Dreamhost used to be one of only three web hosts recommended by the team behind WordPress (the other two being Hostinger and Bluehost).
Now, Dreamhost has been swapped out for Pressable, a web host owned and operated by WordPress. With them being removed as a recommended host I know the question comes up, is Dreamhost any good?
Should use go with them for your web host if you’re looking to build a website, blog or online store?
You bet.
With great shared hosting for small to medium sized websites (50k-100k visitors a month), good prices, the domain name fee being waived for the first year and free WHOIS protection to top it all of.
You get a lot of value from this California based web host.
My Overall Rating
I give Dreamhost a 4 out of 5. Their hosting prices are very fair, and they have great introduction rates that go for 3 years (not one year like other hosts) to help you save on startup cost.
You also get a free domain name for the first year, reasonable renewal rates for domains and free WHOIS protection.
Simply put, they are a fantastic starter host for the aspiring tech savvy who want to build with WordPress. Once you signup and purchase a hosting account, you’ll have access to your Dreamhost Dashboard where you can create new WordPress powered websites with ease.
On top of that, you can also manually install and run other types of scripts and CMS’s on your account like Joomla or Drupal. Really anything that is compatible with a Linux hosting environment. While Dreamhost is focused on WordPress, you’re not limited to only WordPress.
Pros and Cons Overview
Let’s get right to the pros and cons of using Dreamhost to host your website.
PROS
- Cost effective: Dream has low introduction prices for good shared hosting.
- Good upgrade options: Once you outgrow shared hosting, they offer managed WordPress hosting, a VPS, cloud hosting and a dedicated server option.
- Free domain and WHOIS protection: The domain name fee is waived for the first year with a hosting package and you get WHOIS protection at no additional cost.
- 97-day money-back guarantee: A no nonsense policy to allow you to try Dreamhost services risk free.
- Unlimited Bandwidth: Unlimited bandwidth and storage (on Shared Unlimited plan) let you grow without worrying about hitting a resource cap.
- WordPress installation: WordPress one-click installs making launching a site easy.
CONS
- No free email on starter plan: The shared starter plan does not allow for any custom email for your domain. You’ll need the shared unlimited plan for that.
- Self-managed VPS plans: There is no managed VPS option, self managed only. More technical to manage than a shared hosting account.
- US data centers: Data centers are in Virginia and Oregon. Not ideal if your audience is primarily outside the US.
Dreamhost
Affordable hosting, free domain, and an easy, done for you WordPress setup process.
Perfect American based web host for websites, blogs and online stores.
I’ve used Dreamhost to create websites (like in this tutorial)
I bring this up because this review is based on actually using Dreamhost in depth and being a customer. I’m going to cover their different services, support, prices and overall user experience for beginners (their target market).
Dreamhost checks a lot of boxes I look for in a starter host:
- Great introduction rate and an affordable renewal price.
- Fair domain name prices and free WHOIS protection.
- Easy to use interface for launching websites, namely WordPress.
- Hosting upgrade options like a VPS and more.
- Acceptable support for when I run into issues.
- Competitive affiliate program.
I can say Dreamhost hits the mark and all these items and it’s no surprise why they were recommended by WordPress for so long.
The only drawback to Dreamhost that I see is that their data centers are strictly located in the United States. Perfect if most of your traffic is from the US. Not ideal though if your audience is outside the US.
Their support is also average, but I don’t expect top tier support when I’m paying for a budget friendly hosting plan. With that said, their support is fine to help you get started with your account, and you get priority support with more advanced hosting plans.
Pros of Dreamhost
Done for you WordPress setup process:
With Dreamhost, once you submit payment you’re guided step-by-step setup on how to create WordPress powered website. This is perfect for a total beginner who want’s their website and blog up fast without being overwhelmed.
Made for “techy” nontechnical users:
I know that statement is an oxymoron, but I think Dreamhost is great for nontechnical users who want to learn the tech side of thing of how hosting, domains and websites work together.
They provide enough guidance and access to features on the backend with their dashboard to help with creating a website, but don’t hold your proverbial hand too much to the point where you don’t understand how anything works.
If you’re going to be in the business of creating websites, making sales pages, building products, you should understand how domains, nameservers, your hosting account and installing a CMS all work together.
It’s not too complicated, but you still need to take time to figure it all out and Dreamhost is perfect for this.
Free domain for the first year:
Finally, a “free domain” offer that’s actually good. Dreamhost waives the domain name fee for the first year when you purchase a shared hosting account.
On top of that, they also offer free WHOIS protection unlike other hosts and website builders that charge 20$ or more a year extra for this.
Lastly, the renewal rates for domains are fair and not over priced. They are not as cheap as Namecheap (a dedicated domain registrar), but still a fair price for a web host.
SSL certificate done for you:
A Secure Sockets Layer certificate (SSL), verifies your website’s identity and encrypts critical site data. It’s a ranking factor and any decent web host should offer an SSL for free. Luckily, Dreamhost provides a free SSL for all domain on your account.
Customer support:
Dreamhost offers 24/7 customer service. Their customer care is accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and on weekends. Overall their support is adequate for helping you out with your account and any problems you may have running a WordPress powered website.
Unlimited bandwidth
Bandwidth is unlimited (within reason). That means if your website happens to go viral, maybe an influencer shares a link to your site for some reason, you don’t have to worry about your site going down.
If this does happen, Dreamhost will ask you to upgrade your account to a more resource appropriate package. But the great thing is that you don’t have to worry about hitting any limits and your site going down. Perfect for building and growing your website.
Cons of Dreamhost
US data centers
For a shared host, the only cons I see are that they are not ideal for an international audience. Sure your website will be accessible to anyone in the world, but ideally you want your data center located where your audience is.
If your target audience is America, then Dreamhost is totally fine.
“Shared Starter” is too limited
Dreamhost has two tiers for shared hosting; their starter plan and unlimited plan.
The biggest difference is that the starter plan only allows for only one website. A total deal breaker if you ask me. If you want to create even a subdomain like learn.yoursite.com you can’t as that is an additional site.
You also don’t get any professional email on the starter plan. Apart from that, their Unlimited Plan is excellent and feature rich and just a little bit more expensive. Well worth the price.
Dreamhost
Affordable hosting, free domain, and an easy, done for you WordPress setup process.
Perfect American based web host for websites, blogs and online stores.
Dreamhost Pricing
Dreamhost is first and foremost a shared hosting company but they do offer other hosting options like a VPN, cloud hosting and dedicated server. In addition they also operate as a domain name registrar and an email host.
Excellent shared Hosting for WordPress
They offer very competitive prices for their hosting with their introduction rate being for the first 3 years, not one year like other hosts.
- Starter: $2.59 to start, renews at $5.99. 1 website, free domain and unlimited traffic. No email.
- Unlimited: $3.95 to start, renews at $10.99. Unlimited websites, free domain and unlimited traffic. Unlimited emails.
You get so much value out of the Unlimited Plan and it’s only $1 cheaper each month for the next three years. Upon which you’ll pay the standard price.
The Starter Plan is fine if you need a single website for some reason, but compared to the Unlimited Plan, well, there is no comparison. The Unlimited Plan is so much better with it’s unlimited websites and emails.
Last, when your site(s) start to outgrow shared hosting, Dreamhost has other product verticals you can upgrade to like a VPN or cloud hosting.
Managed VPS hosting
I’m technical myself, and no way would I want to manage a VPS. With Dreamhost, once you’re ready to move on from Shared Hosting, they have a great managed VPS offering.
DreamHost offers Managed Virtual Private Server hosting as a premium solution for websites and applications that need more resources than shared hosting can provide, but don’t require the full power of a dedicated server.
- VPS Business: The account to upgrade to once you’ve outgrown shared hosting.
- VPS Professional: Great for high traffic websites with over 100k monthly visitors.
- VPS Enterprise: Similar to the professional tier, but more ideal if your website is resource intensive. Like if you’re running a forum on your domain.
- VPS Premier: The step below before getting a server. Lot’s of storage and cores.
Their VPS offer includes unlimited bandwidth, a unique IPv4 address, unlimited IPv6 addresses, free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates, and 24/7 support. You can also add a dedicated MySQL VPS for database-heavy applications like WordPress.
Managed WordPress
DreamHost’s managed WordPress hosting is called DreamPress, distinct from their Managed VPS offerings, and it’s tailored for the person who runs a high traffic WordPress website but doesn’t want to deal with any technical issues.
If you have one big, high traffic website the their managed WordPress option is a great choice. The only drawback would be if you need more that one domain as the limit is 1 WordPress website.
Maybe your site has a subdomain like learn.website.com, I would suggest contacting Dreamhost to see how to proceed if that’s the case.
- DreamPress: Offers 30GB of SSD storage, supports up to around100,000 monthly visitors, and includes 1GB of RAM. Perfect medium sized publishers looking for managed hosting with fast load times, automatic backups, and unlimited bandwidth. Starts at $16.95/month.
- DreamPress Plus: Provides 60GB of SSD storage, handles up to around 300,000 monthly visitors, and comes with 2GB of RAM. Great for high traffic blogs e-commerce stores requiring enhanced resources, built-in caching, and 24/7 WordPress support. Pricing starts at $24.95/month.
- DreamPress Pro: Delivers 120GB of SSD storage, supports up to 1 million monthly visitors, and features 4GB of RAM. Designed for a high-traffic WordPress website that is resource-intensive and needs top performance, staging environments, and priority support. Pricing begins at $71.95/month.
Dedicated Server
A dedicated server is designed for large businesses, e-commerce platforms, or content-heavy websites with consistently high daily traffic, think tens of thousands of visitors hitting the site every day. This type of site needs guaranteed resources and top-tier performance.
Dreamhost does not offer any specific tier of server, instead you can customize your server in the form of how may cores (6 or 12), ram and storage.
The base configuration seis equipped with a powerful 6-core, 12-thread processor for exceptional multitasking capabilities, 16 GB of RAM to support demanding applications with ease, and a spacious 1920 GB SSD configured in RAID 1 for fast, reliable, and redundant storage.
Offering root access for complete administrative control, a local MySQL database server for optimized data handling, and running on Ubuntu for a stable and versatile operating system, all reinforced by a 100% network uptime guarantee, round-the-clock technical support and server monitoring, and robust DDoS protection to ensure uninterrupted performance and security under any load.
Dreamhost cloud hosting
Finally we come to DreamHost’s cloud hosting which is a flexible, scalable, and affordable solution designed for entrepreneurs, developers, and businesses looking to host websites, applications, or store data in the cloud.
It comes in three tiers: 512mb RAM server, 2 GB RAM server and an 8 GB RAM server.
Domain registration at Dreamhost
Dreamhost in addition to being a webhost also offers domain name registration. With your purchase of a hosting account you can get a domain name free for the first year. Then after the first year you’ll have to pay the renewal rate.
Currently the renewal rate for a .com is $19.99 a year for .com domain names. For their most updated domain pricing you can check that out here.
Last, they offer free WHOIS protection, also known as domain name privacy. Many web hosts and website builders charge a $20+ fee for this, but Dreamhost provides this service for free.
Overall, I do prefer using Namecheap for domain names because you get a lower rate and a lower renewal rate. You can also lock in your domain name at a great current price for up to 10 years with Namecheap. With web hosts like Dreamhost you can only register for one year at a time.
For a web host though, Dreamhost does provide competitive pricing and offers compared to other web hosts. Specifically great intro rate on a wide range of domain extensions, standard renewal rates and free WHOIS protection.
Email hosting (mediocre)
Dreamhost offers basic email hosting that starts at $1.99 a month per inbox with 25 GB of storage. Nothing fancy, no 2FA support, no syncing of apps or anything. Just simple email hosting.
You do get a multiple email inboxes once you have an “unlimited shared” hosting account. But if all your after is a cheap and dedicated email for a specific domain, then email hosting from Dreamhost is for you.
Personally, compared to Namecheap again, Namecheap offers much better email hosting. You can also use Google Workspace if you’re in need a a suite of pro services.
Dreamhost’s “hire a pro” offer
While I’m partial to using Fiverr when I need to hire out for a freelancer, Dreamhost does offer a “hire a pro” service where you can get specific help for a few different verticals.
Website Design and Development
You can hire their team to create a custom, professional WordPress site starting at $1,499 (though sometimes discounted to $1,199 during promotions). They design sites from scratch to match your brand and vision.
Website Maintenance
Their experts can manage your site’s software and backend, starting at $24.50/month, ensuring it stays updated, secure, and fast.
SEO and Marketing
They provide SEO services to boost your site’s visibility on search engines and social media marketing to grow your audience, both starting at $399/month.
One-Time Help
For specific tasks or quick fixes, you can request assistance at $89/hour. This could cover things like software updates, database imports, or DNS configuration.
Site Optimization
They offer performance tuning to make your site faster, typically a one-time service priced at $399 for most websites.
Dreamhost review conclusion and breakdwon
Dreamhost is an excellent, American based web host. They have uncomplicated, competitive pricing for all their product verticals.
From no nonsense shared hosting, to a managed VPS offering or even dedicated WordPress management for high traffic publishers. Dreamhost caters very well to both small and large websites and their specific needs and resource requirements.
Their email hosting option is a bit weak compared to competitors, and I don’t like how you only get one website on their most basic shared hosting plan. Apart from that, I found Dreamhost to be feature rich, easy to use and a perfect starter host for a beginner looking to develop their web hosting tech skills.
If you’re looking to find out if Dreamhost is any good, well the short answer is their very good if your audience is primarily in America. If you’re starting out, then get their Unlimited Shared plan which has an excellent introduction price that lasts for 3 years.
Dreamhost
Affordable hosting, free domain, and an easy, done for you WordPress setup process.
Perfect American based web host for websites, blogs and online stores.
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