DreamHost

DreamHost are normally pretty expensive, working out at around $120 a year; however due to their ten-year anniversary they are offering a one year hosting plan for $9.4. As I'm new to the whole hosting business I jumped at the chance, and after a few days of using it am content with their service. They offer unlimited domain addons as well as a free domain with purchase; the one bad thing about them is their panel, which is different from the standard cPanel. Although it looks complicated in the beginning, it is fairly simple to use. As for technical help, I had a problem with their panel so sent off an email to support- it was promptly answered within five hours.

Biggest Pro: Price
Biggest Con: Control Panel

DreamHost isn't for Serious People

I've had DreamHost hosting for more than a year now. I have a "Code Monster" account. Well, I did until they changed everything on me again. They're upping the limits of their hosting yet again. 500 GB of space and 5 TB of bandwidth, as if anyone can really use those sort of resources on a shared server hosting anything else.

My experience with them was mediocre. My site often loaded slowly, there were issues when the MySQL server was down, and oftentimes another user on my server was abusing the resources, preventing my site from loading.

Their control panel is unique and quite good, but that's really the highest point. That and you can get shell access to the server your site is on.

They offer a lot for the price you pay, and unfortunately, they can't follow through on some of the most basic aspects of web hosting. All of their bells and whistles try to hide that fact. I ended up getting so disgusted that I went and invested in a dedicated server elsewhere.

Biggest Pro: SSH Access
Biggest Con: Unreliable

Dreamhost: A Beginner's Dream

I've noticed that most of the other reviews here have mentioned Dreamhost's reliability, speed, and various issues (though I personally think some may have been a bit overboard), and custom panel. I want to elaborate in this reveiw on one of the best features Dreamhost's panel can offer *anyone* just starting out owning their own sites.

Under the "Goodies" section, there is a page for "one-click installs." This is, by far, the easiest automated method I've come across to install any number of applications on your website. The most noteworthy of the available software is, without a doubt, Wordpress. Many first-time site owners are bloggers these days, and there couldn't be a simpler way to "get up and go."

One-click install runners up would be PHPbb (forum software), Gallery (image album software), and Joomla! (for content management).

A few "cons" would be for those used to CPanel, Dreamhost's panel might be a bit confusing at first, their pricing tends to lean towards the higher end, and their help wiki could be a bit more user-friendly.

Regardless, in this reviewer's opinion, the pros far outweigh the cons. Dreamhost is an excellent way to go for the beginner and the intermediate site owner.

Biggest Pro: One-click Install option, perfect for beginners.
Biggest Con: A bit pricey.

Dreamhost, a definite starting point!

I've been using dreamhost for about 2 years and have 3 separate accounts with them.

For anyone looking for shared hosting at a small price, dreamhost is the way to go. You will receive more disk space and bandwidth then you will most likely ever use. You will also get the best customer service that i've come to find.

And the perks! One click installs of many web softwae packages like the infamous blogging/cms platform: wordpress. as well as ActiveCollab and even MediaWiki. Even a Subversion setup!

You also get great benefits when referring other customers ($97!).

And on top of all that... hourly backups. Never loose your website and files to hackers again.

For shared hosting- dreamhost is your best option for the price.

Biggest Pro: Price
Biggest Con: Still Shared Hosting

Great Host

I haven't had a single problem with Dreamhost after using it for almost a full year. I have the basic plan, and it easily handles the traffic I get on my sites that don't get over 100 visitors a day. I host multiple domains through it, which is easy to set up through their control panel. The speeds seem fast, but not quite as fast as I have seen on some other servers. I have only experienced a very tiny amount of down time when they switched the location of my server.

All in all, a great host for small sites. (At least for their smallest plan)

Dreamhost Review

My first wehost was/is Dreamhost. I've loved their service, and their panel.

What I like the most about Dreamhost is there http://www.dreamhoststatus.com, which is great for customers who are curious what really happens when their servers go offline.

Dreamhost uses there own custom panel, with even more features than cPanel, it seems. They also just updated there customer support function, and you can see events that happened with your server in the last week, (such as restarts and errors) before you submit your ticket.

The only thing I can complain about for the price is the response time of my webpages that utilize MySQL. They seem to take anywhere from 4-10 seconds to load!

Biggest Pro: Great Panel, Great Support
Biggest Con: Slow Response Time

Great hosting for personal / media related sites

I've had my site hosted there for almost two years now, and I must say, with exception to last year's crazy string of downtimes, their service is great if you know what you're doing. The shared plan offers tons of bandwidth, so even if you have a site with lots of videos and images, you're unlikely to approach the limit. It also offers ssh access, so you can edit things really quickly on the live site w/o having to download anything via FTP and then re-upload it etc. You can also fine tune a lot of the options from ssh. However, ssh access is a double edged swrod, and down side to that is if you have re***ds on your server, they can easily mess things up or eat lots of resources until the server runs out of resources (and cause your site to go slow). You can, however, ask them to move you to a lower concentrated server, and if you're diligent about it, they will do it for you as they've done for me.

Perhaps because I work with Jelsoft/vBulletin support so I have high standards for response time; but I feel that their support is a bit slow... Whenever I had serious problems and need to get a hold of them, I usually get a response from them anywhere between 24 hours to 48 hours. Most of the time, the problems I've contacted them -- high loads, ftpd process down, etc. -- are long resolved by the time I get back from them. I haven't had the need to contact them for other reasons and so I guess you'd probably need to know what you're doing before hosting with them.

Generally speaking, they're pretty well rounded host, especially with them polishing up their downtime issues this year, I'd say they're pretty good.

Biggest Pro: Lots of resources available for use
Biggest Con: Downtimes, not so much now...

Dreamhost Review

Dreamhost are one of those companies where i always feel there has to be something wrong..maybe it's there presentation..but it just feels cheap.

However saying that i have been generally pleased over the last few months especially since i'm currently running more than one site on my server.

From what i can remember here hasn't been any downtime however there is the odd slow response. Another thing that i'm not too fond of either is there cpanel..it just seems too tacky, but i guess it's all about preferance.

If you're not too bothered about presentation and just want a place for hosting dreamhost is great..there pricing is superb, that's if you use a voucher of course ;D. Can get a large chunk off for quite a good server with large space and bandwidth that's updated weekly!

Biggest Pro: Price

Great Marketing, Great Prices, Not-so-great Hosting

Dreamhost is really popular, and I figured that getting virtually unlimited storage and transfer for about 20 bucks per year, including a free domain, was worth a shot.

So I took the plunge, and have been relatively happy. It's not great. My e-mail won't connect a lot of the time, my site takes a while to load, but for the price it's pretty good.

Their support wiki is easy to read, and I'd prefer cPanel, but their own panel isn't too bad.

Overall, I'd give them a 9/10, though if I were paying full price it would be more like a 2.

Biggest Pro: cheap with lots of bandwidth/storage
Biggest Con: slow to load pages

Cheap, but slow..

I work with Dreamhost for a long time.. Everything is fine except loading pages late.. Especially when there is 200+ online visitors on my site, it sometimes takes a minute for loading.

But support and value for money is fine enough..

Biggest Pro: Cheap
Biggest Con: Slow