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DreamHost reviews anyone? Leaving bluehost

by Adam Roy
19 replies
I'm looking for some reviews for DreamHost.

I've outgrown the pro package at bluehost for my shared server (have 2 of them actually) and I need to upgrade the servers to accomodate my site's growth.

We're steadily increasing in traffic as we have been for the past couple of years, one site alone is serving nearly 600,000 pageviews a month now and it's just too much for the shared account, even with the pro package. Not to mention they seem to have server issues somewhat often lately and my site's go down for a couple hours a month.

So I looked into rackspace, they weren't very helpful and then recommended their 'sister company' which at first glance and after a bit of looking around appeared very unprofessional.

So dreamhost comes recommended by wordpress so I looked at their site and plans, and they seem to be what I need. They have options so I can upgrade as our websites grow. Essentially I can upgrade as I need to and I don't want to keep changing hosting companies.

Only setback is I'm having a hard time finding any good reviews, I've already searched this forum in the reviews section and couldn't find much. If anybody has used dreamhost or is still using them I'd appreciate it if you could share your experience and provide your review.
#bluehost #dreamhost #leaving #reviews
  • Profile picture of the author Jesus Perez
    The worst host I've used in my life. In 2008, I noticed my sites going down on occasion. So I started monitoring my sites.

    The results? Dreamhost had 88% uptime. Consistently. It was absolutely terrible. Hostgator had near 100% uptime.

    Stay far away. Their control panel makes it especially difficult to upgrade to a regular Cpanel host once you've outgrown them.
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  • Profile picture of the author micksss
    I'm not sure what your budget is but I would look into a mid level managed VPS solution for around $40-50/month.
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    • Profile picture of the author Adam Roy
      Originally Posted by Jesus Perez View Post

      The worst host I've used in my life. In 2008, I noticed my sites going down on occasion. So I started monitoring my sites.

      The results? Dreamhost had 88% uptime. Consistently. It was absolutely terrible. Hostgator had near 100% uptime.

      Stay far away. Their control panel makes it especially difficult to upgrade to a regular Cpanel host once you've outgrown them.
      Thanks. I'm not surprised it's hard to find a good host these days.

      Is hostgator a good solution for medium-high traffic sites? I've heard lots of both good and bad reviews about hostgator but as does any hosting company I suppose.

      I got a hostgator account, just a shared one and never really ended up using it because I didn't like the cpanel and the way you had to register domains (I'm stubborn), but I guess they have options dependent on your sites needs?

      Originally Posted by micksss View Post

      I'm not sure what your budget is but I would look into a mid level managed VPS solution for around $40-50/month.
      Who do you recommend, I'm paying $20 now so if I could end up with a great hosting company with which I can upgrade as I grow that would be great.
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      • Profile picture of the author Jesus Perez
        Originally Posted by Adam Roy View Post

        Thanks. I'm not surprised it's hard to find a good host these days.

        Is hostgator a good solution for medium-high traffic sites? I've heard lots of both good and bad reviews about hostgator but as does any hosting company I suppose.

        I got a hostgator account, just a shared one and never really ended up using it because I didn't like the cpanel and the way you had to register domains (I'm stubborn), but I guess they have options dependent on your sites needs?

        Who do you recommend, I'm paying $20 now so if I could end up with a great hosting company with which I can upgrade as I grow that would be great.
        The Cpanel that Hostgator uses for Shared hosting is a universally accepted control panel. You can actually "export" your entire Cpanel config and import it to another host. It makes migration seamless. That's why I didn't like Dreamhost's custom cpanel. I had to manually move each site...and it was a PAIN.

        As for recommendations, Hostgator for shared hosting. WiredTree for VPS. These are the current hosts I use and both are solid. WiredTree is a bit of money, but the support there is amazing. One call gets you a competent tech that has understood and resolved the few problems I've had.

        Originally Posted by Adam Roy View Post

        That's what I was thinking too.

        After all my running around looking for reviews and such, and options available from the various hosting companies, hostgator seems to be the best fit.

        They have a 'managed' vps option for only $40 a month, not entirely sure but I think that plan should be good enough for me. Still on the fence.
        If you're going VPS, then go WiredTree. It'll cost you $49 but they do something a lot of hosts don't do...they upgrade existing customers. http://www.wiredtree.com/aboutus/press.php
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  • Profile picture of the author Danielm
    I've used asmallorange.com for many years and they've always been really solid with great support. Worth checking them out for sure.
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  • Profile picture of the author zcrafts
    I really avoid host offering unlimited stuff (which they really don't) after a very bad experience I am really happy with WebHost.UK.Net : Best UK Web Hosting | Web Hosting UK | UK Linux cPanel Web Hosting | Affordable UK VPS Dedicated Server | European Domain registration | United Kingdom Web Host | WebHosting UK they are offering me excellent service in UK as well as US ..so I don't have to look further.
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  • Profile picture of the author GMT
    Yeah it sounds like you've outgrown your shared host, I also recommend getting a VPS, it may even be cheaper than what you were paying for your shared setup. You'll have to be more hands on though, unless you want to pay a lot for a "managed" VPS you'll have to read up on how to install things.
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    • Profile picture of the author Adam Roy
      Originally Posted by GMT View Post

      Yeah it sounds like you've outgrown your shared host, I also recommend getting a VPS, it may even be cheaper than what you were paying for your shared setup. You'll have to be more hands on though, unless you want to pay a lot for a "managed" VPS you'll have to read up on how to install things.
      That's what I was thinking too.

      After all my running around looking for reviews and such, and options available from the various hosting companies, hostgator seems to be the best fit.

      They have a 'managed' vps option for only $40 a month, not entirely sure but I think that plan should be good enough for me. Still on the fence.
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  • Profile picture of the author willster74
    I wouldn't recommend Dreamhost for hosting - they don't even use C-Panel. Also if you are list building you have to use confirmed opt in. It's in their terms. I use and and happy to recommend Hostgator - they have Managed VPS and Dedicated Server options which you may want to look into.

    Hope that helps.

    Cheers,
    Dave.
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    • Profile picture of the author SEOlover
      I'd recommend you to use hosting from 4goodhosting.com.
      This company has supported a lot of scripts on their stable servers.
      Prices are affordable and uptime is 100%.
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  • Profile picture of the author David Neale
    Worth a read. Scroll down to see what they think of Dreamhost.

    DAP Certified Web Hosts — DAP Documentation
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    David Neale

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    • Profile picture of the author positivemagic
      You think DreamHost just had a server crash and that is why the 80% being up instead of 100% or is it because they don't manage their host closely? I haven't used them, just wondering. Thanks.

      Isabella Fiorentino
      Pro Online Marketer
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      Ps. What if instead of hunting people down until they begged you to stop... pre-qualified prospects actually sought you out and asked you what you do and how you do it? Click here.

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    • Profile picture of the author DigitalDanny
      Originally Posted by David Neale View Post

      Worth a read. Scroll down to see what they think of Dreamhost.

      DAP Certified Web Hosts -- DAP Documentation

      Just as i should say it myself. Had a hosting account there 4 years ago and what they describe there is same issues i had. My personal opinion to you would be to stay away from them. Pay a little more and get a decent host.
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    • Profile picture of the author ravijayagopal
      I was going to post the link below from our blog, but David beat me to it :-)

      Dreamhost is absolutely, without exaggeration, without spite, the worst host I have ever encountered - ever!
      • No cPanel - they have their own weird, home-grown app that blows on so many levels
      • No phone support.
      • Forget phone support - for a so-called "big name" host, you won't even find a phone number listed anywhere on their web site for even pre-sales questions
      • If you have an emergency, and your site is down, you're basically hosed. You could pay $10 a month for "3 callbacks" - but the call back will come after 3-4 hours, only to tell you that they're working on it. And it will take another half a day for your site to come back. And it will come back whenever it comes back. So the $10 per month is just pure charity from your pocket to theirs.
      • Tickets take up to 48 hours to get an answer. And even when they do reply, it is usually a half-baked one, will ask some stupid questions about your original ticket (and I'm pretty sure they don't even read your ticket until the third time around) and once you respond, off it goes for another 48 hours. No matter how much information you put into the ticket in advance so that they don't waste your time by coming back with lame questions, they always find a way to not address your issue at all, and responses don't resolve the issue - heck, they don't even move the process of resolution forward.
      • Every time you notice your sites are down (which in the last year or so has been every other day for more than a couple of hours - and it's funny how they ALL go down together, even if you have a VPS and 5 different hosting accounts all on different dreamhost servers), and you go to their web site to open a ticket, you'll almost always (99 times out of a 100) find that their main site dreamhost.com is also down. And you have to go to a different site - dreamhoststatus.com (probably hosted at Hostgator! lol) - to check the "status" of why every site of yours is down.
      And I just spent 15 minutes of my precious time thumbing down Dreamhost and writing this long post here.

      Does that say anything about what I think about them? ;-)

      Run far, far away from Dreamhost.

      And don't believe the handful of "rave reviews" you'll find online about dreamhost. Most of them are either affiliates, or are those who are just getting started, and/or have almost no traffic - maybe like 10 visitors a day to their blog that has 5 posts :-)

      Cheers!

      - Ravi Jayagopal

      Originally Posted by David Neale View Post

      Worth a read. Scroll down to see what they think of Dreamhost.

      DAP Certified Web Hosts — DAP Documentation
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  • Profile picture of the author affordableweb
    I would not trust DreamHost. Their service sucks and they will double bill you on occasion and hope you miss it.
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  • Profile picture of the author avalanche
    Wow, really surprised at the responses, because Dreamhost has been a great choice for me. Hosted with them since 2005, and I've no kidding used 50-100 hosts between clients and my own sites.

    I packed that dreamhost shared account full of sites, and they all run pretty fast, and uptime is strong. Only time I had problems with them was when I (ironically) upgraded to their PS. Their support has been their strongest suit as well - very fast, always fixed the first time, and no snotty techs.

    That being said, putting a site getting 600k uniques a month on a shared host seems crazy to me. Unless that is completely awful traffic, surely it has to be worth the cost of a vps. shared hosting should really only be a test bed until a project gets profitable, imo.
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  • Profile picture of the author Chronic IM
    Originally Posted by Adam Roy View Post

    I'm looking for some reviews for DreamHost.

    I've outgrown the pro package at bluehost for my shared server (have 2 of them actually) and I need to upgrade the servers to accomodate my site's growth.

    We're steadily increasing in traffic as we have been for the past couple of years, one site alone is serving nearly 600,000 pageviews a month now and it's just too much for the shared account, even with the pro package. Not to mention they seem to have server issues somewhat often lately and my site's go down for a couple hours a month.

    So I looked into rackspace, they weren't very helpful and then recommended their 'sister company' which at first glance and after a bit of looking around appeared very unprofessional.

    So dreamhost comes recommended by wordpress so I looked at their site and plans, and they seem to be what I need. They have options so I can upgrade as our websites grow. Essentially I can upgrade as I need to and I don't want to keep changing hosting companies.

    Only setback is I'm having a hard time finding any good reviews, I've already searched this forum in the reviews section and couldn't find much. If anybody has used dreamhost or is still using them I'd appreciate it if you could share your experience and provide your review.

    Hello

    This is the first time I heard about DreamHost... Can you please explain the some details about it... Coz maybe I can use it in the future....Thanks..
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  • Profile picture of the author Cliff Carrigan
    I have used bluehost, dreamhost, hostgater, and several more. I ultimately settled with inmotionhosting because of the easy access to tech support..... not giving them a plug on purpose, just tossing out another option you could look at while you are researching.
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  • Profile picture of the author seosoldier
    Did you leave bluehost because they were bad or simply not big enough for you? How were they before you outgrew them?
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