DreamHost Reviews

DreamHost Reviews: PROS

As is tradition with our website builder and web hosting platform reviews, we’ll start things off by taking a look at the main benefits that you can expect to receive by using DreamHost Happy hosting services.

Well, to be fair, I should probably rephrase that - as far as this hosting service is concerned, “Happy hosting” refers to shared hosting. While DreamHost does, naturally, have other types of hosting services available (everything from dedicated hosting, all the way to cloud hosting services), shared website hosting tends to be the most popular option.

Good Uptime + A Unique Uptime Guarantee

The topic of uptime is usually the main thing that I start my web hosting platform reviews with, and, evidently, many user DreamHost reviews are kind of the same in that manner.

That being said, though, when it comes to DreamHost web hosting, uptime is actually one of the more-interesting topics to cover. There are a lot of split opinions on the matter lingering around online, and the uptime guarantee that the company provides is like the cherry on top of a cake.

I’m getting way ahead of myself, though - let’s take it from the top, and make our way down from there.

So - uptime is a term that is used to measure and describe the period of time during which visitors are able to reach your website and interact with it. As opposed to that, “downtime” is the opposite - it measures the period of time during which the site is down.

Uptime is measured in terms of percentage, throughout a set period of time. Usually, these periods of time are split into months, and referenced on a yearly basis.

While user DreamHost reviews do tend to vary, and there are a lot of different numbers floating around, the average uptime of the company in question for the last year has been around 99,91%. This is interesting for a couple of reasons.

For starters, with an uptime like that, DreamHost can be considered to be somewhere in the middle - it’s not the best uptime out there, but is still very decent, nonetheless. Put into terms of time, this is what you can expect with this type of uptime:

I’ve used our uptime calculator in order to determine the average amount of time that your website would be down throughout the day, month and year, with the aforementioned uptime. Frankly, it comes out to be around 1 minute and 20 seconds of downtime during a single day, and almost 8 hours all throughout the year.

Now, do keep in mind that these numbers can vary, and they are definitely not “set in stone”. There is, however, an additional factor to consider - the DreamHost uptime guarantee.

Simply put, user DreamHost reviews will tell you that DreamHost guarantees that the site that you’ll host on their servers will possess an uptime stat of 100%. That’s… Quite interesting.

100% uptime is impossible if we’re talking about a constant connection. However, if split throughout a period of time, this goal might be feasible, though still unlikely. The awesome part here is that, if DreamHost website hosting fails to reach a 100% uptime standard, you will actually be compensated monetarily for the lost time. An extremely unique stance from a web hosting company!

All things considered, it would seem that DreamHost has got the uptime part of its services figured out pretty nicely! Even if it fails to reach a certain standard, you can be sure that you’ll be compensated - a very unique and much-appreciated feature!

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A Very Generous Money-Back Guarantee

While this isn’t admittedly something that would be related directly to the web hosting features of the platform in question, it’s still something that showcases the level of service quality from DreamHost!

User DreamHost reviews will tell you that the hosting service in question can be used on a monthly subscription-based model. This is actually quite rare for hosting providers, since most of them promote year-long plans rather adamantly - many don’t even possess options for monthly-recurring hosting.

The best part, however, is the money-back guarantee offered by DreamHost. If you’re not satisfied with the level of service quality received from the company in question, you will be able to invoke a 97-day refund policy.

That’s more than three months of risk-free hosting! It’s extremely rare to come across a website hosting provider that would offer this type of a money-back guarantee - it’s surely much appreciated, too!

If anything, it just goes to show that DreamHost plans are very versatile, and anyone should be able to find a timeframe that would suit their needs. On top of that, it also displays the company’s attitude towards the service that they provide - DreamHost is so confident that you will love their hosting deals, that they allow you to have more than three months of what is essentially a free trial!

Free SSL Certificate, Unlimited Bandwidth

One of the bigger points that you will likely notice mentioned among multiple user DreamHost reviews is the fact that DreamHost offers a pretty generous list of features with even their basic, most affordable plan.

The list of features includes things such as a pre-installed WordPress (we’ll get to that) and generous SSD storage, and that’s pretty cool. However, some of the more-notable features would be a free SSL certificate, and also unlimited bandwidth.

SSL certificates are among some of the most-fundamental security features that your website might possess. What a certificate like this does is it protects your site visitor information that they might input into your website. Needless to say, if you have options for visitors to leave their email addresses or even purchase something (thus, input their bank or PayPal details), SSLs are absolutely essential.

If you’re using Chrome, an SSL certificate can be found at the top-left corner of a website - it’s the little lock icon. If a website does not possess a proper SSL certificate, however, you will be informed about the potential dangers of data leaks upon entering it.

Same as most user DreamHost reviews, hosting providers themselves know the importance of an SSL certificate. That’s why many of the high-end hosting services do come with free SSLs - DreamHost plans included.

To add to that, if you do choose DreamHost as your preferred hosting service, you will also receive unlimited bandwidth for your website. In layman’s terms, this simply means that your website will be very scalable, and if your audience (amount of site visitors) grows with time, you won’t necessarily need to upgrade your plan, or even choose a completely different hosting provider, altogether.

The fact that all of these features are available with even the most-affordable of DreamHost Happy hosting plans is awesome! Definitely something worth keeping in mind!

WordPress - Available!

WordPress is, without a doubt, the most popular tool for creating websites out there - this has been the case for a very long time now, too. It’s also the tool that you will find whilst purchasing one of the DreamHost plans, too.

WordPress is a content management system. It has similarities to some of the more-modern website builders out there, but at the same time, is much more developer-friendly and scalable, things-you-can-do-wise.

The only notable downside is that WP is seen as being tricky to truly master - this is especially true if you're just starting out, and have no prior experience with website building.

User DreamHost reviews, however, will tell you that the hosting provider in question does try to make the process of using WordPress as simple as possible.

For example, installing WP can be a confusing and time-consuming ordeal. That said, DreamHost plans come with pre-installed WordPress - this allows you to skip through all of the grueling setup processes, and move on straight to your management area.

There are also multiple apps available for you to check out, too. These apps are going to be great for anyone who would like to make their WP experience a bit more similar to that of traditional website builders, or even go the opposite route, and turn towards writing their own code with the CMS.

All things considered, if you’d like to learn how to use WordPress, DreamHost might be one of the better hosting providers to do so! This is proven to be true even further by the fact that you can use the service in question on a monthly basis, as described in the chapter above.

Easy to Use UI

This is a factor of the DreamHost website hosting that is likely going to be most important to anyone who has never used the services of a hosting provider before, and aren’t exactly a technical person, to begin with.

There are multiple user DreamHost reviews that you will find online that do also talk about the user interface of this hosting service being super-simple to use and navigate through. I concur - even if this is your first time hosting a site of your own, DreamHost does offer an enjoyable and pleasant experience!

After you register and purchase the hosting plan of your choice, you will eventually end up in your management area, otherwise known as the Cpanel. This is where you can manage and deal with everything related to your website and its hosting features, too.

DreamHost offers its users a modern-feeling and generally-intuitive interface to do all of their hosting-related tasks on. Everything’s rather self-explanatory, there are no complicated features if you don’t choose to pursue them, and you should definitely be able to find everything that you might be looking for on the interface in question.

Evidently, with many hosting providers out there, ease of use tends to be somewhat forgotten and placed aside simply due to the fact that these services focus on being feature-heavy, and providing users with multiple customization options, thus giving out a feeling of you being in complete control.

With DreamHost, though, the latter is somewhat the same, but the company is still able to prove that this does not mean that you would need to sacrifice simplicity in order to achieve it. Good stuff!

DreamHost Reviews: CONS

As you might have gathered by now, the majority of user DreamHost reviews that you will come across online are positive towards the web hosting service in question. People talk about the benefits and perks that you will receive by using DreamHost Happy hosting, and indeed - they are plenty in numbers!

Naturally, however, not everything is “perfect” - same as any other hosting site out there, DreamHost does have some less-than-desirable quirks that anyone thinking about the service should be aware of. Let’s take a look at the most notable ones, and once we’re done, we’ll also talk about the DreamHost pricing options, too.

Slow Site Speeds

Among the biggest issues that users have with DreamHost is the fact that some websites hosted with this company appear to display some pretty poor site speed statistics. I say “some” mainly due to the fact that this seems to impact a specific group of sites. I’m getting ahead of myself, though.

Site speed is often named as the second-most-important feature that you should look into when choosing a website hosting provider, right after uptime. This is true because of the attention span that internet users nowadays have and display online - if your website fails to load almost instantly upon a visitor accessing it, they will most likely leave and never return.

This, in turn, results in both you losing traffic, and also your site being ranked lower in Google’s search results. Here, two wrongs definitely don't make a right.

The absolute majority of hosting providers know this, and try to do everything in their power in order to provide their users with the best site speed stats possible. User DreamHost reviews, however, will tell you that, as far as this hosting service goes, this is not really the case.

Why so, you may wonder? Well, simply due to the fact that DreamHost appears to only host servers within the US. Meaning, while sites created in the US are going to have perfectly fine speed statistics, this isn’t the case with those made and hosted with DreamHost outside of the country.

Indeed - I’ve ran a website that was made outside of the US through a Google page speed checker, and these are the results that I’ve received:

As you can see for yourself, the website fully loads in just under 3 seconds - that’s not ideal! If your visitors have to wait three seconds in order to start using the website as it’s intended to be used, this is going to lead to a loss of traffic, either way.

Now, something that I think is worth mentioning (and that I don’t see mentioned enough on other user DreamHost reviews) is the fact that a lot of the site speed parameters do also depend on you, and how you choose to manage and optimize your website.

While that’s definitely the case, it’s also worth acknowledging that, even if you optimize your site to the fullest extent, if it’s hosted on overseas-located servers, you are still likely to have site speed issues, nonetheless.

Paid Site Migrations

By now, we’ve already established the fact that DreamHost is a pretty beginner-friendly website hosting platform. However, as ironic as it may be, some advanced webmasters might actually have troubles with service in question.

Well, when I say “troubles”, I’m mostly referring to the fact that there is no free option for you to transfer an already-existing website from another hosting company to DreamHost. This is something that is actually offered by most top-tier hosting providers, in order to make the transition between two services as seamless as possible, and to attract new potential customers.

Instead, with DreamHost, you will have to pay for each and every website that you might want to transfer. The cost is going to be $99 per site.

Now, sure - that’s not a very expensive site transfer… Except for the fact that, according to some user DreamHost reviews, you aren’t really going to have much help whilst doing so.

The company does offer some guidance on how to transfer your site, but it would appear that customer support won’t really help you in regards to the core parts of this process. If you’ve never migrated a website before, it can actually be a pretty tough task to do in an efficient and seamless manner, not to mention without any outside help from the hosting provider.

Naturally, this does sway a lot of potential customers away from DreamHost, especially those who do already have a site with some other hosting brand.

Might Not be Ideal for Advanced Website Creators

In the previous chapter, I’d mentioned that, ironically enough, DreamHost might not be the best option for any advanced website creators out there. Sure, this is only due to a few reasons, and it isn’t a sentiment that would be unanimously expressed by all professional webmasters who have used this hosting service - far from it!

That said, however, some of the more-prominent negative user DreamHost reviews do mention the fact that, as far as advanced hosting-related features are concerned, there seems to be a lack thereof with DreamHost.

Simply put, if you’re looking for some advanced backups or security features, or if you’d like to, say, create multiple websites and tinker around with some high-end caching features, DreamHost might not be the perfect option for you. The hosting provider lacks some of these advanced features.

Naturally, however, it does kind of depend on the type of website that you are trying to create. The features that are missing with the DreamHost Happy hosting plans are rather specific - if you find that they aren’t really “a big deal” for you, then there’s really nothing to worry about, either.

Still, though, you should think about the future of your website, too. If you’re creating a site in order to start working on some kind of online business, you are probably looking to eventually grow and expand, too! For that, however, you are likely going to need the aforementioned advanced features of a hosting service.

Price

Now, with all of the main pros and cons of the hosting provider in question discussed and out of the way, the final thing that we still need to look into are the DreamHost pricing options.

One sentiment that you will find expressed online, in multiple user DreamHost reviews, is the fact that the hosting provider has some very affordable pricing options. Is that really the case, or is it a bit overhyped? Well, take a look for yourself:

• Shared Starter - $4,95 per month
• Shared Unlimited - $8,95 per month

Both of the plans come in 3-year, 1-year, and monthly payment options. The Shared Starter plan, as the name likely implies, is aimed at people who are just starting out with their hosting journey. You get the option to host a single website, buy a domain name, get a free SSL certificate and unlimited bandwidth, and a few other perks.

The Shared Unlimited plan, on the other hand, is going to be best-suited for users who are already a bit more proficient with website hosting, and are serious about creating websites and managing them, too. The plan comes with all of the aforementioned features, but does also include the chance to host an unlimited number of sites, and an unlimited email with your domain name.

Truth be told, when you take a look at the DreamHost pricing options, and then compare them with those of other hosting providers, you might not see too big of a difference in regards to the prices.

However, there is a difference  - and it’s rather significant, too.

You see, DreamHost does not lock you into a year-long subscription, if you don’t want to. You can easily pay on a monthly basis - this is, yet again, huge!

On top of that, the hosting company does also provide its users with a lot of different features, many of which aren’t really available with other brands and their beginner plans. That’s awesome!

All in all, the general idea stands true - if you’re looking for an affordable hosting service, but would still like to receive some awesome features even with the entry-level plan, user DreamHost reviews will surely point you to the company in question.

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Conclusions

So, then - is DreamHost web hosting worth trying out, and are the services that the company provides worth the money, in the first place?

It’s a strong yes from me!

Truth be told, I am very confident with my “yes”, too. That’s mainly because, as mentioned multiple times already, DreamHost has monthly subscription options - you do not need to commit to a hosting plan for the foreseeable future, if you don’t want to. On top of that, with as generous of a money-back guarantee as is available with DreamHost, you really have nothing to lose!

While the provider may not be ideal for anyone hosting their websites outside of the US, and while there are some minor quirks that are worth keeping in mind, the general sentiment regarding DreamHost is still very positive. The uptime is good, there are plenty of beginner-friendly features, the user interface is easy to use, WordPress is pre-installed, and so on - plenty of perks to go around!

	SQUARESPACE	WEBFLOW	ZYRO
Free Hosting
SSL Certificates
Free Custom Domains
Website Export
Website Restoration
Email Integration
App market
Membership Creator
SEO Tools	Good	Good	Good
Blogging	Excellent	Good	Good
E-commerce	Average	Good	Excellent
	Visit site Read review	Visit site Read review	See TOP10 Brands Read review

Table: Features of Squarespace, Zyro, and Webflow

If you’re still not certain, though, you can check out some of the best website builders on the market - this way, you will be able to avoid looking for website hosting, altogether, since the companies behind the builders will take care of that for you.

With that, though, thanks for reading! I hope that this DreamHost review was useful to you, and that you’ve learned something new about the hosting provider in question. Good luck, and until next time!