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’ve used Dreamhost for 9 years, for 3 web sites. I first used PHP and then converted the sites to WordPress, so they could be maintained more easily. I’ve generally been happy with the service and support. Once every year or two email at the hosted domains runs into a problem that eventually gets fixed.
I have used Dreamhost for many years with good support for all of my questions. The last time I had an issue, I asked two questions in the same email. I had the same results as one of the reviewers here, the second question was ignored or missed. It was answered in a second email.
I will number my questions from now on, but your tech support people should read more carefully.
Overall it was a bad experience.
1) Performance was very bad when loading pages. No matter what theme I used, it took from 2 seconds at the fastest front page load to as much as 10 seconds to load the first page. It never timed out completely, but was not something I could stay with. I had the $30 per month account.
I have a few other sites on Bulkregister and although they’re far cheaper at only $60 per year, they are giving me load pages of less than a second most of the time for the standard Twenty fourteen theme. I’ve had them for years and thought that I needed a dedicated site like Dreamhost, but it was a waste of time.
Support is generally excellent – during weekdays.
Weekend support is generally below average – to really infuriating.
The latest experience was awful since the Support could not be bothered to tackle this advanced issue.
The weekend support can often be nearly as bad as Godaddy [which is terrible]. They show bad habits of cutting off chats; being obtuse; pretending to not see what you are seeing and a host of other “…..if I do this enough….this person will give up….”
and you know I do – give up.
The servers need to be better optimised for caching.
I needed help and even though it was because I had forgotten my password, and they were nice and helpful and never made me feel bad about it.
I’m here, for a second time, after DreamHost asked me to rate their support. Unfortunately, after years of excellent service I’ve had two unacceptable support threads in a row.
The first was a simple email issue where their servers were blocking a confirmation email. A month later the issue resolved itself. Support didn’t even know the issue was resolved so they certainly can’t claim they fixed it.
At the end of the email issue I was contacted by someone higher up the hierarchy. They apologized, said they looked into it and found the response unacceptable. Then asked for my comments on how things could be improved. I gave them my comments, said I appreciated their time but I was still going to move my domains – dozens of them – to another provided. They asked me how they could make me a happy DreamHost customer again.
This directly led the to second issue. They asked what they could do and I explained that the apology had gone a long way to mending fences. All I needed at this point was a small token. I was looking into Pagely and MediaTemple’s managed WordPress options and suggested they make me a deal on their managed WordPress option as a token. Their response was to say, sure you can sign up for DreamPress right here it is only $25/mo (the normal, undiscounted, non-promo full price). They were running a promo on DreamPress for $20/mo at the time. I had the page open in my browser reading their sales page when the support ticket came in telling me I could sign up for $25/mo.
From what I can tell there are 2 major issues. First, their ticketing system seems to be redirecting my tickets to the wrong place. Second, the ticket thread isn’t being fully read. The 2 problems combine to create a very frustrating support experience for anything that can’t be immediately answered. If I ask 2 questions in a response it has become way too often that only 1 gets acknowledged let alone answered. Additionally, with both issues support responses suggested to me that they weren’t reading the entire support thread prior to responding to me. As a result, many of supports answers just made no sense in the context of the entire issue thread.
To top it all off I’m trying to move my domains as they come up on their expiration date and can’t. My first attempt was automatically blocked by DreamHost’s systems. I then contacted DreamHost support who told me everything was ready to go on their end. Now 1&1 is telling me DreamHost has to re-initiate the transfer…
For background, I have been a DreamHost customer for about 8 years now. I run my own dedicated servers through a different, cheaper, hosting company. I also code in PHP and Python. I’ve transferred domains a few times before without issue – typically 1&1 to DreamHost in the past. While the issue could be on 1&1’s side I’m inclined to blame DreamHost at this point until proven otherwise.
Dreamhost was super helpful. I’m teaching a wordpress class so tech support showed me how to set up twelve sub-domains at no extra cost! Then I did a one-step install of WP in each sub-domain and now each of my students is happily learning wordpress by practicing on their own site. Thanks dreamhost!
Had Dreamhost for 6 years. I finally didn’t have a use for it and let it expire for about a month. I now have a need for it and went to renew it. I contacted support to see if they would offer any type of discount to keep me as a customer. I was told it would need to be forwarded to a manager in which a email states I will have a response within 24 hours. No response after 2 days of waiting, I then contacted support again which I was again told it would be forwarded to a manager and they are very good at getting back to customer. Still no response.
Decided to go with another hositng service which offers way more for way less.. Thank you Dreamhost for not giving me the time or day and allowing me to choose a competitor at a much cheaper price that when I call / chat with them their responses are immediate.. instead of, “we have forwarded this issue to a manager” without a response.
Josh
Excellent, easy to use service, especially the one click install option for WordPress. Support is also excellent- I use the online chat option. Would definety recommend.
successfully moved our site to DREAMHOST; team was fully supportive during the process. Looking forward to a excellent service from now on.
Great Customer Service is so important, and Dreamhost provides it! No matter your level of expertise, you want an ISP you can rely on, and one that can guide you when you need it. Dreamhost is quick, friendly and is as hands on or off as you require. They have been a Godsend when I have gotten in over my head, but in addition provide fast, reliable web hosting that let’s me get on with creating my websites. I highly recommend them to anyone who wants top quality and friendly sevice!
One of the best support teams I have ever worked with. Very professional and always fix our issues in a timely manner. Thank you Dreamhost support team.
The Dreamhost techie squared me away in mere seconds. Had me doing stuff I never knew I could do. Did what he showed me. Went back to work. Whole transaction took maybe 30 seconds. My kind of whiplash!!!
I need to have my sites backedup in DreamObjects, when I asked how to do that I received this message – “find it here”
http://wiki.dreamhost.com/DreamObjects_Overview_and_FAQs
Are you kidding me, create a real helpful page, not a vague splash of jargon.
I’m about to drop my account because I can’t use it 🙁
I’ve been with Dreamhost since 2002. After a recent service issue with Media Wiki upgrading and Dreamhost support basically neglecting my request I am starting the process to migrate my 15 domains and hosting services to other providers. Over the years my only complaints were associated with Dreamhost server response time and bandwidth. The currect Dreamhost lack of support for their One Click auto-upgrade features doesn’t support my low maintenance policy for using a hosting provider. I write scripts at work to automate functionality. Dreamhost has made a decision to force manual upgrades to their many many users instead of writing a custom script to perform all the work. Bad decision to put more work on users and not enough on yourself. I will cease recommending Dreamhost after this last issue.
I hadn’t updated something right and wasn’t able to follow the first step to create a WordPress admin account for my new domain. The DreamHost rep provided a fast, easy reply and I was able to follow the instructions and fixed the problem. Not being super savvy with this yet, I really appreciate the support! Thanks!!
I have been client of dreamhost for more than eight years now and the other quality of their service and products has made me stay with them and even when I moved overseas. They are always offering more for your money, besides they are always nice and give quick to respond to your inquiries. I will definitely recommend and rate DREAMHOST as the best hosting provider ever….
I was looking to move a photo site with 35GB of data to dreamhost from a personal hosted site. My account says unlimited storage but I thought I’d check that they were ok with me transfering up 35GB of data before I started.
Not a problem, so I’m in the process of unloading now.
I can’t give an honest review of the support since I never chatted with them.
It was Sunday and I opened a chat window. The time until they could respond was 22 minutes. As the clock ticked down I decided to go about finding the answer differently. I found it before they responded.
The question was simple. I was trying to find it while logged on as a customer what it cost to host. They don’t provide it online while logged in. You have to go to the basic website to get the information. I registered via DreamHost because Weebly uses them for registration. It wasn’t a conscious choice.
It’s okay. I don’t like that they can’t be called, only emailed or chatted with. I registered another site with them simply because I want to keep everything in one place.
Dreamhost are always there when I need them, their Live Chat is better than a phone call in that it is 24 hour, I can write down/copy problems, issues and error messages and keep a log of the conversation. I went from 123-reg to DH many years ago and have never looked back.
I can’t fault any aspect of their service! Always so friendly and *human* too…so much better than talking to a machine!
Fast, Fun, and Friendly, been with Dreamhost for a few years.
They made a mistake, refunded me, sent me some canned messages unless I needed a real human, and there he was.
I escaped the horror of Godaddy and here I am, thanks
I have nothing but great things to say about my time with Dreamhost! I have registered ~20 domains with them, in addition to hosted ~6 sites. Anytime I have an issue, I either tweet or submit a support ticket, and am responded to almost immediately. I’ve been with Dreamhost since I started working on websites around 2008, and have never looked back. Highly recommend!
I contacted Tech Support with my fingers and toes crossed because I’m a writer – not a computer person. And I’m older. I know more about mimeograph machines than I do about computers. The help I got from Dreamhost tech support was focused and efficient. They gave me instructions quickly and even though my fingers trembled a bit I none-the-less had modifications to my site completed within a couple of minutes. WAA-Hoooooo! Great service!!
Did not meet my expectations. The only way to reach a real person was through sales and they will not help with anything except sales. The problem I encountered was not their fault, our go-to-guy for the website was away on vacation and we had no backup plan with the website went down. Still, I believe a top-notch organization would have figured out a way to verify who I was and help me fix the problem rather than have to wait for our go-to-guy to return.
Great experience they were super helpful, and I must of been a bumbling pain easily trying anyone’s patience. Thanks for the help!