Latest DreamHost Hosting Review with 7 DreamHost Pros and Cons
DreamHost is a web hosting company providing affordable solutions for businesses ranging from individual users to enterprises. There are many hosts, but choosing the right one sometimes becomes tricky. Don’t you worry; this DreamHost hosting review will help you decide whether it's worth it or not?
DreamHost has been one of the leading hosting companies serving customers worldwide for decades, managing millions of websites and domains under their management. We recommend them if reliability, security, and fastest loading speeds are the primary concern.
WordPress developers officially recommend the host to start a Wordpres powered website.
DreamHost Hosting Review
We know how difficult it is to stumble on the right web hosting these days. Every year, dozens of new service providers appear out of nowhere. And it makes our jobs as digital marketers and bloggers more difficult.
Don’t worry! We are on a mission to make you aware of all the features, pros, and cons of hosting providers. We are here today with the DreamHost hosting review, and even we have shared almost every web hosting review here to help you find the best one. You might have read some reviews here already.
Everything You Need to Know: DreamHost Hosting Review
DreamHost Company Introduction
If you have been in the digital marketing or blogging field for a while, you might have heard of DreamHost many times. Being started back in 1996 in Claremont – California, by Michael Rodriguez, Dallas Bethune, Sage Weil, and Josh Jones.
DreamHost has come a long way as a renowned web hosting company that everybody knows. The company is owned by New Dream Network, LLC, which started hosting websites in 1997.
Right now, Dream Host is empowering more than 1.5 million websites on their servers and is also an award-winning hosting company. And in 2016, it was awarded as the best customer service provider.
The core hosting plans are divided into Shared, VPS, Cloud, Managed WordPress, and Dedicated Hosting. All the plans come with SSD-based hard drives and 99.9% server uptime.
Along with hosting packages, DreamHost also offers domain name registration.
DreamHost Hosting Review
But the question is, are they worth the hype? Can they outperform other providers available today? Let’s just find out.
We have divided this DreamHost hosting review into two parts in which you get all the specification information at first and service details later.
So, are you ready to explore the features of DreamHost and DreamHost's pros and cons?
DreamHost Hosting
Dreamhost Features and Benefits
The following are the features you get once you purchase a hosting plan of DreamHost. Based on the plan you take, the features may vary.
Unlimited Storage and Bandwidth
Over the years of our digital marketing journey, we found nothing fancy about unlimited storage. But still, a lot of fellow marketers and website owners weigh the quality of a web hosting company by checking whether they have unlimited storage or not.
DreamHost offers unlimited storage with their shared hosting package. You know it’s not feasible to upgrade to higher plans like cloud and dedicated servers, don’t you?
DreamHost Hosting Review
Bandwidth refers to the data transfer in and out of your website per month. DreamHost is generous enough not to put a limitation on any of their hosting types. No matter you choose any hosting (shared, cloud, WP, or dedicated), the bandwidth remains unlimited, and your website will never go down to oblivion even for a moment.
Versatile Set of Services
Being a webmaster, you need to gather multiple services. Let’s say hosting, domain, SSL, and maybe cloud storage. You will feel exhausted to switch between different platforms to manage all the services, even for a single project.
Don’t worry because DreamHost has simplified it for you. You can manage all your web hosting needs and domains from their dashboard, and they can intensify your online influence by providing you with SSL and cloud storage.
Now, take hosting. A shared hosting plan is not enough for a website with a million monthly hits. But we purchase the same when starting up due to the lack of traffic. Once the website achieves authority, you will feel disappointed not to buy a higher plan due to the outrageous traffic.
DreamHost features Shared, Managed WP, VPS, Dedicated, and Cloud web hosting that you can upgrade whenever you want and under each type, you will find different packages as well.
DreamHost Hosting Review
The same goes on with domain services too. You can choose any TLD you like for the regular price.
Free Domain Name
A top-level (.com, .net, .org) costs about $12 a year. One may think it is higher or lower based on the hosting he will buy. For a person who wants to buy a shared hosting plan, $12 is a good amount. But it’s like peanuts for people looking for dedicated servers to buy.
DreamHost gives a free top-level domain with every shared hosting annual plan.
Unlimited Domain Hosting and Email Addresses
We all try to pull the maximum out of something we purchase, right?
DreamHost’s unlimited domain hosting favors us in this regard. As some hosting providers allow you to have one website hosted with one purchase, Dreamhost's unlimited domain hosting capability lets you have as many websites as you want under the same hosting account.
It saves you extra expenses and brings the comfort of managing all your sites under one roof.
DreamHost Hosting Review
Having a professional email address has become mandatory now, and people lend ears to something like yourname@xyz.com rather than yourname@gmail.com. We know every hosting provider provides custom business email addresses for free with their shared hosting plan, and DreamHost does it too!
But they give you unlimited branded email addresses so that you can assign emails to all your team members associated with every project.
PCI Compliant
Do you want to develop an e-commerce site? Or you like to have any online purchase feature on your website?
Then, you must be extra vigilant during web host selection because it‘s hard for an ordinary person to know how secure it is to trigger payment info via a particular provider’s server.
That’s where PCI compliance comes into play. If you see a PCI (Payment Card Industry) compliant website, you need to understand that it is safe to make an online payment.
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DreamHost is PCI compliant, and they protect the card data of users coming through the websites by the proper obedience to the public security standards.
Are you still confused with the term PCI compliance? Check this guide out and gather more info.
Zero Setup Fees
Are you a beginner with no experience setting up a WordPress website using a web host?
That brings up another reason to choose DreamHost. They provide website setup at no cost. The hosting experts (humans) of the Dreamhost team help you with the setting up process that you don’t have to get your hands filthy with unnecessary errors in the configuration.
We have searched for free website migration. But I couldn’t find the same! Maybe they included it behind the term free website setup.
Free Domain Privacy Protection (WHOIS Guard)
If you are looking forward to starting a regular website, domain privacy protection may not seem appealing.
But as a blogger, you know its importance, we believe. You might have visited many sites whose owner information can’t be traced. About us, author info, contact us, nothing, and you can’t see anything that points to reaching out to the owner.
When you see such a website, it is clear that the owner doesn’t want to reveal the identity. Still, there is a loophole called whois details. Whether a person puts his identity on a website or not, you can find out who registered that domain using the free who. is details searching tools available on the web.
What if you want to block that too? There comes the role of domain privacy protection, and some web hosts call it DNS protection.
DreamHost Hosting Review
If you purchase it for a domain, no one can trace out the owner of a domain irrespective of what tool (including who. is) they use. DreamHost offers domain privacy protection for free.
Seamless Integration of Unique IP Address
Do you know the importance of having a unique IP address?
You purchased a shared hosting plan in which the resources are equally divided among all the websites present on the server. Once any of them gets affected, your site will also suffer from the same issue.
You get a shared IP for your entire server that once the IP is blocked, all the websites hosted there (including yours) go down.
DreamHost Hosting Review
The unique IP address is a solution for such issues. Even if the shared IP gets flagged, your site will not go down since it has its IP.
DreamHost’s control panel features a direct option to grab a dedicated IP. And that makes the integration seamless and easy to get through.
Solid State Drives (2x Faster than Traditional Drives)
Do you like visiting a slow-loading website? Neither do I. We know every internet user wants to be on faster websites, and they don’t wait more than five seconds on a site to get it loaded. Hence, any website owner needs to keep the loading time as low as possible.
DreamHost provides Solid State Drive, aka SSD hosting, with every plan. They will store your data on SSDs, which load, process, and transfer data over the usual SATA hard drives.
DreamHost Hosting Review
The best thing about the feature is it doesn’t cost you anything extra, and you pay the regular fees and receive faster SSD hosting. No strings attached!
Free SSL Certificates
Secure Socket Layer certificate is a method of end-to-end website encryption that adds an HTTPS prefix to the URL of any website. You might have already noticed the prefix many times.
TLS (Transport Layer Certificate) was the first to hit the website encryption segment. And now, we call both TLS and SSL by only one name, SSL.
DreamHost Hosting Review
DreamHost provides both of them for free for a lifetime. Yeah, you heard it right!
You can painlessly add the HTTPS prefix to your website's domain without going through sweaty tasks. A new security company powers the SSL certificates from DreamHost, Let’s Encrypt.
Though the company provides the certificate only for 60 days, DH renews the subscription regularly that you won’t notice its expiration.
97 Days Money Back Guarantee
Not every hosting provider sticks to its promise. So we may feel disappointed for making the wrong choice at times.
You can request a refund using their 97 days money-back guarantee when you feel the same about DreamHost. I have reviewed quite a lot of web hosts in the past. But it’s the first time we see more than three months of duration for the money-back policy.
Unfortunately, they mentioned a money-back guarantee under shared hosting only. But it’s something that worth considering while choosing the hosting company. Why will a cheap quality hosting company provide such a prolonged money-back guarantee period?
Award-Winning Customer Support
You get three channels to reach out to the customer support team of DreamHost; email, Twitter, and live chat. To comply with the clock worldwide, they are available 24x7x365 days to help you with any issue.
Don’t hesitate to ping them up whenever you think you need guidance. Dreamhost will respond without making you wait for much time.
One-Click Installer
Don’t you know how to install CMSs manually?
Don’t worry! DreamHost has a one-click script installer supporting WordPress, Joomla, and many content management systems, which has made the installation more accessible by simplifying the process into two simple steps.
Launch the installer, choose the CMS, and boom!
Automated Malware Scans
Hackers are getting smarter every day by inventing new methods to peek into websites. So, you have to secure your site with cutting-edge tools not to see an unusual ‘Hacked By’ badge.
DreamHost performs malware scans regularly without making you aware of it. They scan your entire website, and you will know only when something malicious comes up.
The malware scanning provided by StopTheHacker includes a set of unbeatable tools to protect a site.
DreamHost Hosting Review
That’s it! You have read most of their significant features. Now, it is time to look at their range of services.
DreamHost Hosting Plans Prices
I have divided the entire section into several parts like hosting, domain, and cloud for your convenience. Like any other hosting provider, DH has a range of different types of web hosting.
1. Shared Hosting
No, you will not get multiple plans here. DreamHost has only two plans with a free domain, unlimited domains, space, bandwidth, and emails. You will get a free whois protection guard, a free setup, and an SSL certificate.
The pricing varies according to the duration of the service you select. If you go for one year plan, it costs you only $2.95/month. But it falls to $2.59/month for a three-year plan. If you want the service for only one month, the payment slightly raises.
2. Managed WordPress Hosting – DreamPress
Do you want to start a WordPress blog? Then, the best hosting choice would be managed WP hosting from DreamHost. With automatic WP installation, updates, and glitch optimization, they take your headache away.
DreamPress Plus and Pro include Jetpack Professional – the best plugin from the makers of WordPress to help design your site, grow your audience, and keep it all secure.
DreamHost Hosting Review
You will get better results with a faster site without all the extra work of implementing caching yourself.
DreamPress
With DreamPress, you automatically get help from a highly-trained WordPress team any time of the day. Now any problems you run into with your site are easier and faster to solve.
This plan includes everything you need to power a successful website online.
- Built for ~100k Monthly Visitors
- Unlimited Email
- 30GB SSD Storage
- Unmetered Bandwidth
- NEW 1-Click Staging
- SSL Certificate Pre-Installed
- On-Demand + Daily Backups
- 24/7 WordPress Support
- Jetpack Free Pre-Installed
- NEW Free Automated WordPress Migrations
- NEW WP Website Builder
DreamPress Plus
You can confidently test new plugins, themes, and code before pushing your changes to your live site.
This plan is a growth engine for your business or blog.
- Built for ~300k Monthly Visitors
- Unlimited Email
- 60GB SSD Storage
- Unmetered Bandwidth
- NEW 1-Click Staging
- SSL Certificate Pre-Installed
- On-Demand + Daily Backups
- 24/7 WordPress Support
- Jetpack Professional Included
- NEW Free Automated WordPress Migrations
- NEW WP Website Builder
- Unlimited CDN
DreamPress Pro
This DreamPress plan offers powerful features tools and supports your business needs in today's world.
This plan provides a high-capacity architecture for sites demanding extreme performance.
- Built for ~1M+ Monthly Visitors
- Unlimited Email
- 120GB SSD Storage
- Unmetered Bandwidth
- NEW 1-Click Staging
- SSL Certificate Pre-Installed
- On-Demand + Daily Backups
- 24/7 Priority WordPress Support
- Jetpack Professional Included
- NEW Free Automated WordPress Migrations
- NEW WP Website Builder
- Unlimited CDN
3. Cloud Hosting
Do you think shared hosting isn’t your cup of tea and VPS is expensive? Then, cloud hosting is the only choice here. In a cloud hosting plan, you get resources from different servers grouped to feel like one. The scalability is instant, and it is a pay-as-you-go model.
DreamHost's all-SSD Cloud servers enable you to run applications on the Linux OS of your choice. Whether you require MongoDB, Redis, or node.js, ruby, python, DreamCompute has your back. Carefully engineered around OpenStack and Ceph, DreamHost supports standard APIs and the most popular developer tools.
They have 3 basic plans, including the different amounts of storage, RAM, and CPU. But the costs are based on what you use.
The maximum they charge for cloud hosting is $48 per month for 8GB Ram, 80GB storage, and 4 vCPUs. In contrast, the minimum $4.5 per month plan includes 512MB Ram, 80GB storage, and 1 vCPU. All the plans come with free bandwidth and 100GB block storage.
4. VPS Hosting
Virtual Private Server hosting is an intermediary when considering both shared and dedicated. In VPS web hosting, you share servers with others, but it's devoted to the fact that others can’t use the slice you get, and your site doesn’t get affected by the performance glitches of the others on the same server.
The main server is divided into small portions, and many other users use these virtual CPU portions. Still, they are limited to the specific amount of system resources one is paid to Dreamhost. So, if someone’s site consumes high resources, it won’t affect other’s websites.
Each virtual server hosting plan allocates resources that only your website can use. Because seconds count, this equals unrivaled power, low latency, and high performance.
VPS plans are divided into four different sections, which are the following;
VPS Basic: You get 30 GB storage and 1 GB RAM. As they promised for any plan, the unlimited bandwidth is also there. The cost is $10 per month, and you can also host multiple domains there.
VPS Business: For double the price of the first plan ($20), you get 60 GB of space and 2 GB RAM. The rest of the features remain the same.
VPS Professional: Do you think only 60 GB of space and 2 GB of RAM aren’t enough to power up your site? Give Go Bigger a try as you get 120 GB of space with 4 GB RAM. But the price is $40 a month.
VPS Enterprise: The highest plan provides 240 GB storage and 8 GB RAM for $80.
The upgrade options can be seen in the control panel if you don't want extra storage but RAM.
5. Dedicated Hosting
DreamHost doesn’t provide you with a plans-based dedicated server hosting. Instead, it offers a configurator, which helps you choose the requirements.
Dreamhost's dedicated servers host MySQL databases locally instead of on a separate machine, making for faster queries to a database you're hosting.
Extreme Dedicated Performance
DreamHost's dedicated servers use the best hardware and software to ensure your site is always up and fast.
- Dedicated servers have either HDD or SSD hard drives for lightning-fast loading times.
- Use your server resources how you want without having to share.
- Rest easy with 24×7 DDoS protection and 2N+2 power redundancy.
Standard Plan: This is an ideal starting point for dedicated hosting. Dreamhost's Standard servers have 4-core processors to handle all of your sites' visitors.
- Intel Xeon 4-Core 8-Thread
- 4 GB RAM
- 1 TB HDD
- RAID 1 Storage
- Root Access
- Local MySQL Database Server
- Ubuntu
- 100% Network Uptime Guarantee
- 24×7 Tech Support & Server Monitoring
- DDoS Protection
Enhanced Plan: This plan is for the hoster who needs it all. Boasting a 12-core processor, up to 64GB of RAM, and 2TB of space, this server can handle multiple high-traffic sites easily.
- Intel Xeon 12-Core 24-Thread
- 16 GB RAM
- 2 TB HDD
- RAID 1 Storage
- Root Access
- Local MySQL Database Server
- Ubuntu
- 100% Network Uptime Guarantee
- 24×7 Tech Support & Server Monitoring
- DDoS Protection
DreamHost has no reseller hosting that they think the diversified dedicates you can turn servers into resellers.
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6. Email Hosting
You can promote your site with every message you send with an email address that matches your website.
- Huge 25GB Storage per Mailbox
- Mobile and Desktop Sync
- Ad-Free Webmail Built In
- Spam, Virus, and Phishing Filters
DreamHost email works with any domain name you own, even if registered, hosted, or parked somewhere else.
DreamHost offers free inbound spam filtering that automatically adapts to emerging threats, keeping your inbox safe from spam, viruses, and phishing attacks.
Pros and Cons of Using DreamHost Web Hosting
Whether you’re a blogger, small-business owner, web designer, or developer, DreamHost makes it easy to start your online journey off on the right foot. Their WordPress web hosting solutions is an easy-as-pie way to get a great website up and running with so many robust features.
Pros of Dreamhost: DreamHost Hosting Review
- PCI compliant
- Automated malware scans
- SSD powered hosting, much faster than others
- $100 free Adwords credits
- Hosting officially recommended by WordPress
- Free ‘Remixer' website builder (SquareSpace, Weebly, and Wix available as an app along with many others e.g. Joomla, phpBB, Zen Cart, Drupal, Magento, Shopify, and Tumblr)
- Cloudflare CDN (Content Delivery Network)
- Free domain name for 1 year on all plans
- WordPress pre-installed via one-click
- Free SSL certificate
- 97-day money back guarantee (Shared plan only)
- No higher renewal price after pre-payment plan expires
- 99.9% uptime guarantee (excludes scheduled maintenance)
Cons of Dreamhost: DreamHost Hosting Review
- No windows hosting
- 90 days money-back guarantee term applied only on shared hosting
- Support limited to the hours of 8-4pm
- Wix, Weebly, Squarespace cannot be migrated
- Migration to a VPS if a site is resource intensive (VPS and Email do not fall under this policy)
- Email accounts limited to 2GB
- MySQL databases limited to a few GB
- Limited cPanel options
- Migration options limited on shared hosting plans to only a basic WordPress site transfer (excluding themes and plugins)
FAQs About DreamHost Hosting Review
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Is DreamHost easy to use?
DreamHost's control panel is sleek and straightforward to use. From the left sidebar, you can access all of the options. Because it isn't built on cPanel, some users may notice that a few complex features are missing.
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How good is Dreamhost shared hosting?
Dreamhost is a well-known and dependable web hosting company. Since adding solid-state drives to their shared hosting, pages now load 200 percent faster, resulting in a relatively quick experience for visitors. Their shared hosting plan can support any website, including blogs, portfolios, business websites, online stores, and even complex database-driven websites.
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Does DreamHost offer free email accounts with the Starter plan?
Their Starter plan does not include free email addresses. You can create and manage many email accounts with the Unlimited tier. The maximum size of any email account will be 2GB.
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Is Dreamhost suitable for small businesses?
Dreamhost is one of the best web hosting companies for small businesses. They have good customer support as well as basic and advanced web hosting.
Final Words on DreamHost Hosting Review
What do you think now? Do the features look appealing?
DreamHost is a feature-rich, low-cost option for individuals or businesses wanting reliable, fast website hosting with unlimited storage and data transfer. The provider is perhaps best suited for shared and WordPress hosting, and it has several specialist WP packages and offers free WordPress site migrations.
However, customer support could be better. A 97-day money-back guarantee gives users peace of mind should they wish to cancel their account. The starting prices may be slightly higher than the competition, but being upfront about the costs leaves no room for further confusion.
However, you can take a test drive for 97 days and get your money back if you don’t love the service (unlikely to happen).
If you ask our recommendation, we would say DreamHost is worth using, and it is one of the best hosting companies. So what are you waiting for? Start today.
