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 recently switched hosting from GoDaddy to Dreamhost and the service has been on-point in helping with a few issues I had getting things set up along the way. I would recommend Dreamhost.
Been with Dreamhost for 8 years now and during this time they never let me down. Their support service is excellent, promptly responding to silliest of my queries and resolving issues in no time. Well done Dreamhost team, I wholeheartedly recommend your services!
Support is a joke, I cancelled my service after 5mins and went with GoDaddy where I was able to pick up the phone and get support for FREE, what a concept! DreamHost is garage.
These dudes have always been nothing but helpful and available, when I have needed their help. Thanks, Dreamhost!
My son switched me to dreamhost so I would be able to do a lot more with my website than what I could with my former host, and not come to him with every change i want. We’re both happy we made the switch.
Dreamhost support is very good. In addition, they’ve made major improvements in capacity and speed of their systems in the last few years.
Stability is a lingering issue, especially on their mail clusters. It’s not unusually for these to be out of service for hours at a time.
Their basic plan used to be sufficient for most things, but increasingly you have to pay significantly extra for additional services. Their WordPress hosting is a good example. There is no reliable, simple firewall available in the basic plan, only Cloudflare which is not very good.
In general I’m positive about Dreamhost, but also always considering alternatives.
I had a problem registering a domain and the support group was quick and efficient in getting in touch with me. I would definitely use Dream Host again.
Same old messages which say that you have exceeded memory allocation – but no analysis as to why.
The majority of the VPS CPU is very low [2% average] – but the moment there is a modicum of traffic the RAM overloads.
It is clear that the server settings are not optimised correctly to have such a wild swing – but the support staff do not get this.
its getting a bit tired sadly
I have used DreamHost for more than 5 years, and overall I’ve been very happy. Their support staff is pretty awesome, once even helping find a bug with my webapp that I wrote. I was able to grow with them, until my specific needs outgrew their offerings. The VPS solution is pretty good, assuming you don’t need a specific OS or version of software or are very particular with your setup. The shared hosting is great too if you are using standard PHP-based apps and sites. Unfortunately DreamHost is not an awesome choice if you are trying to deploy custom Python webapps or anything Docker related.
I’ve been using Dreamhost for… I don’t even know… over 10 years? I’ve never had an issue, and their awesome staff is always willing to help me through my n00b mistakes and/or cluelessness. I’ve even had times when my question had nothing to do with their service, but they answered my questions faster than the other company did. Love the live chat support.
Dreamhost is awesome. Everything has worked correctly from the beginning. Any difficulties I’ve encountered, I have caused, and they have helped resolve them without any attitude. It wasn’t always instantaneous, however it was resolved fairly quickly. Always within a few hours.
Excellent value on hosting, and domain registration. We are very happy with DH.
Must say great service. I found out that there was an error on my theme after a recent wordpress update and at 4am I spoke to someone online and they sorted everything out for me within about 10 minutes. Can’t speak highly enough of them!
Having to jump through this many hoops simply to get mail working is completely unacceptable. The amount of trouble shooting, wasted time and frustration this has caused is ridiculous. No hosting service should be this temperamental and its is absurd to need to contact the provider to whitelist IP addresses due to their poor services. In my 20 years of IT and technology I have never had a worse experience with a hosting service.
Their web based tools for administration are crude and restrictive, the limitations of their email account settings are not acceptable, the webmail interface is years out of date and essentially unusable, the entire system is fragmented with multiple interfaces for various tasks, they have poor documentation and all of this is on top of the absolute shit reliability and performance.
The inconsistencies continue on our side with issues with sending and receiving but also occurring with attempting to move or delete emails with obscure error messages and seeming permissions errors.
Dreamhost have done above and beyond to give me time to sort out the website and some of the stuff that was on there just taking up space. With a huge number of roles I have to deal with in a short space of time, it has not been possible to be up to date with things recently. Dreamhost were timely in their correspondence and have been more than patient in providing extra time for me to sort things out. We’ve been with others but Dreamhost always wins for us in every aspect of web hosting.
I was using dreamhost shared hosting for last 4 years and 1 year with VPS. Shared hosting was good with lot of goodies, gmail integration, ssh, git availability. VPS experience, to be honest, is not that compared to digitalocean. It’s pretty slow. Other than, I will recommend dreamhost.
I’ve been with Dreamhost for over 8 years now (over 10 years if you count leeching off a friend’s account before I got my own), and have been nothing but thrilled (with occasional hiccups). The most recent was some issue preventing me from installing WordPress or creating subdomains. Mere moments after requesting support, it was resolved.
My only disappointment is that “some issue with [my] account” was never really explained, so I didn’t learn anything from the experience. If it’s preventable, I have no idea how.
I have a real problem with this hosting service. I have three (3) websites under active hosting with them, and one (1) WordPress blog. The WP blog actually performs reasonably well, but the websites, which consist of plain-vanilla xhtml/css have had substantial load time issues. Two of the sites are generally pretty good performers, but one loads so slowly, it can take anywhere from 2 minutes to infinity (timeout) for the index page to load.
I double checked this problem by using several external page load checkers, including Google PageSpeed Insights. I found that page load times from these services were very problematic. I prepared screenshots and detailed information and contacted tech support. I also checked the IP addresses of the shared hosts, and noted that the problem site was on a different shared host than the others. ALL of this information was communicated to Dreamhost.
To put it mildly, Dreamhost tech support SUCKS. Three (3) contact attempts, and the first two people completely blew me off. In fact, that didn’t even ACKNOWLEDGE the information I sent them. One of these geniuses actually told me to CLEAR MY BROWSER CACHE. Yeah, dummy, my browser cache is going to affect how external speed checkers load my site, uh huh.
I’m a systems administrator and I work with many users at my regular place of employment. These people at Dreamhost:
1. Do not know what they are doing
2. Will feed you lines of bullshit to get you to go away
3. Are arrogant, and blatantly ignore even detailed information when provided.
As an admin myself, I really appreciate it when a user provides me with detailed information. It streamlines the troubleshooting process and helps me get to a solution faster. These guys, DON’T EVEN CARE.
Spend your money elsewhere.
I recently contacted Dreamhost about making some necessary DNS changes for my new email vendor. I very promptly received back the directions necessary to make all of the changes that I needed to make, with everything being taken care of in less than an hour! Awesome – actually totally awesome, thanks Dreamhost!
Excellent support and service. I’m recommending Dreamhost to all my colleagues. No extra bs sales pitches and fast and friendly response to my only support issue needed.
I create & consult on websites so I have accounts with a few US hosting providers.
Dreamhost was my first and through the years I have but one thing to say:
Dreamhost is the only hosting company that KEEPS GETTING BETTER!
I have seen substancial improvements server-wise (speed, stability etc) even on shared hosting and they keep adding services taking in mind user feedback.
Opinions may vary according to experience (we’re talking big companies here with many clients) but in the long run I find Dreamhost to be the best and have been always of great support.
I’m glad it was my first choice!
Great service. One of our users just deleted our media folder and they restored it in a matter of hours.
I have been using Dreamhost for the last 6 months or so for about 10 websites. I just upgraded to a private server with them because I have been nothing but happy with their service so far. I have had hostgator as well as arvixe…two hosting companies that are supposed to be top notch. Hostgator I had billing issues that I had to call and have them fix EVERY MONTH plus it took FOREVER to get support. Arvixe was just SLOW with all of my sites. Dreamhost has been perfect. I have contacted support multiple times and they have been nothing but friendly and knowledgeable. I highly recommend their service.
Technical support was fast and thorough (as usual). I’m sticking with Dreamhost!
After many months of always being impressed by Dreamhost online-chat support, this time I was left severely underwhelmed.
The first response to my query was “Wow”, which was not very helpful. Then a couple of phrases meant very little. Then silence. Then, after a query from me asking him to explain what he had just said, and then one more asking if he was still there, more silence. At this point I gave up.
They are a little on the expensive side and their servers a very slow at running WordPress. Customer support can be slow at times and generally that supply you with links to help you solve your problems. Their referral plan is a little sketchy and I have lost some referrals because of their small print. My clients have then gone to having hosting fees that are too expensive. I’m switching to DigitalOcean and I wouldn’t recommend.