domains for email addresses.

I love their affordable pricing. You can host unlimited amounts of domains for about ten dollars a month. With that you have unlimited memory so you load as much information as you want. You also have unlimited email for your employees etc.

I dislike the fact that you can't talk directly to a person, you have to email them your problems. Instead of it taking minutes to walk through you have to go back and forth, they usually respond within 24 hours but still it can be annoying. Also sometimes the email service doesn't work, so you will get blips of no service.

Unlimited website hosting for ten bucks a month, when I tell people how cheap it is for me to hosts all my website they find it hard to be believe, they usually think hosting has to be super expensive and also that they have to pay individually for each site, but you dont.

Cost-effective, simple hosting solution for beginning sites.

No compelling features to really set it apart from other shared hosts.

Basic web hosting.

Dreamhost is an excellent place to start out in terms of hosting when you're pretty new to it. Their customer support in general (as well as response time) has gotten much better - I remember it severely lacking years ago. If you're an average Joe looking for a quick one-click install with nothing too fancy, Dreamhost is an excellent option for you. It's also simple enough to figure out if you don't have that much experience with hosting. Their customer service has stepped up their game as well should you need the help.

I had issues with the shared hosting in terms of speed, downtime and other people in the same cluster getting DDoSed which ended up making me switch for a little while years ago. They seem to have fixed all of those issues more recently though, so I would take that comment with a grain of salt.

Dreamhost was my host for a long time and they have definitely stepped up their game since ~2008. They've been a good host for the smaller sites I manage.

Good support, I do have website problems. I am not the IT manager but I do put content on our website. Good price. Pretty reliable hosting.

it would be nice to be able to register multiple domains at once.

We are able to get our content out the public in an eye appealing manor.

I liked the fast support I received when having some difficulties during our rush time in verge of releasing a game that would connect to our php back-end

I disliked the user interface they had at the time and the troublesome way for handling payments

I'm developing games and we were working on a client-server game when we were using the service

I have used a few different hosting providers and Dreamhost is a decent option. They offer good domain registration and hosting. It is nice to be able to do both in the same place if possible, and their system makes it easy enough to do just that. Their control panel is easier to use than some providers, but it can still be a little complicated at times.

I personally like buying domains from GoDaddy or Network Solutions and I'm currently using BlueHost to host my domains. While there are pros and cons to each, that's just the setup I have going right now.

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Installing is easy. Getting support is easy. One-click apps are great to have, but when you don't know what to do with them they become kind of uncool, but I got all the support I needed from their team as well as their online wiki. I've been using their basic services to host a small startup company and we do get all we need at a very low price

Email is not their best feature, they really have to get that part working better. Sometimes my emails won't get to people, or go to the spam folder automatically. Also the interfaces they provide are not cool.

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I like the different hosting plans that they offer, there is multiple tiers depending on your needs and your expect web traffic bandwidth. Also if you are pretty comfortable with coding dreamhost makes it easy for your change the coding for your websites.

If you are somewhat new to websites then it can be a hinderance, when I try to get other people to modify the site on my behalf there is a lot of confusion as opposed to other hosting sites like Blue Host where is it super user friendly. And my main issue with them is you can't reach customer service by phone. They have chat but only during limited hours and email. If you get disconnected mid chat you'll have to explain what happened sometimes all over again.

Dreamhost has great packages and this definitely fit out needs when it came to hosting needs. All of our sites are running smoothly after a couple kinks that had been worked out and we haven't had issues since. So we are enjoying the speed of their hosting sites.

Very extensive control panel, with one-click-installs, shell access and multiple ftp users. While still shared hosting, the fine-grained access on several levels at once, made it very flexible in multiple scenarios. Practically unlimited bandwidth and web space and databases. Very generous storage and usage restrictions. Cheap price (at the time), including one domain name. So good value-for money.

Extensive control made the control panel very complex and detailed. Often had to look around to find what I needed and when changes occured, it wasn't always clear how to get to certain sections. I could literally get lost in the control panel at times. Speed issues: Hosting a Drupal site with the majority of users from EU showed that page load times were considerable. I learned that it might be due to quite DB-intensive nature of Drupal and the fact the DB and web pages were running on different machines. But since the DB and site were fairly small, this was concerning me, as it would hold-down possible growth.

Me and my brother have shared a Dreamhost package for a while. He used it for his website development business and I had my personal domain and a few smaller sites. While the functionality was extensive with good control, for a low price, I had problems with Drupal hosting and especially website response time. Eventually, we stopped the account and moved to a local hosting company, which is somewhat more restrictive in storage and bandwidth, but which helped us and had a more usable speed here in EU.

When I used Dreamhost, I just migrated from GoDaddy and purchased hosting for a year for $20. Dreamhost at the time provided a good incentive with that particular sale, considering the amount of GB space that came with the hosting plan.

My dislike was the extreme prices Dreamhost set for the upcoming year when I still hosted my website with them. I felt that I could get more storage for a fairer price elsewhere and ended up choosing Bluehost. Dreamhost also did not have the best customer service response or user interface for their FTP.

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Straight forward integration for Wordpress site hosting.

Not great for keeping emails synced across devices, or for simple things like deleting emails from a phone.

Hosting for website and email

When I first signed up they had a deal for a lifetime price. Since then the prices have gone up but their service is still just okay.

The layout is outdated and not very user friendly, although customer service responds usually within 48 hours, they aren't very helpful and will usually just give you a link to figure it out on your own.

I have a retail and service based business and am always struggling getting wordpress themes to work smoothly with dreamhost. I constantly have issues that are dreamhost settings related and end up having to wait days to have them fixed.

Low pricing, but unfortunately you get even less than you paid for.

For several years we (as a digital marketing agency) hosted many client websites on Dreamhost. However, over the last 2+ years, their service has gone into the septic tank. It is not unusual for sites to go down for 10s of minutes to hours. They seem to have oversubscribed their servers to meet their chosen price point.

Low pricing, but also very low reliability. Stay far far away!

Very Little. The only thing I can say is they have a done a great job marketing themselves via influencers and make it easy to sign up and get started with them.

I've used 4 other hosting solutions for my business and while there are always minor snags, I've never encountered so much instability and lack of accountability than with Dreamhost! After migrating one test site to Dreamhost earlier this year, I've had at least 10 incidents of down time and the worse part what could be called as 'sabotage' or inappropriate behavior from agents who seemed to took matters in their own hands and undermined by site. Despite having an expert team of developers helping me, Dreamhost repeatedly created issues on top of down time issues and even blamed my developers for security breaches. When we asked for proof they never provided anything concrete. Dreamhost simply does not live up to its reputation and has the worse customer service, even if you pay for a more expensive beefier plan like I did!

They are simpy a hosting service which should, in theory, maintain my site via a VPS so that it passes all core web vitals and fast and up 24/7. I migrated only ONE website to Dreamhost out of 20. One of my top performing sites and since moving to Dreamhost my site has been flagged by GCP and 3rd parties as failing despite having been optimized by experts.

They made available access to WordPress.

I used Dreamhost for one year. After I couldn't make a payment for a couple of years my balance was negative and all the projects I was working on were deleted and no backups were left available. They just deleted many hours of my hard work. I found it out when I renewed my subscription. After that, I tried to cancel my subscription and delete my account didn't provide any refund. Anyone who wants to use their service please check other platforms such as WordPress, Winx, GitHub, etc.

I used it to manage my websites.

They fairly inexpensive. Not the cheapest, especially since they just raised prices. But a VPS is still cheaper than hosting everything on GCP.

The have frequent downtime without warning. Currently all my sites have been down for 14+ hours and all I can do is wait for their support to fix it when they get time. So frustrating that my business is shuttered because they changed something. I haven't made code changes in weeks, and it's not a resource issue.

We use Dreamhost for the main VPS and DB for pir web sites and web services. So when it's down (like right now, going on 14 hours) it brings everything down, including our mobile app endpoints.

Managed WordPress and relatively quick server migration

After three years of happy and reliable hosting on Dreampress, changes in Dreamhost's web servers, hosting service, and technical support forced our online business to go elsewhere. It began with unexpected servers crashes which quickly became daily and unresolvable. In about a week we dropped from years of stability to every-day troubleshooting to keep our site online. And with each crash, we learn our server was running out of memory but tech support seemed less specific about the causes or instability. Instead, they chose to up-sell us on a new “Openstack” server deployment, promising better caching and performance -- at the same price. We were thrilled with how fast we were operational on the new 'bionic' server but not happy to discover this upgraded server would actually cost us 35% more annually, that the memory configurations were no different, and ultimately the server crashes would continue. For the next 10 weeks, we meticulously followed Dreamhost's advice to optimize our site build, to employ different caching strategies, to minify, to defer code, to better optimize images, and reduce page loading sizes. We did everything required to get us to an A-rating with GTmetrix but the server crashes continued while Dreamhost offered us no effective assistance with resolving what became a maintenance nightmare. The final straw was learning that DH tech support was aware of a bug in the new servers that prevented some MySQL DBs from restarting after a server crashes. When we migrated our site off of Dreamhost servers, they still hadn't isolated the problems or taken any ownership of them.

Our intention is to showcase and sell our scientific research equipment like we have been doing for 28 years.

Knowledge base is large and helpful. Tech support can be useful.

After (2) consecutive 3-year terms, my 3-year renewal rate increased 38%, with an explanation that did not match the service level. Dreamhost has gone greedy, and their billing support agents do nothing to resolve issues other than a templated response. Buyer beware!! If you disagree with the price increase, expect frustration and agervation dealing with their billing agents. If you change service levels to monthly during the last month of 3-year term, expect a much higher monthly bill that takes effect immediately as they will cancel your 3-year term period with pro-ration of pre-payment to a monthly much higher rate. It's a ridiculous tactic to extract more money and waste your time. Good riddance Dreamhost. Save yourself the hassle and look elsewhere.

Domain, Web & Email Hosting

The panel to control that controls the website.

It took a very long time to load my site and sometimes it wouldn't load at all. Then they did an upgrade and lost half my site. And finally as I closed the account, I made a back up as per their directions for closing an account. The notice said it would be availble another 10 days. But when I went to retrieve it, they told me it is unavailable as my account is closed. So dreamhost has compleely destroyed my website after years of working with this website. I couldn't possible begin to imagein a worse service.

They destroyed my websit, so none.