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’m a complete beginner and was having some problems. I got help through chat. It was extremely fast and efficient, solved my problem immediately, and the analyst was courteous to boot.
Thanks for superb customer service DreamHost.
Kevin
Excellent user friendly service. Just slow chat response time.
Was re-signing with Dreamhost after a hiatus, and sent a query about pricing offers I had seen for sign-up which I didn’t seem to have access to on re-activating my account. I received a super prompt reply with a very acceptable/comparable pay-up-front offer for exiting customers. Super fast, friendly responses on every interaction and very comparable rates. Looking forward to my two years ahead!
I am not happy with DreamHost and haven’t been for quite some time! Poor service and even poorer responses from their so called expert technical support team! I have been struggling with updating my site since the BIG migration! My site has been down for five months now and yet they still expect to paid for their poor services, despite not helping me with getting my website up and running again! They continue to direct me to their useless wiki page on help with upgrading my website to the recent applicable programs, despite the fact that the upgrade failed the last time I attempted it! I reported this problem too and the technical staff simply directed me back to their wiki page! I do not recommend DreamHost! They clearly do not care, their staff are obviously untrained, because being technical wizards, they should be able to assist more competently when there is an issue with one of their customers websites. I am not a web designer/programmer! You’ve been warned, do not go with DreamHost!
Our SSL certificate was using SHA-1 encryption, which was being flagged as unsecure by Google Chrome. After speaking with support, they cancelled our current certificate and I requested a new one. All this within a few hours. Much less painful than I thought it would be
Sorry Dreamhost. I’ve been with you since 2009 but your poor customer service is causing me to move away after 6+ years.
Took them about 5 hours to respond to the ticket, when they did they “cleaned the infected files” which lead to the entire site going down. Their only suggestion from there (an additional 2 hours) was to reinstall wordpress and start over.
We’ve been using Dreamhost since the early 2000s and remain very happy. With up to fifty websites managed for our clients, we have had nearly zero downtime. Requests for support have alway been attended to promptly and followed through until we were fully satisfied.
How can anyone use Dreamhost? They have been experiencing email blocks from AT&T, my internet provider. I haven’t been able to receive emails from my nonprofit chapter website since October 1st. It’s now October 19th! This is causing many problems and to make things worse, some senders don’t even receive a bounce notice. These emails are being blocked because Dreamhost customers generate too much SPAM (according to Dreamhost). I found out what the problem was by going to forums. No notification from Dreamhost.The customer service is terrible and they are dragging their feet on this. I don’t know of any other major hosting company that has their emails blocked. I’ve had my own websites through Godaddy since 2007 and never had a problem. Dreamhost could care less. This is insane!
Same here… I’ve been with them for a decade and suddenly they did the same to me… deleted a lot of my content in a private section available students to learn their skills… moved it to a new cloud like service where they want to charge me more… crappy marketing… they did all this without my permission… the help people just spin answers. That content was fine for a decade but now suddenly not allowed…
I’m looking for a new server / host as well… who would you recommend?
Excellent service with a small delay
No issues with Dreamhost. Always fast response time to any problems I encounter due to my lack of experience, very helpful action and advice – often beyond my expectations. Excellent customer service. Thank you.
I’m in the right hands. Thx DH!
I would recommend hosting with Godaddy or Bluehost. They have support that you can talk to if problems persist or need escalation.
If you are expecting to host a site to support your business, This is not the place. E-mail only support (sort-of) fails to work when they have the problem, and it is outside of their skill set. I have seen this too much now.
We will be evaluating the costs of rebuilding the entire site on a proper hosting company.
I worked for a web company in the 1990s, and have also used GoDaddy and Hostgator. Of the large cheap hosting services, DreamHost is one of the better ones, especially in the area of customer support. It’s not perfect, but where there are known problems (such as with its webmail) it works towards solving them. Recently it has taken a more forceful approach towards preventing web space being used as a backup in order to try and force customers to use its cloud service. Uptime over the last twelve months has been good. It takes a more ethical approach to business than its major rivals, and has a positive attitude towards customer involvement.
Excellent hosting. And yes, the support is excellent too.
I am quite happy with dreamhost hosting services. Yes it is kind of slow but for websites where I need better performance I have contracted one of their virtual private server. That is all mine and I run websites over there that need to be fast. For support request I have always had fast replies to them. Always a solution for the shared hosting. For my vps they have done the initial setup for me but from that point on I was on my own installing mysql database and other stuff I needed. I am OK with that as I know myself around in Linux. One minor. When I was installing WordPress multisite support actually gave me the wrong information. As I am OK with Linux apache Dns etc I understood that from the beginning. I nevertheless followed their support suggested way to act. At midnight I understood it is not going to work I have to do it myself on my way. So I did with success. The lesson? Do not hesitate in contact their support but investigate yourself in knowledge. It may turn handy
One of the best support companies I’ve ever dealt with. I was convinced to switch from HostGator to DreamHost, and I will never go back now! I love DreamHost!
I tried Dreamhost at the suggestion of a professor that recommended them. She said “…reasonable cost and good customer service.” She was right.
I have had no issues with Dreamhost, although I have had a few technical questions when trying something new to me. They have been able to answer all my questions. I will continue using them for my sites. Excellent customer service – I can’t say enough. I am very pleased.
Not happy? Cannot get complete answers from DH support. They did away with their online “Chat” support. Existing email support is shallow because of the anonymity, If there is more than once question or concern, support only answers the easiest query so they can “get the numbers.” Their email system may be OK for small inexperienced users, but for a serious venture, their technical infrastructure is very poor. I transferred over 55 domain names and am currently running a Joomla website site. If I don’t see better results, will have to go.
Dreamhost are quite simply put *superb* in every way. I cannot recommend them highly enough. Second to none!
Poor hosting, poor service.
Not so happy with DH at the moment…After 8 years of being a customer with an unlimited storage account, DH suddenly starts making a problem of me having a couple of gigs on the server (I run a music label and have a lot of albums up for free download). I don’t understand why, since it was never a problem and why would you have an unlimited account of you cannot store a lot of data??
Next to that they move stuff around from one server to another and things get messed up, which means database usernames get shortened, and websites do not work anymore.
Support is really slow, sometimes takes more that 3 days to give me an answer via email.
Servers have always been slow, but I accepted that since they are (were) cheap.
Since there are faster and better hosts out there now that offer better and faster service for exactly the same money, I am done with DH. Currently I’m moving my websites to a new server, a super fast one, which is costing me the same as DH.
I would have stuck with DH only if they hadn’t started making a problem of the amount of data I am hosting with my ‘unlimited’ plan.
I have been a very happy customer of Dreamhost for over eleven years. I have never considered switching. Recently I needed to contact their customer support to find out if I can pay my annual payment with more than one credit card (I have prepaid rebate cards that I wanted to use). they responded immediately to me, and said that YES I could pay with multiple methods/cards, etc. I am VERY happy about that and it is just ONE more reason I will stay with them! Excellent customer service. Speedy, accurate, professional. What more can you want from customer service?
There is NO company – hosting or otherwise – of which I am aware that provides better customer support than DreamHost. In a world where customer service seems to have disappeared and we are all just treated as a number, DreamHost brings back the nostalgia of better times. They are prompt, thorough and even follow through after the fact to ensure the issue or even just a question has been resolved or answered to my satisfaction. Thank you DreamHost. It is a pleasure to do business with you.
I have 10 websites with DreamHost and finally I found decent hosting with good and really working support. It is not the fastest hosting in the world, but for that little price for staring plan it’s great. Been using it for few months and there was no downtime at all.