Want to buy DreamHost hosting?
In this review, we will show you the advantages and disadvantages of DreamHost hosting!
DreamHost is considered one of the oldest and largest global web hosting companies. DreamHost is a private American hosting company that was established in 1996, making it one of the oldest web hosting companies that is still operating today.
DreamHost was established by a group of students at a university in California in the United States of America and is still a private company that does not belong to a large group or financial institution. The company has more than 400,000 customers and hosts more than 1.5 million websites on its web servers.
DreamHost hosting is widely popular among web developers and website designers who are mainly looking for developer-friendly hosting that allows them to access advanced settings and gives them greater control over their hosting in order to run special tools and software or to facilitate their development and programming tasks.
DreamHost is also popular among “Digital Marketers” for providing a powerful and reliable website hosting service. In addition, DreamHost’s hosting packages are considered one of the cheapest web hosting services as they enable them to host more than one website on a hosting account at a low cost.
DreamHost offers a variety of hosting services including shared hosting, virtual private servers (VPS), full servers, and WordPress hosting.
In addition, the company provides domain registration and reservation services, CDN content distribution networks, and a DreamCompute cloud computing platform that is primarily aimed at developers and large companies.
If you are planning to purchase hosting from DreamHost, you are in the right place.
We have been testing DreamHost hosting, monitoring its performance, and testing it for years. It was one of the first companies we tested at SoFarBit, and thanks to God, we were able to identify its flaws and problems in addition to our knowledge of most of the advantages of hosting and the service in general.
Like other web hosting reviews on SoFarBit, we will share our experience in detail and inform you of the advantages and disadvantages of DreamHost hosting in detail.
Thus, you will know whether DreamHost is really the best website hosting as it claims or not? This is from the perspective of a user of the service over the years.
DreamHost Hosting Advantages
Every hosting company has advantages that attract customers to it and some disadvantages that may make them avoid using the company's services or try to live with those disadvantages if they are not major disadvantages that affect the service in a way that makes it unusable.
By experiencing different hosting services, including DreamHost, SoFarBit team is able to identify the disadvantages and advantages of hosting and we share those strengths and weaknesses with our visitors on SoFarBit website in the form of reviews and evaluations of hosting services in detail.
After using and experiencing DreamHost hosting services over many years, we will share with you its disadvantages and advantages without bias in detail.
We start with the special features of DreamHost..
These points are the most important features of DreamHost hosting that we liked while purchasing web hosting from it and while using hosting over the past years, which makes DreamHost one of the hostings that are often mentioned in the lists of the best global hosting companies.
DreamHost hosting is fast
One of the most important factors that distinguish a good and strong hosting company is the speed of hosting response, which directly affects the speed of loading the pages of the sites hosted on it. The speed of loading the site pages affects the visitors' experience and their impression of it, and studies have also proven its connection to the site's profits and sales in the case of commercial activities and online stores.
One of the advantages of DreamHost hosting is its high hosting response speed compared to the average of other competing web hosting companies in the same service and in the same price range.
DreamHost was one of the first hostings to switch to using Solid State Drive or SSD storage disks, which are characterized by being several times faster than the speed of a regular hard disk HDD, which directly affects the speed of hosting response and its speed in general.
DreamHost also relies on using optimized servers to provide the best possible performance, in addition to using software, tools and technologies that improve the performance of the web server, while updating software, tools and programming languages to their latest versions, which often come with better features and higher operating speed, in addition to some other features that increase the speed of hosting.
DreamHost Uptime is Strong
Hosting Uptime is the most important factor that expresses the quality of the hosting service. Strong and distinctive hosting services often have good uptime and this is achieved after the hosting company does many things that are financially expensive for the company and may be stressful for its team as well.
In short, uptime is the rate at which your hosting service operates normally without stopping and is measured as a percentage that expresses the percentage of time the system was working compared to the entire time period.
For example, if the uptime rate is 100%, this means that the hosting did not stop at all during that period. If it is 90%, this means that the hosting and your site with it were stopped for 5% of that time period, which is equal to one hour and 12 minutes every day.
One of the most prominent advantages of DreamHost hosting is the significantly lower hosting downtime compared to its competitors due to the high quality of its hosting service and its use of modern and effective servers, tools and software to reduce the possibility of hosting downtime to the lowest possible level.
In addition, DreamHost guarantees that its hosting will work 100%, which means that it will never stop theoretically, which is almost impossible. In most cases, the uptime guarantee in other web hosting providers is 99.99% or less, although most of them do not even reach that number.
The importance of the uptime guarantee is that some hosting companies provide you with compensation for the period during which your site was down. This compensation is according to the mechanism determined by the hosting company and after you contact its technical support to request compensation from them.
As mentioned above, in DreamHost the uptime guarantee is 100%, which means that almost any downtime in the hosting qualifies you to receive compensation from DreamHost.
The compensation in DreamHost, like other hosting, is in the form of a balance in your account with the company or a longer period of use of the service.
The compensation mechanism in DreamHost is as follows:
- You will receive a credit in your DreamHost account equal to the cost of one day of your hosting service for every one hour (or part thereof) of service downtime, with a maximum of 10% of the value of the hosting renewal bill.
- To receive compensation, you will need to create a technical support ticket to report the problem and DreamHost will investigate the matter and you will receive compensation in your account after the investigation into the problem is completed.
- You can compare DreamHost hosting performance in terms of uptime and hosting speed with the performance of other hosting such as BlueHost hosting, HostGator hosting, Hostinger hosting and others side by side on the Best Website Hosting page on SoFarBit website.
DreamHost Hosting Unlimited Resources
We previously talked about the reality of unlimited hosting and mentioned that there is no such thing as unlimited hosting. Most hosting companies use the term “unlimited” in order to attract new users. However, we also mentioned the advantages of unlimited hosting in that it gives you the freedom to use the hosting without worrying about consuming its resources.
If you are going to create a regular website and not a file sharing site or a file upload center, using unlimited hosting is an advantage in hosting and not a disadvantage, especially if you are a user of shared web hosting.
DreamHost offers unlimited web hosting as it provides unlimited bandwidth and unlimited file storage capacity as well, with the exception of the smallest package that comes with a limited disk space capacity, but it is 50 GB, which is a large storage capacity compared to the price of the package and the needs of the sites that will be hosted on it.
DreamHost also does not impose restrictions on the number of website visitors and the number of visits that are met from the cache memory, in addition to not imposing limits on the number of databases and FTP accounts and the number of subdomains that can be created, with the exception of the smallest package that has limited resources.
Like other web hosts, DreamHost has a fair usage policy that regulates the unlimited hosting feature and explains the mechanism governing the consumption of unlimited resources.
The summary of this policy is that the use of hosting and its unlimited resources is for normal uses only and not for the purpose of benefiting from the resources themselves primarily. Hosting cannot be used on sites that provide hosting resources to the public for free or for a fee, such as: file upload and sharing sites, keeping backup copies, keeping an archive of files, or sites that keep files that do not have intellectual property rights.
This policy is not exclusive to DreamHost, as it is present in almost all web hosting providers and all unlimited hosting. It is also similar to what we often see in telecommunications companies and Internet service providers in what is called the "fair usage policy", and its main goal is to maintain the quality of the service and protect the company and users alike from misuse by other users.
Monthly hosting or accept monthly payment
There are not many web hosting companies that allow you to purchase a hosting service for a month or pay your web hosting costs every month. Most web hosting companies allow you to purchase website hosting for a period ranging from one to several years, and in some cases they may allow you to purchase the service for a maximum of 6 months.
Although this has a noticeable justification, which is that purchasing for a relatively long period will give you the comfort and time to develop your website. It also relieves you of the worries of the hosting reservation period ending at a time when you may not have the hosting renewal fees or you face another payment problem such as the expiration of your credit card, for example, which may lead to the deletion of your account with the hosting company and your websites hosted on it.
On the other hand, it is also beneficial for the hosting company, as it helps it filter out users who may misuse the hosting service, such as hackers and others who purchase hosting or rent a web server for a short period and use it in their hacking operations and then move to another hosting.
Buying for a longer period also helps the hosting company increase its financial income and enables it to predict the number of users in the coming years, which helps it continue to work and develop its services and increase or decrease the capacity of its hosting platform in terms of the number of web servers and their capabilities and other data center resources.
In this context, DreamHost is one of the few hosting companies that offer monthly hosting that you can renew on a monthly basis and cancel the hosting at any time you want, which gives you the freedom to move to another hosting at any time or even close your site completely with the least possible losses.
Among the hosting companies similar to DreamHost in this matter are the well-known American A2 Hosting and Hostinger, which has become one of the largest hosting companies in a few years, in addition to Cloudways, which relies on monthly payment primarily for its services, and among them is Namecheap hosting.
Shared web hosting packages only
Almost all web hosting companies such as Hostinger, Namecheap, HostMonster and others offer several shared hosting packages, which makes choosing a suitable hosting package difficult in many cases. It also makes comparing hosting companies a difficult task as all hosting companies offer hosting packages with different resources and prices.
As for DreamHost, it offers only two hosting packages, the first is small and has limited resources and the second is unlimited resources that supports an unlimited number of databases, storage space and data transfer amount and allows the user to create an unlimited number of websites on the same hosting account without additional fees.
One of the most prominent advantages of this principle in pricing packages in DreamHost is that it makes choosing a hosting package for your website easier due to the clear differences between the two packages. It also reduces your costs as well. If you need suitable hosting for only one website, then the smaller DreamHost hosting package will be more suitable for you and will save you a lot.
However, if you need hosting resources greater than those in the small package, the larger package will give you unlimited resources and additional features that are not available to users of the small package for a slightly higher price.
Therefore, the two packages give DreamHost customers great flexibility as they meet the needs of most users looking for shared hosting without the user who needs small hosting having to pay for a hosting package larger than his needs. In addition, they do not limit the ability of the customer who needs a larger hosting package or wants to increase hosting resources as well.
Here we must also mention that there are other web hosting companies that take a simpler approach in pricing. They provide only one web hosting package such as iPage hosting, which offers a shared hosting package that includes all resources without limits.
Free Daily Backups from DreamHost
The best way to keep your site safe is to keep backups of it continuously, which will be your last resort if your site goes down, gets hacked, or you make any mistakes in its settings or programming.
A backup is a copy of your site files and its database and is considered a complete image of it at a specific moment that you can restore your site to if a problem occurs or at any time you want.
Although the backup feature is very important and SoFarBit recommends getting it, it is expensive, especially keeping backups as they are large in size, especially if your site is large. And if you keep more than one backup for different periods at the same time.
In this context, DreamHost hosting comes with a free Automated Backups feature with a daily frequency. DreamHost takes a backup copy of your site every day automatically without your intervention and keeps that copy so that you can restore that copy whenever you want.
Install WordPress on DreamHost easily
The vast majority of websites run on WordPress, and although creating a WordPress site on a web hosting is not very difficult, it requires some technical knowledge and takes a while. That's why some users opt to subscribe to WordPress.com.
DreamHost offers a feature to easily create a WordPress site without any intervention from you in downloading WordPress, creating a database, modifying the WordPress settings file, re-uploading the WordPress script to WordPress hosting again, and other steps that may be difficult for beginners.
All you need to do to get a WordPress site on your DreamHost hosting is to choose the "Pre-Install WordPress" feature when purchasing DreamHost hosting, and DreamHost will install WordPress on your hosting and create a WordPress site without any intervention from you and for free.
You can also install WordPress at any time easily from within the DreamHost hosting control panel without the need to upload WordPress script files or create a database, as all of this is done automatically thanks to the One-Click WordPress Installer tool that enables you to install WordPress easily in moments.
You can get your money back within 97 days
- Web hosting companies often do not give the possibility to try the service for free in order to avoid misusing this feature.
- However, since you will be associated with the hosting company with a long-term contract in most cases and will pay the cost in advance, it is necessary to have the possibility to cancel this contract and get your money back or part of it if you do not like the service.
- Here comes the importance of the "Money-back Guarantee", which gives the customer the freedom to cancel the hosting or service within a specific period from the date of purchasing the hosting if you do not like the service.
DreamHost offers a money-back guarantee if you cancel the service within 97 days of purchasing the hosting. This period is considered the highest money back guarantee among web hosting companies (with the exception of some other companies that support money back at any time, such as A2 Hosting).
DreamHost Hosting Disadvantages
After we mentioned above the advantages of DreamHost, we must also mention its disadvantages or weaknesses, because of course anything has advantages and disadvantages.
In this section of the DreamHost hosting review, we will mention the most prominent disadvantages of hosting in DreamHost.
Private control panel
One of the things that may be seen as a disadvantage in DreamHost hosting is that it uses its own control panel to manage hosting and not using an external web hosting control panel as most competing hosts do, such as Namecheap, which provides low-cost hosting, and the rising FastComet company, and others.
Although this control panel is easy to use and simple, it is unfortunately not as powerful as the cPanel control panel, which is used by other major hosting companies such as GoDaddy, and a specialized company develops and updates it.
DreamHost's control panel does not have Arabic language like cPanel, but this problem can be solved by using the translation feature in the web browser, and do not forget that there is a library of explanations for the control panel in the DreamHost hosting knowledge base that you can use to learn how to manage hosting and perform various tasks. But what distinguishes the DreamHost hosting control panel is that it enables you to manage your account and manage the hosting account from the same control panel with ease without the need to move from one place to another or log in to the control panel separately as is the case with competing control panels.
DreamHost Hosting Prices Are a Little High
Compared to other hosting companies such as Bluehost and Inmotion Hosting, DreamHost hosting prices are relatively high. This is if you want to get the same services that you get from other companies.
But always remember that good service has a price and the hosting price should not be the only factor when you judge whether hosting is good or bad.
All hosting companies want to compete and bring in new customers and one of the best and easiest ways to do that is to lower the hosting price, but these companies also aim to make a profit from the hosting services they provide.
So although DreamHost hosting prices are high, the reason for that is the quality of service provided by the company, which is better than some other cheap hosting companies.
Script installer supports WordPress only
As mentioned by SoFarBit team above, DreamHost provides a One-click Installer tool that helps the user to easily create a website in a few simple steps without having to do complex tasks and tasks that may require technical knowledge, which may make them difficult for novice users.
However, the application and script installer tool in DreamHost is limited to WordPress only. Although WordPress is the most widely used and popular content management system, similar tools such as Softaculous in other web hosting allow the installation of a large number of applications and scripts such as Drupal, Joomla, and others, and are not limited to WordPress only.
But do not forget that this defect does not affect the quality or performance of DreamHost hosting, but is limited to the ease of creating the site, which is a task that you will only need to do once. DreamHost provides explanations on how to install popular scripts on its hosting manually, in addition to the presence of many explanations on the Internet.
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