DreamHost is one of the leading web hosting service providers. It has grown and maintained a successful hosting business for the last 18 years. It currently hosts around 1.5 million sites, blogs, and applications. IsItWP users get an exclusive 40% discount on web hosting.
4.7 / 5.0 5.0 / 5.0 5.0 / 5.0
4.0 / 5.0 4.0 / 5.0 4.0 / 5.0 4.7 / 5.0
DreamHost is one of the oldest web hosting companies, founded back in 1996, even before the advent of Google. DreamHost is now the home for over 1.5 million websites, blogs, and applications, with over 400k happy customers, spanning throughout more than 100 countries.
DreamHost offers a wide variety of web hosting plans for customers of all sizes. Their hosting services include:
Their team is top-notch, and they are always ahead of the curve when it comes to their technology stack. It is one of the officially recommended web hosts by WordPress.org and also the highest-rated web host by PCMag.com.
They offer everything you need to get your website up and running. They give you free domain registration with annual plans, free SSL encryption with Let’s Encrypt, a one-click installer for WordPress and a website builder known as Remixer for those who want to kick start a website with absolutely no coding involved.
On top of that, every shared hosting plan with DreamHost comes with a 97-day money back guarantee. That means you get full three months to try DreamHost and if you’re not fully satisfied, you can request a full refund.
They are also a domain name registrar and offer domain registration and parking services as well.
DreamHost’s shared hosting plan starts at $8.95 per month (regular price). You’ll find their extensive knowledge base immensely helpful to kick off a website from the ground up.
4.3 / 5.0
DreamHost offers cheap hosting, also known as shared hosting, which is the best choice for entry-level and small websites. With cheap hosting, you share the same physical server with many other DreamHost users. Although you share server resources like physical hard drives and RAM with other users, your website files are secured and only accessible to you.
There are 2 shared hosting plans: Shared Starter and Shared Unlimited. DreamHost lets you pay monthly, annually or every 3 years. DreamHost’s 3-year plan provides the best value with over 47% cost savings over the monthly plan.
With any of the DreamHost hosting options, you can waive off the domain name registration fees for one year. You’ll also get free SSL encryption, and 1-click WordPress installer.
Unlike most other web hosting providers, DreamHost comes with a 97-day risk-free money back guarantee.
5.0 / 5.0
DreamHost’s dedicated hosting could be the best choice for websites with high-traffic volume. With dedicated hosting, you get a complete server for your sole use, giving you much more control over the server and operating environment.
With DreamHost’s dedicated server, you get RAID 1 storage, 24×7 server monitoring and tech support, 100% network uptime guarantee, DDoS protection, full root, and shell access and more.
You get a custom-built control panel for your dedicated hosting needs with the flexibility to add or remove servers, reboot or powercycle your server whenever you need it. Plus, you can also manage your domains, websites and email address with ease.
4.6 / 5.0
Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting is the best bet for you if you want to build websites with secured data or resource-heavy applications that are growing through rapid growth and expansion. With VPS, you get a tremendous amount of bandwidth and storage along with easy backup and scalability.
With every managed VPS hosting plan, you get expert assistance on installing manual security patches, user-friendly control panel, 20 x faster SSD storage.
DreamHost allows you to choose from three different VPS plans based on RAM (1GB to 4GB) and SSD storage capacity ranging from 30GB to 240GB.
If you’re technically inclined and looking for an inexpensive, scalable server that gives you full control with root access, you can choose DreamCompute, which is unmanaged VPS hosting also known as cloud hosting.
5.0 / 5.0
DreamHost’s WordPress hosting protects your website from WordPress specific vulnerabilities and malicious attacks.
With their managed WordPress hosting, you’ll get automatic WordPress updates so you can ensure your site is always updated and secured. With every plan, automatic daily backups and on-demand backups are included.
DreamHost’s managed WordPress hosting is the best solution for you if you don’t want to perform site maintenance yourself and needs WordPress specific support for maintaining your WordPress site. With Plus plan or higher, you get Jetpack Pro subscription, daily malware and scanning repair, and instant access to the extensive collection of WordPress themes.
4.8 / 5.0
DreamHost offers WooCommerce hosting for users who want to quickly build an online store without the tedious process of WordPress and WooCommerce installation. WooCommerce hosting is almost similar to the Plus plan of managed WordPress hosting. The only difference is that WooCommerce will be preinstalled on your account.
Upon subscribing to a WooCommerce hosting plan, you can easily get your online store up and running just by logging into your WordPress dashboard. The storefront theme is preinstalled with WooCommerce hosting. You’ll also get a Jetpack Pro subscription.
Here’re a few things we liked about DreamHost
Here are a few limitations of DreamHost…
Does Dreamhost live up to their uptime promise?
To test the server performance for our DreamHost review, we’ve created a test WordPress site using the default Twenty Seventeen theme and dummy content for theme development, including images. This way our test site looked and behaved like an actual average WordPress site.
After setting up our test site, we ran a speed test on our site using Pingdom.
As you can see in the results, our DreamHost test site loaded in less than half a second. That’s faster than 97% of all tested sites, which is incredible for a site without any performance optimization plugins.
Apart from Pingdom, we also used a testing tool called Load Impact to figure out whether our DreamHost site can survive a traffic surge. Load Impact sent some virtual users (VUs) to our site and gradually built up to 100 visitors at a time to test how the server handles it.
In the chart, you can find a blue line (VUs active) which shows the number of virtual users sent to our DreamHost site and a green line (VU load time) which represents how much time it took to load a web page for a user.
As you can see, DreamHost’s performed was great and consistent throughout the test. The number of live visitors on the site doesn’t have an impact on site performance.
The content of your site can have an impact on your page loading time. For instance, if your site contains too many images, it will take more time to load. In fact, images account for most of the downloadable bytes in a typical site.
To get a more accurate result for our test, instead of solely analyzing page load time, we decided to test the actual server response time with Bitcatcha by ignoring the content of our page entirely.
Bitcatcha works differently than Pingdom. It ignores the content of your page and records the page loading time from eight different global locations: New York, LA, London, Brazil, India, Singapore, Japan, and Australia. The speed for each location is measured three separate times, and then the results are averaged.
From the result, you can see that DreamHost server response time remained under less than half a second for all geographic locations. It was particularly great in the United States.
If you need help with DreamHost’s hosting service, you can check out their extensive knowledge base that comprises of tutorials and recommendations. You’ll find DreamHost’s support portal immensely helpful for building and growing your website with a DreamHost hosting account.
DreamHost provides live chat and ticket based support for free with every hosting plan. The main drawback is that Live Chat is only available during 5am – 10pm PST, 7 days a week.
The DreamHost support team strives to answer all emails within 24 hours. Although call back requests are available, they’re not included in every hosting package. You’ll have to subscribe to it separately either by making a one-off payment or monthly subscription. Bear in mind that callbacks cannot be made for numbers outside the United States and Canada.
If you’re just starting out with a new website, you can choose DreamHost’s shared hosting plan.
There are 2 shared hosting plans: Shared Starter and Shared Unlimited.
For WordPress optimized hosting, you can choose from their managed WordPress hosting plans.
Take a detailed look at the pricing of different DreamHost hosting plans.
| PLAN | DISK SPACE | BANDWIDTH | PRICE |
| Shared Hosting | Unlimited | Unlimited | $2.59 / mo. |
| WordPress Hosting Starter | Unlimited | Unlimited | $2.59 / mo. |
| Basic VPS Hosting | 30 GB | Unmetered | $10 / mo. |
| Dedicated Hosting | 1 TB | Unlimited | $169 / mo. |
Having helped thousands of users choose a web hosting plan and start their website, we have answered just about every question you can think of. Here are some of the most frequently asked questions about DreamHost.
Which DreamHost plan should I get?
The answer really depends on your hosting needs. When you’re starting out, simply choose their shared hosting plan. DreamHost has only a single shared hosting plan, which makes it easy to get started with an account. If you want to create an online store, then we recommend using their WooCommerce hosting which is specifically designed to handle eCommerce websites.
Can DreamHost handle high traffic?
DreamHost is capable of handling high traffic. But keep in mind that it all depends on the plan you choose. If your site starts consuming too much resources, then DreamHost will ask you to upgrade to a higher plan.
Can I upgrade my DreamHost plan later?
We always recommend users to start with the smaller plans and upgrade as needed. DreamHost makes it very easy for you to upgrade.
Does DreamHost offer a month-to-month payment option?
Yes! DreamHost offers month-to-month payment option. However, keep in mind that they offer significant discounts for longer-term deals.
Can I create subdomains in DreamHost?
Yes, you can easily create subdomains in DreamHost using the cPanel.
Do I have to register my domain name with DreamHost?
No. While you can claim a free domain name while purchasing a hosting plan, you’re not obliged to register a domain name with DreamHost. You can use Godaddy, NameCheap, or any of your preferred domain name registrar.
Does DreamHost offer free SSL?
Yes, DreamHost offers free SSL with all of their plans. Ecommerce plans come with dedicated IPs and private SSL.
Do I need to purchase the addons that DreamHost offers me?
No, you do not need to purchase any addons at the time of purchase. Should you decide that you need them later, you can always add them to your account.
Does DreamHost really offer unlimited disk space and bandwidth?
Just like any other hosting company, DreamHost also advertises unlimited resources. When they say unlimited, it just means that you don’t have to worry about disk storage or bandwidth because you get enough resources to operate a small site in a normal condition.
Can I create an ecommerce site on DreamHost?
Absolutely. DreamHost’s WooCommerce hosting plan comes pre-configured with all the things you need to start an online store.
Wondering how DreamHost stacks up against other web hosting companies? See our side-by-side comparison to see for yourself.
We think DreamHost offers a very reliable platform for hosting your websites. Their starting prices may be slightly higher than the competition, but being upfront about the prices, they leave no room for confusion down the line. With a DreamHost plan, you don’t find any hidden charges and comes with an unlimited website and email hosting.
We were also impressed with their custom control panel and quick support. DreamHost could be the best solution for you if you don’t want a cPanel based backend option. We rate DreamHost as an excellent choice for hosting any kind of website.
All DreamHost plans include a money-back guarantee. 
I did not have a good experience with Dream Host support At All.
All my sites were hacked and after a very long time waiting to chat with someone, they basically said, ‘we can’t help you’.
Then someone from the support team wrote back to me after several hours with a set of very complicated instructions about how to fix the sites.
I was horrified to discover that Dream Host DOES NOT BACK UP ANYTHING so if your site gets hacked, you are out of luck.
I used to love DreamHost. They were a small-ish web hosting company that was personable and really seemed to care about their customers. Support was lightning-fast and the support techs were knowledgeable, but that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore.
Every time I have to contact support I wait 30-40 minutes to get a hold of a tech, and even when I do they bounce me between departments several times. My issues always end up getting resolved, but I just hate that it takes so long and is so frustrating, especially because more often than not the issues I contact support about are issues that are keeping my website offline.
Very glad to have switched to Dreamhost. Their software is really nice and works really well. Easy to use and easy to setup. I don’t consider it a true VPS tho because I can’t install my own software on and edit config files manually, but for my needs, it works perfectly.
Lately when I try the chat feature I hold for as long as an hour…I typically hang up and try to figure out the problem myself. Had better luck getting in touch with someone via email.
It’s probably a great hosting company if you can troubleshoot all of your own issues, but they offer no phone number for support and the first time I tried their chat support I had to wait 25 minutes. You can put in a request for them to call you but apparently they charge a fee for that. As a web designer without a lot of knowledge of MySQL, databases or server settings, it was not the right company for me. But if you know you’re doing the prices seem great.
It is without doubt ,The best Web Hosting Services even on a Shared Hosting Account which i am, I have used Blue Host, Hosting Zoom, Host Gator. None of them provided any service , but they kept my url sites out 1-3 months out every year. no Support no reply no Nothing Blue Host was just like Ghost Host where you need to pay as well.
I am quite happy with Hosting Zoom services. Just Panel is different to C panel but it is allot more reliable than C Panel. with time will learn more about Panel. I will highly recommend experienced designers and developers to try Dream Host hosting services.
The best part of Dreamhost is what I love most is it is 100% free from Indian type support which most ISP’s fall for because the Indians sitting in India ( they get their IT certifications in India by Cheating or caste system or religion or race or recommendations or threat or by any means except real knowledge),FYI i am Indan.
Their support team is awesome. I am a newbie regarding VPS and they helped me set up my websites, transfer, etc. A+++ I am advising Dreamhost to my friends (already have few signed up), which is, for services and specs offered, way below competitor’s prices.
Unbelievable. My site was hacked for the second time on their server, as a result they closed down my site without even letting me know. They state they “contacted the site owner”, meanwhile I only found out because google adwords warned me. Next I tried to contact them, after 20 minutes twice to chat, nothing. Unbelievable that they have no phone support even for emergencies. Anyway, glad to rate them, I”m switching to Go Daddy where you can actually talk to someone when you have a problem!
DreamHost has to be the best hosting provider! Not only do they provide me with entertaining monthly newsletters but their customer service is wonderful. They even helped me with a non DreamHost related issue on my blog! Definitely a provider that I recommend.
hi kim, you say that you decided to live chat but no help? as i was leaving my views i couldn’t help notice your comments, what went wrong with the live chat? ever since iv been with dreamhost they have stayed online till the problem is solved, to pay someone for that time in this game you are talking a lot of money. live support is amazing when you are working and stuck at the time.
Very pleased with the dreamhost team, been stuck many of times so started a live chat as i was working, im a beginner and not to clued up on things so helped a lot when i got connected within 5 min to help solve the problem, and as im new i think 1 of the dreamhost people thought it would be easier to do it for me than explain 🙂 , im not new to customer support so know dreamhost is doing a good job.
i can say simply GOOD JOB, i got answers to all my questions and assistance from the support in live. security, unlimited space, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited domain name host just greattt and unbelievable
Best Hosting Services I Like It
I made the HORRIBLE decision of choosing dreamhost.Com. I was having some issues with the startup and decided to “live chat” with technical support. No help. I emailed. No help AND no response. But I did get an email for a chance to rate my service. At this point I’don’t rather pay them to get out of my life. Horrible!!!
I’ve been a customer of DreamHost since 1999, and I’ve never wanted to look elsewhere. Not only do they send out entertaining, monthly newsletters, they also constantly reward loyal customers. Oh, and did I mention they have certified Green Hosting?
I have been a DreamHost customer for 14 years, and have been highly satisfied with the level of personal attention and responsiveness I have gotten from the DreamHost support team. The custom cPanel provided for site management is among the best in the hosting industry, and one-click installs provide a great deal of flexibility in creating new sites quickly. I would recommend DreamHost to anyone looking for a new hosting service, whether it’s transferring an existing domain, or creating something new.
I’ve been a Dreamhost user for several years now. I must say, I do recommend them. They’ve been prompt to help me fix issues. They’ve migrated my hosting to another server when the one I had been on was outdated and having connectivity issues for me, and everything. I plan on sticking with them for a while.
I’ve been a Dreamhost customer for 11 of the 16 years they’ve been in business, and I’ve always been incredibly happy with their service and pricing. They’re not the cheapest service out there, but they’re very reasonable, and I appreciate their no-nonsense and friendly approach.
Dreamhost has been hosting my websites since 2008. It is not my first, but it does seem it will be my last hosting company. It’s acknowledging and being truly helpful about what can be done to fix the situation. They have reasonable prices, good hosting plans and the best panel EVER.
I will be nice and not mention my previous host of this blog, but I had nothing but problems and constantly on the phone with support to resolve issues. Since the switchover, my blog has been faster, easier to access and a breeze to configure.
As a web developer who has worked with other web hosting services and who has been a customer of Dreamhost for 6 years, hands down, Dreamhost is the best value for domain hosting and services.
I’ve been with Dreamhost for a while and have always been looked after, they have the BEST customer service in the industry!!
I’ve been very happy with Dreamhost as my hosting service. People often joke “Cheap, Fast, Good: Pick two”. But with Dreamhost you get all three. It’s always a balance or tradeoff, but the balance for me has been very satisfactory. Best of all has been the service. I’ve very rarely had a serious problem but, when I have, I’ve always been astonished by the quick, professional service.
They have been my loving webhost now for almost 8 years and I couldn’t be more happy. From their great prices on some awesome plans to the amazing people you get to talk to when you contact support… I can’t think of anything they could improve on to make my experience better! – Andy
After trying to work with a few other hosting services chosen by clients, I appreciate DreamHost’s well thought control panel, status blog, wikis, and system for resolving customer issues. Whenever friends and small businesses asked for web host recommendations, I mention DreamHost. (And I’m not referring just for $ credits. My non-profit gets free DreamHost hosting. More reasons to love.)