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  1. #1

    A Bad DreamHost Experience

    After just 43 days of hosting with DreamHost, my experience was bad enough to leave. I know plenty of people are just fine with DH, but I just wanted to tell my story. I run a PHP/MySQL chat program for a football recruiting message board. Traffic can get extreme every once in awhile, but nothing too ridiculous. In any event, the first week or two with DH weren't too bad at all. The control panel was a little awkward (I prefer cPanel) but I got used to it. Soon however, the site was only intermittently available, and when it was, it was EXTREMELY slow, even when no one was logged into the chat app. I began getting complaints from other users, which were not fun to answer. I checked the DH blog and saw several status updates about upgrades/maintenance that were taking "longer than expected". I felt like DH should have warned us about planned maintenance that may have effected the availability of customer sites. I was willing to forgive this. However, once my site went back online, things were fine again for another few days until the slowness returned with a vengeance, making the site grind to an almost unusable halt. The problem persisted and I emailed support. They informed me they were doing other sorts of maintenance on the filer and my entire cluster was affected with the slowness. Again, users were not informed about this significant downtime. I decided that was an unacceptable amount of downtime for a high-end host. 3-4 days of complete unavailability followed by several more days of slowness in just a 43 day period were not acceptable to me. I cancelled my account and have currently re-hosted with HostGator. On the plus side, DreamHost's support was very fast and quite courteous

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Apr 2006
    Posts
    562
    Quote Originally Posted by lindec View Post
    I decided that was an unacceptable amount of downtime for a high-end host.
    high-end. adjective. being the most expensive and technically sophisticated.

    Sorry, but at the price you're paying, DreamHost (and HostGator) are not high-end, not even by a long shot.

  3. #3
    Actually, if you want to make a spectrum of web hosting services, I'd consider DH and HG to be high-end compared to bargain basement hosting services and other types you might find along the lines of Yahoo. It's obviously not Akamai or a dedicated, but the point of the post was not to discuss semantics on what constitutes "high-end". In fact, that's a minor detail and it's not even that important to the overall post. For ANY host, low-end or "high" that should not be an acceptable amount of downtime. A thoroughly uninsightful, unhelpful, dick post on your part. Well done.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Jun 2007
    Posts
    1,238
    Dreamhost has the slowest MySQL ever, don't go with them. Glad you made the switch.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Jun 2005
    Location
    New Jersey
    Posts
    219
    Fixago beat me to the punch. In no way shape or form is dream host a "high-end" hosting provider.
    Plutomic Hosting
    Empowering Your Web Ventures
    In Business Since 2005
    Specializing in Web Hosting, VPS, Managed Dedicated Servers and Managed Colocation

  6. #6
    dreamhost seems to be currently down

    All my sites hosted by dreamhost are currently down anyway

    Again and again and again


  7. #7
    Join Date
    Jul 2005
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    here, there, where?
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    4,101
    Quote Originally Posted by Lastbutnotleast View Post
    dreamhost seems to be currently down
    Indeed it is. Looks like a network issue. So much for being "high-end". (That was a joke, even real high end hosts have network issues.)
    -Steven | Cooini, LLC
    "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it" -Aristotle

  8. #8
    Great joke steven


  9. #9
    Join Date
    Dec 2006
    Posts
    35
    Quote Originally Posted by Lastbutnotleast View Post
    dreamhost seems to be currently down

    All my sites hosted by dreamhost are currently down anyway

    Again and again and again

    Yeah, I was going to mention the downtime of the Dreamhost servers, since even the main site, dreamhost.com is down, but they do have a website with attention to that matter: http://www.dreamhoststatus.com/

  10. #10
    Thanks for the information Tinkleondabeach

  11. #11
    Join Date
    Jul 2005
    Location
    here, there, where?
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    4,101
    Quote Originally Posted by Tinkleondabeach View Post
    Yeah, I was going to mention the downtime of the Dreamhost servers, since even the main site, dreamhost.com is down, but they do have a website with attention to that matter: http://www.dreamhoststatus.com/
    I was looking for that page. What a big move they are doing. I feel for them and all the hate emails they'll likely get from customers that don't look at that status page.
    -Steven | Cooini, LLC
    "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it" -Aristotle

  12. #12
    I do believe they are used to face such a situation as they are in business for some years

    No big deal I guess

  13. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by lindec View Post
    After just 43 days of hosting with DreamHost, my experience was bad enough to leave. I know plenty of people are just fine with DH, but I just wanted to tell my story. I run a PHP/MySQL chat program for a football recruiting message board. Traffic can get extreme every once in awhile, but nothing too ridiculous.
    Do you know exactly how much this "extreme traffic" which you call "nothing too ridiculous" is? Having more exact figures will help you when doing q&a in order to find out what is wrong. (and also in this case, make it possible for you to get yourself a new hosting provider fit to your needs)

    And no, database driven sites isn't Dreamhost's strong side...

  14. #14
    Join Date
    Apr 2006
    Posts
    562
    Quote Originally Posted by lindec View Post
    Actually, if you want to make a spectrum of web hosting services, I'd consider DH and HG to be high-end compared to bargain basement hosting services and other types you might find along the lines of Yahoo.
    You're kidding right? I mean, you have to be. Because that's the biggest load of bull I've ever heard. DH and HG are bottom of the barrel. They're right there with GoDaddy and Yahoo.

    Perhaps you missed the highlighted parts of the description I provided. They are neither (a) expensive nor (b) technologically advanced. They both provide shared hosting for the masses. I spend more money on cigarettes than I would hosting with them. Hell, a bottle of Jack costs more than I would spend on them for a month of hosting. I couldn't even buy a Filet-O-Fish at McDonald's for what they charge.

    I really don't know what to say if you consider them the higher end of the spectrum compared to "bargain basement" hosting services. Seriously. You're killing me here.

  15. #15
    Dont fault lindec. His just misinformed.
    << Please see the Rules page. >>

  16. #16
    Dreamhost is doing a great job in their market-segment though.

  17. #17
    Today, a nice 10/15 hours downtime ...

    http://www.dreamhoststatus.com

    Very good for our businesses indeed



    WE CAN'T ACCEPT THIS
    Last edited by Lastbutnotleast; 03-22-2008 at 10:56 AM.

  18. #18
    Join Date
    Dec 2001
    Posts
    380
    DreamHost used to be a good host. In the earlier age, they were developer-friendly hosting provider.
    My memory stopped at the moment http://web.archive.org/web/200201181...dreamhost.com/

    From 2003/2004, they joined the over-selling game of hosting business. I'm sorry to see lots of company changed in this way when they had to find some ways to expand and grow.

  19. #19

    Dreamhost vs. Brinkster, A2Hosting

    Quote Originally Posted by Henrik View Post
    Dreamhost is doing a great job in their market-segment though.
    How do they stack up against Brinkster and A2Hosting? I'm looking for a budget host for a handful of author sites -- basically just book information plus wordpress blog.

    /Bruno

  20. #20
    Join Date
    Apr 2003
    Location
    USA
    Posts
    40
    I must have been having to much R&R this weekend... didn't notice the outage. Hmmm... I'll keep it in mind though if the State of Texas comes to ask me to host their website...

  21. #21
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Posts
    96
    Quote Originally Posted by NelsonT View Post
    DreamHost used to be a good host. In the earlier age, they were developer-friendly hosting provider.
    My memory stopped at the moment http://web.archive.org/web/200201181...dreamhost.com/
    Woah...I clicked on that link and it was a like a time machine.

    How old was that site, and how come the links still work?

  22. #22
    ...Rant ON

    I'm always befuddled when I read comments that try to tie price to performance.

    In "most" cases this is absolutely true - you get what you pay for. However; there are hosts that provide inexpensive hosting that are high performance. They simply do it in volume.

    Keep everything in perspective and don't generalize - you may find yourself paying too much for the same hosting that could have cost much less elsewhere.

    Being human, haven't we all had experieinces where someone said something was true only to find out later in life that the initial comment was based on a generalization and not true for the entire universe of like-typed issues? (rhetorical question)

    Well at any rate, buyer beware but don't buyer be blemished by generalizations.

    I had a terrible issue with HostMonster - another well known host only to find out that they are not so willing to listen to reason or proof and would rather make generalizations of their own.

    It's everywhere, buyer and seller alike.

    ...Rant OFF
    Peter Marek
    https://www.UltraQuantix.com
    Fast - Reliable - Affordable - Shared Hosting - VPS - Website & Server Monitoring
    Web Hosting Done Right !

  23. #23
    Join Date
    Oct 2002
    Location
    EU - east side
    Posts
    21,920
    Quote Originally Posted by Sampdoria View Post
    Woah...I clicked on that link and it was a like a time machine.

    How old was that site, and how come the links still work?
    That's an archive from back in 2002. Funnily enough, the service that makes it available is actually called WaybackMachine: http://www.archive.org/web/web.php

  24. #24
    Quote Originally Posted by bnavasky View Post
    How do they stack up against Brinkster and A2Hosting? I'm looking for a budget host for a handful of author sites -- basically just book information plus wordpress blog.

    /Bruno
    I haven't tried the other two, but as I have other hosting accounts I am not having any wordpress blogs on Dreamhost any longer.

    There has also been issues getting wp-cache to work on Dreamhost.. unfortunately.


    EDIT: But what I want to say is that Dreamhost offers great value for the money, depending on what you are out after.

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