Dreamhost is a web hosting provider established in 1996 and registered just a year later in the county of L.A. in California. They now boast over 400 thousand customers. They offer web hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated hosting, cloud hosting and the important WordPress Hosting.
Taking pride in offering their customers the best service possible is one of DreamHost’s goals. They also want their customers to be in full control of their own data, so DreamHost doesn’t mine your data for their own beneficial purposes.
(Since this post was published, DreamHost have completely revamped their plans. Back in 2017 they offered three main plans but now have many more covering Shared Hosting, Managed WP Hosting, WooCommerce and VPS Hosting for high-performing installs or sites).
Does DreamHost offer good Hosting?
DreamHost’s Plans;
Four individual plans are offered by DreamHost. These plans are called the basic plan, the Plus plan, the Advanced plan and the Dreampress+WooComerce plan. You can also get a custom plan with more power to suit you and your sites better. To get a custom plan you will need to contact DreamHost directly. This is ideal if you would need to get hosting for more than just a few sites, or for larger-scale sites, which may need more storage.
With every plan, users will get access to resource scaling and cloud platform. Resource scaling allows your website(s) to perform and work even when or if you attract a lot of traffic within a small period. How does DreamHost do this? Well if they notice your site gaining better traffic they will use more power and resources to keep your sites afloat.
Shared WordPress Hosting Plans;
Dreamhost now offer two shared hosting plans for WordPress. They advertise ‘Starting from $2.59 a month’, which can be a bit misleading due to this being the price of the shared starter three year plan.
Shared Starter;
The first Shared hosting plan of the two that DreamHost offer is the Shared Starter Plan. This plan is the cheapest plan out of any plans Dreamhost offer for WordPress. Users get access to a range of features including a free domain, unlimited traffic, pre-installed WordPress and much more.
A great feature within this plan is access ti the new WordPress builder. One negative of this plan is that you can only have one website. If you need more the Shared Unlimited Plan might be for you.
Overall this plan costs $2.59/£2.07 a month for a three year plan, $3.95/£3.16 a month for a one year plan or $4.95/£3.96 a month if you wish to be billed at a monthly rate, which allows you to cancel anytime.
Shared Unlimited;
The second and last Shared Hosting Plan from DreamHost is the Shared Unlimited Plan. Users gain access to all the same features as the Shared Starter Plan. This includes a Pre-Installed WordPress, Unlimited Traffic a Free SSL and more. The only difference between this plan and the Starter Plan is this plan allows for unlimited websites instead of only one.
Overall this plan costs $5.95/£4.77 a month for a three year plan, $6.95/£5.57 a month for a one year plan and $10.95/£8.77 if you wish to be billed at a monthly rate. Although paying monthly allows you to cancel anytime.
Managed WordPress Hosting;
DreamHost have upgraded their Managed WordPress Hosting plans. The New plans offer more to users than the before plans that were called the Basic, Plus and Advanced Plans, which you can see below. These plans have now been scrapped and DreamHost now offer more up to date DreamPress Plans.
To see the DreamPress Plans skip the Basic, Plus and Advanced Plans shown below.
Basic Plan;
(Isn’t offered anymore in favour of the DreamPress Plans).
The first plan DreamHost offer for WordPress is the basic plan. This plan allows one website, so it would be ideal for bloggers and single websites, with a small general idea. This plan is very small and would only be suitable for these kinds of websites.
With the Basic Plan, user can expect to receive 5GB of storage, up to ten thousand visitors to their site over a monthly period, a cloud platform, basic backups for their site and resource scaling. All for $16.95 a month.
Jetpack free allows you to gain site stats and other performance features such as monitoring your uptime and downtime. Security features are also included in the Jetpack feature including attack protection.
Plus Plan;
(Isn’t offered anymore in favour of the DreamPress Plans).
The next plan DreamHost offer is their plus plan. It is a step up from the Basic plan and will set you back $24.95 a month. With this plan you get access to every feature you get with the basic plan, only the Jetpack is the pro version and backups are offsite instead of basic backups.
This plan gives users access to one site with up to thirty thousand visits per month, which is three times the amount of the basic package. If you have the basic package and you’re growing I would recommend upgrading your package to this plan. As this plan offer’s up to thirty thousand visitors per month it would be ideal for growing single websites and blogs. 10GB of storage is also a part of this plan which is double the amount in the basic package.
You will also get access to premium themes, which are expensive if bought separately. These themes might be ideal for the kind of website you’re wanting to host with DreamHost. Daily scans for any malicious content on your sites are carried out by DreamHost for free with this plan. other features you will receive with this plan are resource scaling, JetPack pro, VaultPress backups, Video and Image CDN and elasticsearch.
Advanced Plan;
(Isn’t offered anymore in favour of the DreamPress Plans).
The third plan DreamHost offer is the Advanced plan. This is the next level plan after the Plus plan and will set you back $35.95 a month. Ideally, think it would be so much better if the price was either $34.95 or $35 as it sounds better and looks better on your bank statements. I would recommend this plan if you’re looking to host two websites with DreamHost as out of the basic, plus an advanced plan this is the only one that allows two sites. Alongside the two sites, you also get up to sixty thousand visitors per month and 15GB of storage.
You also get everything included within the Plus plan, including the cloud platform, resource scaling, Jetpack Pro, VaultPress backups and the daily malware scanning feature. Elasticsearch and the video and image CDN are also included within this plan. The elastic search is very useful for improving search results and speed throughout your sites, which would help greatly in e-commerce sites. Images and videos are also compressed to improve the loading time of pages and your site with the help of the image and video CDN. This also helps to free up space on your account, meaning more content can be uploaded to your sites.
DreamPress Plan
The first DreamPress Plan offerd by DreamHost is self-titled – ‘DreamPress’ Plan. This plan comes with a range of features ideal for any small-medium site such as a blog or a single shop website.
With this plan users have access to the new WordPress Builder, daily backups, an SSL Cartificate and also 24/7 WordPress support. Overall this plan also allows for up to 100000 visitors a month and 30GB of SSD Storage which is why this plan is perfect for small-medium sites such as blogs and online stores.
The price of this plan is quite modest, starting at $16.95/£13.58 a month when you purchase a yearly plan otherwise it would cost $19.95/£15.98 a month if you wish to billed at a monthly rate.
DreamPress Plus Plan
The second DreamPress Plan is the Plus Plan. This plan is very like the plus plan before the change and it also includes all features of the original DreamPress Plan talked about above.
Included within this plan is features such as the unmetered bandwidth, a pre-installed SSL Certificate, daily backups, 24/7 WordPress and also the new WordPress website builder. The only additional feature that isn’t included in the first DreamPress plan is the addition of the Unlimited CDN feature.
The price of this plan again is quite modest. To buy yearly it will cost $24.95/£19.98 a month which would be a saving of around 16% if you were to purchase this plan monthly. The cost of monthly is $29.95/£23.99.
Overall this plan allows up to 300000 visits per month on the website with up to 60GB of SSD storage.
DreamPress Pro
The final DreamPress plan is the DreamPress Pro Plan which is more expensive than the others, costing $71.95/£57.63 a month for a yearly plan which is a saving of over 10% if you are to purchase this plan monthly. The cost of this plan monthly is $79.95/£63.03.
This plan features every feature offered in the DreamPress Plus plan including the Unlimited CDN. The only difference is that with this plan you get access to over one million plus visitors per month and also 120GB of storage.
DreamPress and WooCommerce Plans;
The final plans DreamHost offer are the DreamPress and WooCommerce plan. These plans would be ideal for any kind of e-commerce website. Whether you are selling, shoes, food or even DreamHost badges, these plans could easily host your e-commerce website.
These plans cost between $19.95/£15.98 a month and $79.95/£63.03 a month for the largest WooCommerce plan. Overall there are three plans with WooCommerce. The DreamPress plan with WooCommerce, the DreamPress Plus plan with WooCommerce and the DreamPress Pro plan with WooCommerce.
Each plan is exactly the same as the managed DreamPress plan only WooCommerce is pre-installed on the WordPress install. A 30 day guarantee is also offered as part of all plans.
WordPress VPS Hosting Plans;
In addition to the Managed Hosting and Shared Hosting, DreamHost offer Virtual Private Server WordPress Hosting (VPS). VPS Hosting is in fact shared hosting that gives the illusion of dedicated hosting.
All plans come with the same features apart from the size of RAM ans SSD Storage.
Features include, unlimited websites and traffic, free SSL certificates and unlimited emails for your domain. You will also receive unlimited support 24/7, an appropriate support panel, automatic updates and many other tools. To find out more visit the DreamHost website.
VPS Basic;
The first VPS plan is the basic VPS plan. This plan starts from only $10/£8.01 a month for a three year plan. For a one year plan it will cost $13.75/£11.01 a month and a cancel anytime month by month plan it will cost $15/£12.01 a month.
This plan comes with all the features mentioned above plus more, 1GB of Ram and 30GB of SSD Storage.
VPS Business;
The VPS Busines plan is the second VPS hosting plan offered by DreamHost. This plan also includes a month to month plan, a one year plan and a three year plan. The three year plan starts from $20/£16.02 a month, with the one year plan costing $27.50/£22.03 a month. The final price is the month to month cancel anytime plan which costs a more expensive $15/£12.01 a month.
This plan comes with all the features mentioned above plus more, 2GB of Ram and 60GB of SSD Storage.
VPS Professional;
The third VPS Hosting plan is the Professional plan by DreamHost. This plan is more suitable towards larger websites due to the size of the RAM and SSD storage offered. (4 GB Ram and 120GB SSD Storage).
Overall this plan starts from $40/£32.04 a month for the three year plan, $55/£44.05 for the one year plan and $60/£48.06 for the monthly, cancel anytime plan.
VPS Enterprise;
The final VPS Hosting Plan offered by DreamHost is the VPS Enterprise Plan. This is the largest of the VPS Hosting Plans. Overall the plan is quite expensive a month with the cheapest being $80/£64.07 a month for a three year plan, $110/£88.10 a month for the one year plan and $120/£96.11 a month for the month to month cancel anytime plan.
This plan comes with all the features mentioned above plus more, 8GB of Ram and 240GB of SSD Storage.
Do DreamHost provide good Support?
Dreamhost offers many support features for their customers. One of the main features offered by DreamHost would be their 24/7 support. You’re able to contact DreamHost for a number of reasons through their in-house support. This means you’re able to contact DreamHost directly about any sort of problems. Even if it’s not an emergency. The key areas you can contact our sales, billing, tech support, ‘I can’t log into my account’ and others. This is a great advantage as some hosts only allow you to contact them directly within certain times unless its an emergency.
There is also a section within the support that allows you to check DreamHost’s system status. If you’re website ever goes down, this is the best place to look for answers before contacting DreamHost. Every part of their service they provide is listed and shown if they are operational or not. This support page also makes users aware of any scheduled maintenance within DreamHost. Within here they tell you the date of the scheduled maintenance and when it will start and how long it will take. The service which they are maintaining is also shown so that you’re not left in the dark.
Like many competitors, DreamHost has a knowledge base with many articles on various topics, which you may need help with. This should always be the first step you should take before going directly to their 24/7 support as you may find your answer more quickly here and it helps keep the calls DreamHost receive to a minimum. There is also a forum in which users of DreamHost have access to, which is another alternative to finding quick answers to your problems before contacting DreamHost directly.
A thirty-day guarantee of your money back, if you don’t like DreamHost’s service is available with every plan. This means you never be out of money and are not tied down to the plan straight away after signing up.
What kind of Security does DreamHost provide?
DreamHost also offers a lot of security features for and with heir plans. Security is the most important part of your website, as it helps to protect your sites from hackers, spam and other malicious software. To help prevent the unknown from happening, DreamHost has built-in security that will update, monitor and protect your site, to stop any tragedies happen to your site.
With the basic plan, you will get access to basic backups, and free SSL. The SSL will encrypt pages within your sites. This is especially helpful on an E-Commerce site as it will encrypt all card and personal details. JetPack free is also included with gives you a few extra security features. With all the other plans, you get access to JetPack Pro. Jetpack Pro gives you more security features than free JetPack. The security features you will receive from JetPack Pro are brute force attack protection, spam filtering, daily backups, malware scanning and threat resolution and secure logins. Everything you could almost possibly want. The JetPack Pro means your backups will be off-site with the help of VaultPress. You also get free SSL with the other plans.
You can add on to your package domain privacy and a web application firewall. The domain privacy means all your personal information such as your email and phone number will be hidden so you won’t get spammed from people looking to build your website. The firewall ensures your site is more protected than ever as it helps defend your sites from malicious attacks.
DreamHost’s Performance, what’s it like?
DreamHost advertises 100% uptime, which personally I think is impossible, as if your site needs unscheduled maintenance or DreamHost is at fault, you may occur downtime. Although if you experience anything less than 100% you will be compensated for the stress, except if scheduled maintenance happens. Also, don’t worry about going over your limit of visits as DreamHost will have you sorted right out with their resource scaling. Their resource scaling means that if your site blows up more power will be sent to your website to keep alive.
Upload speeds are above average offering you, decent speeds, generally less than a second, which isn’t the best. But it will still load to a decent standard. They can’t be perfect at everything.
With the plus and advanced plans, users also get access to an image and video CDN. What is this? Basically, this feature helps to compress images and videos into smaller files without losing their quality. This means your pages and media will load quicker, compared to the loading times of your pages without the CDN. It will also mean less storage space will be taken up by images and videos, allowing you to upload more media, posts and pages to your sites.
Server level caching is also available to everyone, so cache plugins are not needed within your WordPress sites. If you need to get more power for your sites, it can happen within one click. with an instant upgrade.
Does DreamHost have any other or Unique Features?
DreamHost has a number of other features, some of which are unique to them. One of their very unique features is their fast provisioning. This feature can launch a site live in five minutes or under. They also have a custom control panel, to as they say ‘manage WordPress easily’. Many people will see this as a disadvantage as most hosts use cPanel, so many users moving to DreamHost would be very used to cPanel.
With DreamHost, your WordPress install comes pre-installed with many themes and plugins. Some of the plugins might be just what you want and need. This means you will not need to go and find themes and plugins yourself unless you need some which you don’t get pre-installed. You’re able to create an unlimited amount of email accounts with your domain.
Positives of DreamHost;
DreamHost’s biggest positives are their relationship with WordPress themselves. WordPress is one of four partners DreamHost have and WordPress, in turn, recommend DreamHost’s hosting. Getting a recommendation from WordPress is very difficult, so being one of the three recommended hosting DreamHost must be doing something right.
The uptime guarantee and money back guarantee can also take a weight off your shoulders. It means you can always gain back from DreamHost if you don’t like their service and if you experience downtime, you will receive compensation.
The fact DreamHost offer multiple plans for WordPress is another positive as you’re able to choose the best one which suits you. Having access to an unlimited amount of emails with your domain is another positive.
DreamHost, have many amazing security features you get with every plan. They could be the difference between keeping your site life and it crashing. The support offered by DreamHost is also exceptional, or in my words, ‘their support is out of this world’. This is due to having so many ways you can contact DreamHost and also the community DreamHost have.
Yes, DreamHost is one of the few hosts that are green. This means all of their servers from 2007 have been running by renewable energy such a wind power. You can also earn from DreamHost by becoming an affiliate. This is where you share DreamHost on your social media to gain them more customers. You don’t even need to be an existing customer to earn.
Negatives of DreamHost;
One of the main negatives of DreamHost is their price, especially for WordPress. Their cheapest plan cost $16.95 a month, which is a price some people wouldn’t want to pay for hosting. Their other plans also cost between $20-$40 dollars which is even more expensive. Although the features you get with DreamHost balances out the price.
Another main disadvantage is that DreamHost doesn’t use cPanel. cPanel is one of the main control panels used within hosting, so a lot of people are familiar. This is negative as it means their customers will need to learn DreamHost’s custom control panel.
DreamHosts upload speeds are not the greatest compared to some of their main competition. This is another negative as some users will leave sites if pages don’t load quickly enough for them. Although the best isn’t the best, they are still better than average but have room to improve.
My Thoughts;
Personally, I think that DreamHost is one of the main hostings you should consider when trying to find hosting for WordPress sites. They might be a little more expensive than their competitors but I think the security, support and other features make up for the price. They have more positives than negatives and their support seems one of the best offered by hosting companies.
This article was last updated on 24th September 2019
*ALL PRICING WITHIN THIS ARTICLE WERE ACCURATE AT TIME OF WRITING. ALL STERLING (GBP) AND EURO (EUR) WERE CONVERTED FROM DOLLARS (USD) USING GOOGLE’S OWN CONVERTER.
*ALL PLANS AND PACKAGES MADE BY DREAMHOST ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE BY DREAMHOST THEMSELVES.
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