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 am very disappointed in DreamHost. I was asked to survey this:
Incident # 6897986 closed on 9/4/2015 10:57 AM
Incident Desc: related #6853597 related to #6796965
I never heard from anyone. THis was related to my email being BLOCKED outbound due to the mailhosts being blacklisted. I had to open this ticket many times over many months.
The one time I did correspond with someone (via chat no phone option) they had no answer and could not answer my questions.Th.ey seemed to plead ignorance of this.
I may look for a new home as my subscription runs out in October.
Mail is now working but I am using a mxlookup tool to watch for blacklists and the hosts are still blacklisted but at least I can now correspond with my insurance company!
Leon
thanks for quick reply
Fast and accurate support! Highly satisfied.
Im really DISAPPOINTED with Dreamhost! I have been with them since 2013 and hadnt had a problem till recently, when I started being direct debited for a new service called DreamObjects. The problem started back in May 2014 when i received warnings from Dreamhost about my disk usage. It took me a few days but I tried to fix the problem myself, assuming it must be having to do with my emails as that was the only part of my website growing in size. I contacted customer service and was told they had fixed the problem for me. Lets just say they didnt! I would NOT recommend Dreamhost unless you have a degree in I.T. ! I would cancel my hosting but apparently I would have to “apply” for a refund and it is just too easy for them to withhold my money!
I am happy with dreamhost support – always responsive.
Emailed a question about an old account from a few years ago. Turns out they weren’t hosting our site anymore, but they answered within 24 hours and went above and beyond to point me in the right direction. If they are that helpful with people who are no longer customers, I can’t imagine how excellent customer service must be for actual subscribers. This experience alone has me looking into switching over my current company’s hosting services! Thanks DreamHost!
Dream Host has always been very promy, and kind in resolving any issues that come up.
tech support and customer service are excellent
many thanks I send
Dreamhost technical support is one of the main reasons the reason I use Dreahmost. Any time, day or night, I can get on a chat conversation with them and explain my problem. I have been provided a clear and helpful answer in every situation…with a smile and politeness. I have not seen this level of support in any other hosting provider, and I’ve tried many. So Dreamhost continues to get my business and has earned my trust.
I had decided to recreate my newly renovated and expanded website on WordPress.org and needed a host for it as well. Due to the mostly positive reviews I found about DreamHost, I chose it as my preferred host for my bigger site.
I started the process of creating my account and purchasing the hosting service on the DreamHost site. Unfortunately, something came up (as it often does) with my business and I had to leave my signup/purchase to go put out the “fire”. Later on, I went back to DreamHost to complete my purchase. I tried to signup and purchase it all over again since I hadn’t done so previously, but it said that I already had a login and needed to purchase the hosting by logging in. Okay, fine. I tried using the email and password from before, but I received an error saying that I couldn’t login because there were IP issues.
I searched the FAQ and Support section to try and find a solution but I couldn’t find anything. I checked my IP address to see what could be flagging it, but there were no issues there. Then I searched high and low to find a number to call and ask for help. What I found was that they don’t offer and support via phone for new or interested parties. Then I sent an email to DH support. I conveyed that this was an urgent matter and I needed to resolve it quickly or I’d have to look elsewhere. Well, a few days later I finally heard back from someone. Unfortunately, the response was too late and furthermore it was completely unhelpful.
Overall I was very UNIMPRESSED with DreamHost. Perhaps they offer decent hosting to those who are actually able to get it, but I wouldn’t know. What I do know is that they have possibly the WORST customer service in history. If they really cared about their customers or getting new customers, they would provide a better method of contact via phone and reply to their only method (email) in a timely manner.
I use a forms creation package that had some scripting issues with PHP 5.6. When I discovered this, I requested that Dreamhost support delay the implementation of the upgrade from PHP 5.3 to PHP 5.6 on my site.
Support response was immediate and totally satisfactory. I have since resolved the scripting issues with forms package provider, and I have now set my account to use PHP 5.6.
Thanks for offering me the opportunity to fix this issue without causing a service interruption to my client.
Support was surprisingly helpful and succinct. Good job Dreamhost.
Wow, this host is the best. I have hosted with many other companies in the 20+ years I’ve been a host for my clients and my own sites, but never has there been equal to Dreamhost. I found them in 2008 and have never needed anyone else.
Perfect example, last week one of my clients got hacked! That’s a scary and potentially reputation-damaging situation. I fired off a desperate email to Dreamhost support, and they got back to me in less than three hours … already having done a TOTAL SECURITY AUDIT!!! Normally they get back to me in an hour or less, which is HEROIC! But in my case, they took my need seriously, and acted immediately. They repaired what they could and then gave me a complete instruction on how to repair my complete hosting account, look at all the vulnerabilities, domain by domain.
No other hosting company is necessary to check out, just go Dreamhost!
Dreamhost Security Team are superb! Extremely helpful and patient when a site was repeatedly being hacked. Dreamhost responds quickly to any questions or problems.
Dreamhost is always trying their best to help me no matter what problem i have, even if it is something that I should be figuring out for myself. Always helpful and quick to respond, Dreamhost is phenomenal when it comes to technical support.
Support was very helpful in assisting me getting my website transferred and working. I also had an issue with the site being slow and that issue was resolved very quickly.
The support has been great and much better than my other hosts. Very happy with my choice to move to Dreamhost.
With Dreamhost you’re never alone. If you have any question or issue the support it top notch. They respond quick and are so awesome. Highly recommended!
Every time I have even the slightest issue, I can be sure to get the timely support I need. Follow up is awesome, issues are always resolved.
Working with Dream Host has been the best thus far. I appreciate their hosting service, fast response time, and how detailed they are with support. I am satisfied and plan on continuing my hosting with Dream Host. Thank you!
Blessings!!!
I have used this for about 2 years. I love the prompt, clear, succinct tech support responses. It takes a bit of lifting of your own, but the support is there and it is good. I also chose it because I heard their privacy settings were much more respectable than the average host. The price is just right.
I’ve been a customer of Dreamhost for 8 years, after trying numerous other hosting solutions.
The support people have always been helpful, quick to respond to questions and/or problems and always gave me instructions that I could follow and learn from…AND THEY HAVE NEVER TALKED DOWN TO ME. Even when I was a relative newbie, they were always courteous and treated me as a valued subscriber. This was particularly refreshing after the numerous experiences I had with the technical support people on the OTHER hosting options I tried. They have my loyalty because they have ALWAYS treated me with patience, understanding and CLEAR instructions (even doing things FOR me when I was overwhelmed at the beginning).
I love the online chat help and I really love One-Click installs.
I recommend Dreamhost to everyone!
Affordable fast and responsive hosting. I recommend it.
I’ve been a Dreamhost customer for 8 years. Great service: real, knowledgeable people, patient and helpful without being patronizing or obsequious. They really know their stuff, their product is rock solid, does exactly what they say it does and is well supported. I have no hesitation in recommending Dreamhost as the best hosting provider in the world, without a doubt.
I’ve been using Dreamhost for years. Their customer service has been consistently responsive and helpful. When my site had been hacked, they helped me through clearing the problems. When I’ve had small or large issues, they’ve helped me troubleshoot.
Question asked and answered. Professional service, no complaints.
super fast support team. always provide solution. so far all my inquiry,support can solve it in a short time. definitely satisfy.