DreamHost Reviews – Cheap Hosting even cheaper with coupon codes

January 14th, 2010

Jab
So far everything has been great. Fast idle servers… Great prices and great throughput. Easy admin tools. Haven’t had any reliability issues. I have launched several sites there in the last few days and all is well. For now I can’t see ever moving to another provider.

Willem
Extreme Happy Dreamhost Customer. No better value for $$

John
Dreamhost is a provider who offers very cheap prices all around, for more webspace and bandwith than most other hosters can claim to provide.

I haven’t had any issues with them yet, and am quite content actually. On the one occasion that I needed it, support feedback has been quick. The panel, while it is not CPanel and takes some time to apply changes, is still easy to use and offers all features decently organized. I wouldn’t set up a professional business website on it, but for everything else, this provider is the way to go.

Lastly, it should be noted that it’s advisable to sign up for the site with one of the available coupon codes. This allows you to save money on your first bill.

DreamHost Questions 54-64 – MySQL databases remote access and cron jobs

January 11th, 2010

54. Can I remotely access my MySQL databases with your service?

Yes, you’ll just need to whitelist the IP you connect from via our web panel.

55. How is payment made, month by month, or a year contract?

It’s up to you!

56. Am I billed automatically?

Yes! Your hosting account renews automatically for the same price and period.

57. What control panel software do you offer?

Our own customized one at https://panel.dreamhost.com/

58. Do you have a demo of your control panel available?

Yes! Check out our mad panel skillz!

59. Do you have any mini servers available?

No.

60. Is python supported via SSH?

Yes.

61. What credit cards do you accept?

* Visa
* MasterCard
* American Express
* Discover
* Diner’s Club
* Carte Blanche

62. Do you support ASP and .NET services?

Nope, no Microsoft here. Debian Linux only.

63. How can I transfer my domain name to you guys?

You can initiate a transfer request via through our panel.

64. Do you allow the creation of cron jobs?

Yes via SSH and via our control panel.

DreamHost Reviews – MySQL,PHP

January 1st, 2010

James
First off, I’d like to say that I’m thoroughly impressed by Dreamhost’s services. They seem to be pulling up their socks and stepping up to the place. I have been hosted since April 2007, and while I’ve not been here a long time, I can see I’m quite pleased already.

They offer both Shell & FTP access, which is a real deal; not a whole lot of hosts will permit you to see what is on the rest of your server. I can go and look at each & every hosting account that is on my server with Shell.

Their rewards program is awesome. I’m glad for it. Rewards make babies smile. The next thing, as stated, is their Wiki. What a wonderful tool this was. If I ever have a question, I go straight to Wiki first, and in most cases, my answer is solved. On one occasion, where I asked for SHOUTCast! rather then the QuickTime streaming that they offered, I was referred to a suggestions page; a huge database with all of the reccomended upgrades for DreamHost. This may be updates to software, updates to hardware, services, customer support, a new server in X Country, etc. You get points, and you vote what you want. Although this is not the final decision in the end, it is nice to know that you are being heard.

I have not yet experienced problems with email.
DreamHost either is improving; learning, adapting & growing, or has just been in a dark spot with its customers.

Gary
Id recommend this to anyone, I will also be buying a dedi off them at some point or colocating, so i can run a game server for BF2.

In total an awesome host, awesome support, as im not a total novice i feel i can work with them on a problem and they dont talk down to you or upto you, just on a level with you.

Glen
By far the most reliable, most powerful, most bang for the buck. Runs on Debian Linux, and has all the expected tools available and then some.

Dave
I have been with Dreamhost for a long time. Overall, they have been excellent. When I was looking for a host a long time ago, every review I saw was glowing. For the first couple years, I couldn’t have said one bad thing.

Tom
The pricing is rediculously cheap, especially when combined with a coupon. Their reliability is generally good… but they’ve had a few major issues that were more than concerning. The support is very good.

What I really like about Dreamhost is the continual changes they make to the system. Whether it’s keeping ontop of new technologies (RoR, PHP5, MySQL5, etc) or provide new features that really help out the users. There’s one thing that keeps them a float and that’s their listening of what the users want and need.

More DreamHost Reviews – I love having ssh access

December 29th, 2009

marcus
Well I’ve spent some time shopping around for some web host’s, had a few that were “OK” and have administered a few websites with other hosting companies. The larger ones are a complete nightmare and simple tasks like importing a database file was like giving birth. Anyway I had a couple of people who I work with refer me to dreamhost and I’ve had them for close to six months now. I LOVE having ssh access, saves so much time to do things myself instead of putting in a “ticket” and waiting on some data center monkey to screw up the job.

Anyway Dreamhost has lots of tools available and if you half way know what you’re doing they’re great. That and tech support expects you to have a clue, that doesn’t mean they’re not helpful it’s just that they’re not there to admin your site. Now they have had some network issues that have been resolved, but then again who hasn’t/doesn’t?

I have since moved over to their “VPS” and really, really like it. The cost isn’t bad and with the monitoring tools you can adjust your resources to suit your needs. What that means is when you are doing some updates, db work, etc. just crank up the resources short term till the task is done. Then for your day to day web traffic you drop it down to the level you need. This is great since you don’t have to pay for what you don’t use/need.

All in all I really do like them, you’ve got a lot of control over your services to suit your needs. If you need someone to hold your hand you really won’t be happy. I’d say unless you’ve got the $$$ for a CoLo they have a good balance and are a good bang for the buck.

darren
All I can say is, wow!

DreamHost is fabulous. You get SOO much for about $7.95 a month, which I guess isn’t too terribly bad. The people there are very nice and in the 8 months that I have been hosted with them, I haven’t experienced any downtime at all.

I definitely recommend DreamHost.

Shawn
I have to say coming from a host whos servers got burned away to Dreamhost was a DREAM COME TRUE. They are serious about their Dreams!

Best host I have ever been with and cheap to. Last cheap host I was with had all sorts of downtime issues and they would just say, your getting a deal, why complain…NOT DREAMHOST! Dreamhost support is the most reliable support I ever seen!!! I mean they give better and quicker support than my credit card company support line which is pretty quick. The staff at dreamhost are very friendly, laid back people and not all corporate about everything. Josh the one that hogs the blog (as he said before) is one of the funniest people I have seen in a blog!

I rate them 10 out of 10 but it stopped at 5 :-( I recommend anyone that wants a good host to go to them!

Mike
This is the best I ever seen. They help you, they’re fast and always give support, their plans are good and they have rewards for every week you’re hosted by them (increase in bandwidth and disk space). You can also get promo codes for a discound if it’s your first account.

DreamHost Review – Users Experience – Very much recommend as a web host!

December 28th, 2009
KikoLtd
Dreamhost is really the best hosting company! I have been hosted with dh for 1 year. My experience is great! I really love their easy to use control panel. Everything is great! The support-guys are very cool and fast! I have been hosted with many other companies (such as hostgator, ixwebhosting, justhost, vexxhost, subdesign etc) but from all these, dreamhost is the best!
mani
First of all, my websites don’t sell anything online and don’t get huge numbers of visitors, but if I relied on my site for my income, I would think about investing in a local server for piece of mind. For my purposes, showing (my own) video and music clips, Dreamhost shared hosting has been well priced and pretty reliable. When things have gone wrong ( which they do, every now and again ) its usually sorted out in a reasonable amount of time.
I found the User Panel and one step installation plugins (Wordpress) and streaming QT very useful for my purposes. I’ve always found the Customer Service top notch via e-mail and the help wiki is very intuitive. I haven’t used the callback option but I tend to find e-mail support do the trick within 10-30 mins on average.
I recently upgraded to the private server to ensure stability which was quite a seamless transfer after a problem for a couple of hours. All as expected and things are running faster more consistently for a little more $ per month. The shared hosting is a very good option anyway and perfect if your starting out. Make sure you take advantage of the discount offers and you can get yourself, cheap reliable hosting…
With hosting generally, I think you generally get the reliability/speed/control you pay for, but with Dreamhost Sharing, you can get an inexpensive, speedy, service with friendly support (from my experience).
Nick
We work about 10 miles away from Dreamhost’s headquarters in Brea. I thought I recommend dreamhost to my boss who runs several e-commerce sites. So we opened up several accounts with dreamhost, everything was fine up until the last few months. I highly recommend that you DO NOT run an e-commerce site on dreamhost. You will lose lots of sales because dreamhost is constantly slow during prime hours. Customers from all over the US complained that the site was extremely slow. Our site is xhtml validate and is even dail-up friendly. We never had problems with our old server that we were leasing from DELL.
ABH
I’ve been with Dreamhost for probably going on 5 or 6 years. They have been a great webhost the entire time and constantly expanding and upgrading their serices. I’ve only ever had to contact customer support twice for techincal issues. Both times the response was prompt and fixed my issue right away.
Very much recommend as a web host!
Jamie
My experience with DreamHost has been awesome so far. I experience very little downtime, download speeds are good for the most part and I have yet to run into a serious problem where I would have to contact customer support. I also love that they add new features every month and the amount of bandwidth and disk space you are allocated grows every week. I personally would recommend this web host to anyone that is starting to get into building/running websites as their web panel is very easy to use.
BH
I currently use DreamHost to host two sites, with one of them being registered there as well. The larger of the two sites serves approx. 4,000 pages per day (not counting the faviocon, robots, and the like) and has an announcement list of approx. 1,000 users who subscribed using a (DreamHost provided) automated system. I have also used DreamHost in the past to host a site for a blogger-run-blog when I had the time to post.
The web hosting aspect is easy to use with standard ftp or secure-ftp access. The management of the various other things (changing billing options, checking user statistics, web-mail, forwarding/redirecting e-mail, and setting up e-mail subscription lists) is very user friendly. The team running it always has a sense of humor in their blog and newsletter — but doesn’t let that get in the way of getting the job done.
I have contacted them over a dozen times in the past with questions on topics such as transferring domains and the use of mailing lists and have gotten helpful responses within 24 hours to each one, often much quicker. (They also have a support wiki that answers a lot of standard questions).

KikoLtd

Dreamhost is really the best hosting company! I have been hosted with dh for 1 year. My experience is great! I really love their easy to use control panel. Everything is great! The support-guys are very cool and fast! I have been hosted with many other companies (such as hostgator, ixwebhosting, justhost, vexxhost, subdesign etc) but from all these, dreamhost is the best!

mani

First of all, my websites don’t sell anything online and don’t get huge numbers of visitors, but if I relied on my site for my income, I would think about investing in a local server for piece of mind. For my purposes, showing (my own) video and music clips, Dreamhost shared hosting has been well priced and pretty reliable. When things have gone wrong ( which they do, every now and again ) its usually sorted out in a reasonable amount of time.

I found the User Panel and one step installation plugins (Wordpress) and streaming QT very useful for my purposes. I’ve always found the Customer Service top notch via e-mail and the help wiki is very intuitive. I haven’t used the callback option but I tend to find e-mail support do the trick within 10-30 mins on average.

I recently upgraded to the private server to ensure stability which was quite a seamless transfer after a problem for a couple of hours. All as expected and things are running faster more consistently for a little more $ per month. The shared hosting is a very good option anyway and perfect if your starting out. Make sure you take advantage of the discount offers and you can get yourself, cheap reliable hosting…

With hosting generally, I think you generally get the reliability/speed/control you pay for, but with Dreamhost Sharing, you can get an inexpensive, speedy, service with friendly support (from my experience).

Nick

We work about 10 miles away from Dreamhost’s headquarters in Brea. I thought I recommend dreamhost to my boss who runs several e-commerce sites. So we opened up several accounts with dreamhost, everything was fine up until the last few months. I highly recommend that you DO NOT run an e-commerce site on dreamhost. You will lose lots of sales because dreamhost is constantly slow during prime hours. Customers from all over the US complained that the site was extremely slow. Our site is xhtml validate and is even dail-up friendly. We never had problems with our old server that we were leasing from DELL.

ABH

I’ve been with Dreamhost for probably going on 5 or 6 years. They have been a great webhost the entire time and constantly expanding and upgrading their serices. I’ve only ever had to contact customer support twice for techincal issues. Both times the response was prompt and fixed my issue right away.

Very much recommend as a web host!

Jamie

My experience with DreamHost has been awesome so far. I experience very little downtime, download speeds are good for the most part and I have yet to run into a serious problem where I would have to contact customer support. I also love that they add new features every month and the amount of bandwidth and disk space you are allocated grows every week. I personally would recommend this web host to anyone that is starting to get into building/running websites as their web panel is very easy to use.

BH

I currently use DreamHost to host two sites, with one of them being registered there as well. The larger of the two sites serves approx. 4,000 pages per day (not counting the faviocon, robots, and the like) and has an announcement list of approx. 1,000 users who subscribed using a (DreamHost provided) automated system. I have also used DreamHost in the past to host a site for a blogger-run-blog when I had the time to post.

The web hosting aspect is easy to use with standard ftp or secure-ftp access. The management of the various other things (changing billing options, checking user statistics, web-mail, forwarding/redirecting e-mail, and setting up e-mail subscription lists) is very user friendly. The team running it always has a sense of humor in their blog and newsletter — but doesn’t let that get in the way of getting the job done.

I have contacted them over a dozen times in the past with questions on topics such as transferring domains and the use of mailing lists and have gotten helpful responses within 24 hours to each one, often much quicker. (They also have a support wiki that answers a lot of standard questions).

DreamHost Questions 11-20

November 20th, 2009

11. Do you allow SSL support?

Yes

12. Can I purchase an SSL certificate from you?

Yes. When you initially set up a “secure hosting” option for a domain you have the opportunity to purchase one from us. The price is $15/year. But you also purchase one through another Certificate Authority if you like.

13. Can you install it?

Yes we can. But it’s easy enough you could do it yourself through our control panel, you just paste the cert you get into a form for the domain, and it’s all automatic.

14. Do you offer domain name registration services?

Yes (but only for .com, .net, .org & .info Top Level Domains).

15. How many websites can I host with a reseller account?

We don’t really have a “reseller account”, but our Happy Hosting allow unlimited domains. If you have unlimited disk space and bandwidth, however, we ask that you offer websites as part of a “Hosting Plus” service (you design the websites, perform maintenance, handle tech support, etc.). Making your account resources available (whether for free or pay) to the general public without any “Plus” is not allowed. Please see our Unlimited policy for more details.

16. Can I have my own custom nameservers?

It is possible, but not something we easily support.

17. What payment methods do you accept?

Credit Card (Amex, Visa, MC, Discover, Diner’s Club, JCB), Debit Card (with Visa or MasterCard logo), Google Checkout, PayPal, Check, Money Order. However, during the sign-up process not all payment methods may be offered.

22. May I upgrade at a later time?

Sure! It’s a seamless process from our web panel, you’ll get a prorated refund of your existing pre-paid time that will be credited towards your newly upgraded plan.

18. What is your typical support response time?

Typically 50% of questions are answered within 1 hour and 98% within 24 hours.

19. What about other departments like abuse, billing, etc.?

The same as above. Our support team is one unified team handling all requests!

20. What is the typical resolution time?

That depends a lot on how clearly worded and complicated the support request is.

DreamHost Questions 1-10

November 16th, 2009

1. How long has your company been open?

Since April 1997… learn more at our site and in the Dreamhost Category.

2. What is the typical load average on your web servers?

We try to keep them under the 2-3 range… anything higher gets looked at.

3. What uptime SLA do you guarantee?

Why, 100% of course!

4. What are your server hardware specifications?

Throughout 2009, we are moving all customers to new shared servers.. they are quad core Xeons with 16GB or 32GB of memory with a 8x raid10 SATA disk array.

5. Where are your servers located?

Los Angeles, CA

6. Where is your company located?

Los Angeles, CA and Brea, CA

7. Where are your staff located?

Los Angeles, CA and Brea, CA

8. Do you offer dedicated IP addresses? If so, how much?

Yes, $3.95/mo, or $47.40/yr, or one included with our Strictly Business plan.

9. How many staff members do you have at your company?

As of November 2009, 90.

10. What kind of support options do you have?

Email and chat and call-back support (where you can schedule a time with for us to call you back) if you have added our premium support option.