DreamHost web hosting review | IT PRO

LA-based DreamHost has been providing web hosting for 25 years, and serves over 1.5 million web sites. It presents fairly a gamut of web hosting providers, from cheap shared hosting to high-end devoted servers, and usually options among the many best web hosting providers.

DreamHost review: Snapshot

DreamHost’s pricing is extremely aggressive. Performance is nice, too, and plans are easy to know and full of value-adding options. Above all, DreamHost has a give attention to privateness and safety not usually seen in most greater web hosts.

It might have lower than half as many shoppers as greater rivals Bluehost and HostGator, but it surely punches above its weight. It’s persistently cheaper than Bluehost and HostGator, but doesn’t skimp on crucial options. 

In our DreamHost review, we glance nearer on the web hosting supplier’s options, efficiency, and pricing, so you possibly can resolve whether or not it’s one of the best web hosting service in your wants.

Score: 3.5/5

Read on for the total DreamHost review. 

DreamHost’s rivals

How does DreamHost examine to its most important rivals?

DreamHost: Key options

DreamHost presents a variety of hosting merchandise. These embrace shared hosting, VPS hosting, managed WordPress hosting, devoted server hosting, and cloud hosting. We’ll give attention to shared and WordPress hosting right here, however do not forget that DreamHost has you lined when you have a bigger enterprise with extra exact wants.

DreamHost consists of many options in its set plans that you should pay additional for in the event you select a finances web host as an alternative. Taking its most cost-effective Shared Starter plan for example, you get limitless site visitors, unmetered bandwidth, limitless databases, a free SSL certificates, SSH entry, and a WP Website Builder instrument for making a WordPress web site. 

You get automated every day backups, and there’s a one-click installer for a wide range of pre-assembled apps. Even with this plan, your web site is hosted on quick SSD drives. The solely notable merchandise lacking from the Shared Starter plan is electronic mail, which is able to value you £1.63 a month. Or, you possibly can improve to the Shared Unlimited plan, the place limitless electronic mail is included.

Though DreamHost has a one-click installer for in style web apps, the record of obtainable apps is shorter than most rivals. As it stands, there are 25 apps you possibly can set up, together with massive hitters like Joomla, Shopify, Squarespace, and Weebly.

We examined DreamHost’s safety by taking a look at what security measures can be found on all accounts, and researching how effectively its safety has carried out up to now. DreamHost seems to contemplate safety and privateness a part of the fundamental specification of any web hosting service, and consists of options that rivals usually cost a premium for. 

Every web site will get its personal Let’s Encrypt SSL/TLS certificates, so all knowledge transferred between your web site and your guests is encrypted. Your login particulars may be protected with multi-factor authentication from Google Authenticator or Yubikey. DreamHost additionally makes use of ModSecurity on its Apache servers, which is actually a tried-and-tested firewall that may assist block denial-of-service assaults. 

For a further £2.46 a month, you possibly can add DreamShield, a malware-scanning instrument that checks your web site weekly for rogue software program and robotically removes it.

This part should include a caveat {that a} safety researcher discovered DreamHost previously left some client data exposed due to a server misconfiguration. However, the corporate responded shortly and rectified the error instantly. It says that solely 21 web sites had been affected, and not one of the knowledge uncovered included personally identifiable knowledge or consumer passwords.

All of DreamHost’s shared plans embrace WordPress, but it surely additionally has a number of managed WordPress hosting plans—DreamPress, DreamPress Plus, and DreamPress Pro. As the title suggests, managed WordPress plans shift a number of the day-to-day working of a WordPress web site onto the hosting firm.

DreamPress is without doubt one of the greatest managed WordPress choices we’ve reviewed. Your WordPress web site is pre-installed on a high-performance cloud with quick SSD storage. Bandwidth is unmetered, and your WordPress set up will get a number of efficiency boosts like built-in caching, limitless CDN, and Jetpack.

Recently added to DreamPress is one-click staging, so you possibly can safely check tweaks to your web site on a draft model earlier than placing them dwell. You now additionally get free automated WordPress migrations, making it simple to maneuver your web site to DreamPress. 

Besides this, there’s devoted 24/7 ticket help from WordPress specialists, with cellphone help out there. DreamPress deserves consideration for providing all these options with out the large bump in pricing that’s usually seen from managed WordPress options. 

When evaluating the privateness options supplied by DreamHost, we had been impressed that it consists of domain privacy as normal. This means folks can’t discover out your title, tackle, and make contact with particulars just by trying to find your area title. It’s one thing many hosts cost a small charge for, and we respect that DreamHost doesn’t.

DreamHost additionally scores massive factors for customers involved with privateness as a result of it has stood up for its customers’ privateness up to now. Most newsworthy was DreamHost’s 2017 refusal at hand over the personally identifiable knowledge of holiday makers to a political protest web site. 

The Department of Justice took the case to the Washington D.C. Superior Court, however DreamHost fought for its customers in order that solely a extremely redacted record needed to be handed over.

DreamHost: What’s new in 2022?

DreamHost has continued to make enhancements to its management panel. In 2020, the central hub of the consumer interface obtained an entire overhaul that made it simpler so as to add new options. It grew to become simpler to vary your area, and free WordPress migrations had been added. The DreamHost web site additionally grew to become out there in Spanish for the primary time.

In February 2021, it added a DNS Propagation Checker that reveals you, in real-time on a world map, the standing of any new area title you buy. This offers you a greater concept of how lengthy it takes for a brand new area to go dwell throughout the entire web.

DreamHost: Pricing

DreamHost presents month-to-month, one-year, and three-year plans. On shared plans, the low cost for paying for 3 years directly is a large 63%, however on different varieties of plans, the low cost is modest. It’s nice to see a web host with a no-commitment, no-contract month-to-month plan.

Like most web hosts, DreamHost presents a low introductory charge in your first time period to attract you in, beginning on the equal of £2.42 a month. After the preliminary time period, the speed will increase. But DreamHost’s normal charges are usually cheaper than the competitors, so it makes for a sensible choice in the event you’re in it for the lengthy haul.

Alongside shared hosting, DreamHost additionally presents WordPress, VPS, cloud, and devoted hosting plans. Some of those function the identical preliminary discounting and elevated charges, whereas WordPress hosting is on the market in managed and unmanaged variants, and cloud hosting is a separate service.

DreamHost additionally presents a large 97-day money-back assure, making it the chief within the business on this regard.

DreamHost’s pricing plans

Shared hosting

WordPress hosting

VPS hosting

Dedicated hosting

*  Undiscounted month-to-month charges
**  Undiscounted one-year charges

Testing DreamHost

In order to comprehensively examine DreamHost to the competitors, we analysed its server response occasions.

How does DreamHost carry out?

To check DreamHost’s efficiency, we ran a fundamental WordPress web site for 14 days, and continually checked uptime over this era utilizing Uptime.com. In whole, we accessed the web site over 4,000 occasions, and every time, the positioning was out there. This is usually to be anticipated with a check over such a brief interval, but it surely’s promising however.

DreamHost additionally goes additional than most hosts by providing a 100% uptime assure. This is streets forward of the same old 99.9%. If any of your providers (web site, electronic mail, and many others.) go down due to a DreamHost system failure, you’ll be compensated sooner or later of hosting for each hour your service is unavailable.

What’s DreamHost’s response time?

We examined DreamHost’s response velocity by loading a fundamental WordPress web site hosted on DreamHost each 5 minutes for 2 weeks, from computer systems located in Dallas, Los Angeles, and New York.

Website hosts sometimes reply inside 200 to 400 milliseconds. DreamHost did OK right here, too, averaging 374 milliseconds all through our exams. Once each few days we skilled highs of as much as 1.96s, however these slower response occasions by no means lasted greater than 5 minutes.

Note, too, that these efficiency outcomes are a baseline, as DreamHost presents many dearer packages. We’d count on to see even higher efficiency when utilizing its cloud, VPS, and devoted servers.

Alternatives to DreamHost

DreamHost’s record of shared hosting, VPS hosting, devoted servers, and cloud hosting is comparable in scope to high rivals Bluehost and HostGator. In our testing, Bluehost websites had been marginally sooner than DreamHost’s websites, and HostGator’s buyer help was higher.

But DreamHost’s introductory costs are very aggressive, and issues get even higher when you think about its modest normal pricing. Its introductory supply isn’t the bait-and-switch you get with most suppliers, and its normal charges are significantly better than these of Bluehost and HostGator. This means DreamHost ought to be considerably cheaper in the long term.

DreamHost’s options in comparison with the competitors

*No month-to-month plan; worth based mostly on annual plan

DreamHost: The verdict

DreamHost is a nice web hosting supplier, notably in the event you’re searching for a comparatively easy web host that offers you the whole lot you want with out throwing in costly bells and whistles. 

There aren’t any thrilling advertising instruments included, for instance. You should pay additional for electronic mail on the most affordable plan, and DreamHost doesn’t supply free 24/7 cellphone help. Servers are all US-based, too, which suggests DreamHost isn’t splendid for customers in different areas, and the record of apps you possibly can one-click set up is fairly brief.

While the dearth of a lot of these options might delay some folks, these simply searching for a stable, reliable web host may discover the lower cost interesting. As famous, DreamHost does prominently promote its introductory charge, but it surely’s not the setup for a bait-and-switch pricing mannequin. Its renewal pricing is truthful and persistently cheaper than that of its high rivals.

We additionally like that DreamHost presents a month-to-month plan. Many rivals require annual plans, or make their month-to-month charges exorbitantly costly. And in the event you’re searching for a managed WordPress answer at a superb worth, DreamHost is right.

Our efficiency testing confirmed DreamHost is quick sufficient for nearly all makes use of. You get a 100% uptime assure, too, which is excellent. And we’re impressed at DreamHost’s confirmed dedication to retaining consumer particulars non-public and out of presidency fingers. 

Overall, we advocate DreamHost most to customers whose high considerations are pricing, privateness, and dependability.

Further studying on web hosting

To discover out extra about one of the best options to DreamHost, take a look at our guides to the best unlimited web hosting, and the best VPS hosting. If you’re nonetheless unclear about why you want hosting, yow will discover out extra in our article asking what is web hosting? If you are trying to find hosting for a small enterprise web site, check out the best web hosting for small business. 

If you are contemplating the best WordPress hosting in your WordPress web site, make certain to have a look at our listicles outlining seven nice causes to decide on managed WordPress hosting, and the 4 S’s of managed WordPress: safety, scalability, velocity, and repair.