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. 
Dreamhost’s quick and friendly customer service helped me get back up and running in no time…five stars.
Dreamhost has always come to the rescue when needed and very promptly, too.
Thank you.
Great tech support, no BS like other hosting sites, no waiting on hold, just submit a ticket and receive a fast and thorough response. Love DreamHost!
Recently contacted Dreamhost re a non profit site that has changed hands so many times it was a little tough getting follow up. Dreamhost offered the support they could within privacy parameters. While their efforts were not the final straw, they were certainly one of several approaches that has finally brought a resolution to this issue within grasp. As new webmaster for this site, I am looking forward to seeing the support Dreamhost offers first hand.
Even when I’m in a shitty mood from solving tech issues of my own making anyone from dreamhost tech support has cheerfully (and effectively) helped. I’m very grateful to be hosted by a company with a bit of soul.
Our not-for-profit organization has been the beneficiary of DreamHost’s free hosting for many years. In the course of that time I’ve had several interactions with the DreamHost support staff. Their responses have always been quick and helpful. We benefit greatly by being a DreamHost “customer.”
They were very responsive and helpful. I am not sure what went wrong but I was getting an incorrect error message, they fixed the issue and completed the one-click process for me.
I have had very positive experiences with Dreamhost tech support. A few key examples:
– we deleted a user account for an employee who left the company, not knowing that would delete the sites associated with that user. A Dreamhost support tech had the problem resolved within about 30 minutes (sites restored from backup)
– We moved from a VPS to a dedicated server. A few things didn’t move over cleanly, and I got help within minutes from Dreamhost.
– A month or two after the move to dedicated server, I noticed that we were still being billed for the VPS. I had forgotten to turn that VPS off. I reached out to Dreamhost to get help shutting it down, and without me even asking, they credited my account for two months of VPS service, since we really hadn’t been using the VPS.
Our non-profit has been taking advantage of their free non-profit hosting, and it’s been wonderful. We recently interacted with their support team, and they were quick and professional.
I set up a hosting account for my emails and all went well until I tried to switch to dream hosting so that I could set up a WordPress site.
When I tried to register the domain, I received a message saying it can’t be done because a sub domain was created. When I reached out to customer service I got zero response. It’s 3 days later and need the site up and designed by September 1st, therefore If I don’t here back by tomorrow with a solution, I’m dropping Dreamiest but only after switching to another host.
I am glad I am hosting my web site with you! I don’t often seek help but you always come up trumps with advice, so thank for that!
I would say however that I am not a techy savvy person (being a Yoga teacher 😉 ) and so sometimes I find your answers to my questions a little over whelming with ‘techy speak’ and am left feeling I still don’t know how to resolve my problem on my own.
Just this week I thought my web site had been hacked and you came to the rescue very quickly and sorted as much as you could your side and then gave me advice as to how to protect and update my site going forward but some of the items I just couldn’t understand so I went on your very quick instant online chat and for security reasons the lady there could not take me through things incase there was a breach or something…so I haven’t done what you emailed me to do coz I still don’t understand how. I need hand holding….so what then?
Anyway….I am still happy to be with you guys!
Blessings
Gina Hardy
I’ve used Dreamhost for several years now and have had nothing but GREAT experiences! First of all, the dashboard is pretty self-explanatory and most things are very easy to figure out as is. Secondly, their wiki articles for help are often all I need to clear up a question or figure out something I may not be certain how to do (I am not the most advanced web designer on earth). Lastly but not least, on the few occasions I’ve needed to contact customer support, they have been absolutely fantastic, helping me work through what I’m trying to do with patience, and extensive knowledge that is actually kind of mind-blowing. I’ve never worked with any company for any reason that has better support than Dreamhost! Highly recommended!
Excellent Support and services , Thank you Dreamhost Team 🙂
The customer service with Dreamiest is excellent! They are very responsive and quick to provide solutions
I’m new with DreamHost, I seen there services very nice with accepted prices and realy feel good when finished chat with one of there agent .
Thank you:)
Someone (or something?) hacked my web site, and I do not have much experience with managing web matters myself. However, dreamhost customer support responded to my request for help immediately, and offered suggestions for fixing the problem myself (which worked) and how to prevent it from occurring again. I am very happy with dreamiest.
I had a problem getting data from a Ninja form. Email addresses with common domains were getting blocked. My initial response from DreamHost support didn’t address the issue, but that was due to my confusing tests. Once I clarified the issue I got a quick and useful response. The problem was in my Ninja forms options. They explained their blocking process and I was able to easily fix it in my forms options. I’m very happy with the prompt support I received and their willingness to go the extra mile.
This is my first experience using WordPress for web design and I really appreciate the tight integration they offer with the application. Five Stars!
New to hosting with Dreamhost, our first ‘oops’ on our page, our fault. The support team was able to fix quickly and we are back online with full access. Thank you!
Dreamhost as always helps those in need and the process was quick and easy. Thank you again!
Camilla Ross
I’ve been a Dreamhost customer since about 2002. I love their control panel and ease of use. Their prices for their quality of service are great, and you feel like you’re doing business with good guys.
Dreamhost’s shared hosting is a good place to host a low traffic blog.
Caveats:
For higher-traffic sites, you’ll probably want a VPS, and Dreamhost’s prices for VPS are on the high end.
If you want to forward email from your custom domain to Gmail, you’ll find that Gmail penalizes mail from Dreamhost significantly, slowing delivery down. I had to move my primary domain from Dreamhost to Hover to avoid this penalty.
My questions were answered right away, as in the past. That’s why I stay loyal to Dreamhost.
We use Dreamhost for a simple WP website and a few mailing lists (using their mailman interface) . It’s very inexpensive, so I have little reason to complain. There has been the occasional email issue (stuck mail because of a hung process on the mail server or similar) and the occasional slow WP site. Tech support has been good, competent, and responsive, if sometimes a bit slow to reply to a submitted problem. Good value, I say.
My web identity was hacked and all my copyrighted material was stolen and hosted on DreamHost. Well, they did respond to my issue quickly, but provided very little help other than to tell me to Google how to file a formal complaint. I did, and wrote a formal letter demanding the illegally used content be taken down, however, as a hosting company I feel that DreamHost should have a system already in place for dealing with this huge internet issue.
As a person who had a legal violation against me, it should be EASY and EFFICIENT for me to file a complaint and my PRIVATE INFORMATION should be immediately removed from their servers. As it is, I have had to do a lot of research and work to file my compliant. I believe that all web hosts should have automatic tools for handling such issues and proving who is the real owner of the copyrighted information. Also, all web hosts should have links to legal tools that can be used against the violators of copyright law.
As it is, this is extremely hard to find. Just because Dream Host makes their living hosting websites, doesn’t mean they have no legal responsibility to the public. There is a legal precedent for this; it is called “Duty of Care” and i means that providers of services have a LEGAL OBLIGATION to make sure that the public is not harmed by their business actions. Right now, the public at large can easily be HARMED BY DREAM HOST because they do NOTHING to help protect against COPYRIGHT VIOLATIONS.
We got hacked and Dreamhost saved the day by helping us deal with the fallout. The customer service and tech support was excellent. Fast, friendly and knowledgeable. I highly recommend them.
Never seen such a quick and great customer service. Never. Online chat is a helpful service and they are there…every time you need! Great.