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 happy with the price and the support. I’ve used the online chat and my problems have been solved immediately. Their interface is a bit outdated and not intuitive, but I am overall satisfied.
Good support. Take time to understand questions, answers aren’t scripted gibberish. Relevant, helpful, technically accurate. I’ve been with Dreamhost for nearly ten years and have always been satisfied with their service and support.
I have been very happy with DreaHost. I don’t know a lot about the hosting business, but the have consistently provided help when I ran into a hosting problem. I recently decided to move my only web site/blog from WP to DreamHost since DreamHost is who I bought my domain name from. Now everything is at one place. I think the on-line immediate chat provided by DreamHost is amazing and a very useful service. They have always been very responsive to my questions no matter how lame they may have been!
I expect I’ll be a DreamHost customer for a long, long time. I see no reason to do otherwise!
Dreamhost was quick, friendly, professional and able to ‘think out of the box’ to solve problems – rather than rely solely on existing processes/policies. I appreciate their flexibility.
Honestly, I can’t rate DreamHost highly enough. My whole experience has been flawless, including my first time using their live support service the other day. Waited about a minute to speak to someone live who resolved everything courteously and quickly (it was a WordPress issue not a DreamHost issue). Amazing. These guys are great! Use them.
I’ve been a Happy Dreamhoster since 2003. Just checked and I currently have 38 domains, 92 subdomains, 74 users, and 142GB storage on one $10/month shared account. That’s crazy insane. I have four domains on VPS for a few high-traffic sites, and now that they’re on SSDs, they just rock. I have a client with a $300/month dedicated server at a big datacenter with worse response times (yeah, it’s WIn Server – not supported by DH). DH’s dashboard makes cPanel like something from the last millenium DH support is friendly and useful. In 12 years I’ve gone from newb to guru and DH support has worked with me at every level. Love status.dh.com, love the wiki, love the newslettery. Call me a big fan.
I wouldn’t trust this company at this point. A year ago we signed up for a hosting package and shortly after we were robbed. All of our personal documents (car titles, receipts, credit card info and cards) were stolen and the thief actually used our CC’s and were caught on film. Needless to say our lives were turned upside down and inside out. Not only did our bank help us out and cover the fees that were stolen and issue new cards on our accounts, but several other parts of life were not so easy to deal with. Computer had all of our info with passwords etc and we had to get new email accounts created and then reroute all of our current stuff to new addresses etc. Really wasn’t too bad as everyone we dealt with was more than helpful and actually could tell that they felt bad for us. Everyone but this company. Its now been a little over a year trying to get this so called “DreamHost” company to help us fix this. In the time that has elapsed NO ONE has tried to communicate with us over the phone and every time someone communicates with us it is through email and a new person almost every time. We have since been accused of trying to get a discount for new customers even though we have NEVER used the account or been able to log into it for technically over a year. They are still billing our cancelled credit card with knowledge. To top it off they claim that it is more secure to deal with the sensitive information by having us post our info into their “secure” form, rather than call and talk to us over the phone. This is absolutely unheard of, according to everyone we have dealt with through this (authorities wise.)
BUYER BEWARE
I’ve only been with DreamHost for a short while and already the experience has been a huge step up from my last hosting company. Really impressed with their services and the customer support is just awesome. The control panel is excellent and if you’re ever unsure the wiki has everything you need. The only hosting company you will ever need. Thoroughly recommend.
After all the other hosting systems I tried, I was so grateful to find Dreamhost. Support NEVER talks down to newbies and they are not only patient but FRIENDLY. I’ve been with them for about 4 years now and I wouldn’t trade them for the world.
I’ve been a customer of dreamhost for the past several years and have always gotten excellent service. Occasionally, I work on my client’s websites and they are a nightmare. There’s hardly any support(they charge), or the settings (cpanel) are so hidden or missing. I recently got a website up and Dreamhost’s service has gotten even better. Within a few hours, I had my questions answered. I always recommend Dreamhost to my clients and friends.
I haven’t used their hosting for a long time yet. Just registered several domains and started a WordPress hosting. Still so far I have very positive experience with Dreamhost. I noticed that the control panel and account management can be somewhat confusing for a novice users. However my impression this is because of high flexibility and number of features which are available. And support is very helpful in resolving your difficulties. No major issues so far. I have chosen Dreamhost as long-term hosting services provider and have no reasons to regret.
Have been with DreamHost for about 3 years now. They are hard to fault. I am based in New Zealand, I thought with the different time zone things would be slow if I had a problem. I was well surprised when I had a query they got back to me very fast not that I have problems very often. I would highly recommend them to anyone looking for reliable hosting. Keep it up DreamHost
DH has been a blessing to me. they help me with all questions, in a timely manner and were excellent with their responses. I highly recommend them to any one wanting to host their sites.
I switched to BlueHost. That should tell you everything you need to know about your service.
I have been with Dreamhost for several years now, and have gradually moved over several client websites to them. I’ve always found their support team to be great. Sometimes they point me to their wiki, which is well-written and thorough. And the troubleshooting dilemmas that I’m able to resolve with the help of the Dreamhost Wiki increases my skillset. The ability to view a site before making a DNS change has been helpful when moving clients over to Dreamhost … either during a WordPress redesign or just to ensure there is no down time for them. I will continue to recommend Dreamhost.
You guys are truly awesome. I just really got into the website maintenance racket this last year and while I’m learning that I still have a lot to learn about running my own site, Dreamhost has been incredibly knowledgeable, patient and helpful. The few times I have had questions or issues they have not only responded extremely fast, but they have been very helpful; usually including additional tips and advice that made the process even better. Thank you guys for being awesome, you make this rookie feel like a veteran.
I have always found Dreamhost support for their shared web hosting (the only service I’ve used) to be excellent for the years I’ve used them.
The last time I needed them was when they offered to move me to their new solid state drive hosting. They did it quickly, faster than they promised, and to my surprise there were no issues. I thought I’d need to reconfigure some things, but so far, nothing. Nonetheless, they invited me to contact them if I needed such help.
Has DH been flawless? No, in my early years with them there were some widespread downtime issues. However, during that time they communicated openly and honestly, and I’ve found them to be extremely reliable in the later years I’ve been hosted with them.
Overall, I’m happy I chose to be with Dreamhost, and their pricing is fair, support great.
I’ve been a DreamHost customer since 2007. Overall, I’m quite happy with the value, technical offerings, and support service. They have always been responsive when I’ve had questions or problems. In a few cases, the problems might have been preventable with better proactive communication, but this is a relatively minor issue and I hope to be with DreamHost for a long time to come!
I came to know DreamHost after hosting three sites on a different hosting company. I switched one of my sites to DreamHost (more than a year ago) as I needed better customer support and the ability to customize my hosting solution (specifically, adding OAuth and IonCube capability). It turned out the DreamHost was a great choice. Their customer support is one of the best in the industry, staffed with technical people that know Linux, and are capable of solving issues and respond relatively quickly. Their pricing is also very competitive and their Wiki is full with great articles and how-to information for managing different aspects of your site. Keep it up!
I want to share that the service from dreamhost.com is very excellent, i came from other provider and this one (dreamhost) they are very kind, fast response, highly efficient. thumbs up!
I have been using DreamHost since 2004, yes you read that right, for over 11 years I have been hosting with them!! Its been a blissful reunion with many benifits and lots of great toys to mess around with. From instant installs of WordPress, to Zen Cart, to even geeking out and installing custom php extensions through ssh.
I haven’t looked back and am still enjoying the benifits of my Crazy Domain Insain plan I orginally signed up with all that time ago. If your looking for a host that has solid servers, great speeds, fantasic support and a wacky monthly news letter to boot…look no further. You’ll be glad you took he plunge. Spoken from a long standing DreamHost Customer.
Joey Troy
I have been a Dreamhost customer for over eight years and I am extremely satisfied with the service and support.
Any problems that I have had on my website were quickly resolved.
I would recommend them to anyone looking for a hosting service.
Have been using DH services for a at least 10 years with great satisfaction. Last week had a problem and contacted support via chat which turned to be super helpful with immediate response. The problem was solved already during out conversation. What else can one say about a good customer support ?
Just switched from major US hosting company to DreamHost. Just want to share that dealing with DreamHost is excellent. The fact they have online chat helps massively and was a major factor in why I changed to them. Although I haven’t dug too deep yet into what they offer technically for hosting, all looks good to me. Had an issue with email setup but the gremlin at their end got dealt to. Pleasing purchase and transfer experience and an ease to deal with.
I’m a dreamhsot customer for over 3 years now.
I’m not really the kind of guy who knows a lot about hosting so I’ll skip the technical details: I’m using multiple domains all having wordpress installed (using the dreamhost one-click install option) and things are runing just fine.
I got some third-parties to monitor my domains performance and uptime and I do confirm I have over 99% uptime. I sometimes get some delays here and there but it’s mainly due to buggy wordpress plugins, nothing to do with dreamhost.
So I’m the average blogger if you want. Why am I picking dreamhost? it’s for 2 main reasons:
1. Dreamhost allows you unlimited domains hosting with unlimited disk quota and bandwidth. Now I wouldn’t be surprised to know there are some actual limits to that but so far I’ve reached none. It’s good to be able to host as many domains as you want for free, it gets my work going (with some other hosts you’d have to pya a bit in order to add a domain each time).
2. The customer support live chat. Now to be fair, sometimes I’ve reached the support and had to wait like 25 minutes till a representative shows up and then he looked distracted or not very responsive. This has happened few times. But on the other extreme, just yesterday I contacted them and a representative helped me out in the most perfect way. I was so satisfied that after ending the conversation I decided to contact dreamhost by Email and tell them how satisfied I was with their reprentative that day (the guy is “KevinH”, let him be recognised). Many sites throw you links of FAQ pages when you ask for help and this annoys me: if I could fix it myself by reading FAQ I wouldn’t be here… So that guy was very patient, understood I have little knowledge with hosting and he actually did all the required changes while explaining to me what he was doing. The chat lasted over an hour and the representative was very courteous and patient the entire time. So yeah, customer support has its ups and downs (usually depending on the time of the day you’re contacting them) but once you catch them in a good timing, their representatives are REALLY well-trained.
Hopefully this helps you guys decide. For the beginners out there, just take my advice and go with dreamhost. After 3 years, I decided to make the commitment of renewing for 10 more years: by picking this option I get the priice of ~6$/month rather than the typical 10-11$/month. I did the math and that’s some big savings… Oh and about that… If I had to point out things I wish they had: coupons… As a 3 years customer, I’d feel good if I receive a mail telling me “hey you’ve been a loyal customer, if you take the 10 years plan we’ll give you an additional 20% off ” or something along that way…