DreamHost is one of the oldest web hosting provider out there. It was founded in 1997 and currently hosts over 1.5 million websites.
DreamHost’s shared hosting plan starts at $2.59/month. It comes with WordPress and website builders like Weebly and more. Also, you get a 97-days money-back guarantee.
Pros
Here are some of the pros of DreamHost
- Long money-back guarantee time – DreamHost has 97 days money-back guarantee which is offered by no hosts on the market. Also, you can pay month-to-month and if you cancel within 97 days, you will get your entire money back, no questions asked.
- Good base plan features – Though DreamHost’s basic plan starts at $2.59/month, it gives you a ton of features.
With the base plan, you get one website, unlimited traffic, 50GB storage, free domain, free SSL certificate.
You also get access to DremHost’s website builder called Remixer. But, if you prefer Weebly, Wix etc, you have that option via their app library.
You will also find some of the other popular scripts like Joomla, Drupal, myBB, phpBB etc. in their app library.
WordPress comes pre-installed if you take the WordPress hosting package.
- Ample disk space and unlimited bandwidth – DreamHost basic plan gets you 50GB disk space and unlimited bandwidth which means you don’t need to worry about either one of them if you don’t violate their FUP. If for some reason, your site is using a lot of resources, you may be asked by the team to move your site to a higher plan.
- Custom control panel – DreamHost uses a custom-made control panel. This helps them to spend less on software and more on server resources.
- Free site migration – This is a new feature in DreamHost. You can migrate your site for FREE. The only catch is that your site needs to run WordPress. If you are running any other supported CMS, then you have to pay a one-time fee of $99.
ALSO READ – Hostinger WordPress Hosting Review
Cons
Here are some of the cons of DreamHost
- Slow speed – Speed is really important for SEO. It not only affects bounce rate but also affects SEO ranking on Google. So, a fast-loading website is a must for ranking high on Google.
As you can see from above, in quiet a few occasions, the load times went over 1 sec which is not fast at all.
- Average uptime – DreamHost’s 12-month uptime was 97.93% which means it had more than 24 hours of downtime. This could mean that you can lose a lot of potential customers. The good thing is that their SLA is 100% uptime. So, if it’s less than that, you will get a day’s service for free for every hour it’s down.
- Limited chat support – DreamHost has an extensive knowledge base. That’s really good for beginners but sometimes, we all need to contact live support. DreamHost claims 24×7 live chat support but, in my experience, it’s quite the opposite. When you will open the live chat, you will have to select some options. After going through a long list of the options, you will be able to contact a human but hope that luck is on your side because most of the time, you will see the message that all of the agents are busy.
After some experimentations, I found out that their live chat timing is actually between 5.30 AM-9.30 PM PT every day.
Pricing and Hosting Plans
Here is an overview of their plans:
| Shared Starter Plan | Shared Unlimited Plan | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | $2.59/month Renews at $5.99/mo | $3.95/month Renews at $10.99/mo |
| Websites | 1 | Unlimited |
| Bandwidth | Unmetered | Unmetered |
| Storage | 50GB | Unmetered |
| Email Accounts | Costs extra ($1.67/mo) | Unlimited |
| Other Features | – | • Unlimited Subdomains & MySQL Databases • Unlimited FTP/SFTP/Shell Users |
Here are their managed WordPress plans:
| DreamPress Plan | DreamPress Plus Plan | DreamPress Pro Plan | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing | $16.95/month | $24.95/month | $71.95/month |
| Websites | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Bandwidth | Unmetered | Unmetered | Unmetered |
| Storage | 30 GB | 60 GB | 120 GB |
| Email Accounts | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Other Features | – | • Unlimited CDN | • Unlimited CDN • Priority Support |
Verdict
DreamHost is one of the oldest hosts to be around. It currently hosts over 1.5 million websites. There is a 97 days money-back guarantee. Also, their plans are cheap and offer a lot of features for their price.
If you have any queries or suggestions, then please let me know in the comments down below.
ALSO READ – Bluehost Hosting Review
