Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Web Hosting : DreamHost

[FireFox]

I've had some positive and negative thoughts about many hosts in the past, but I've got a bit to say about DreamHost right now.

Last year I was working on some projects and used DreamHost to temporarily host the projects because of its price and the space and bandwidth they were offering. Of course they were overselling, but that wasn't a problem as I wasn't likely to be using all of the space and bandwidth anyways.

The server I was on was relatively fast, though it did have some hiccups here and there where I wasn't able to connect to the server or the site was going slow, but this was usually corrected very quickly.

As for their customer service, I must say it's quite amazing. My account expired on January 15 of this year and my account had still been active with them until today. When I was sent an email that my account had been suspended because I had not renewed I was a bit worried as I, being the bad programmer, hadn't backed up my most recent work or the database. I contacted support asking if I could get my files and the database and sure enough, with a very fast response time, my account was reenabled and I was able to get everything copied.

I'll most likely be renewing my account with DreamHost in the near future to run my projects and dev coding with them. Definitely recommended.

[Lastbutnotleast]

Now = https://panel.dreamhost.com/index.cgi

(trying to connect to manage domains)

Originally Posted by [URL

https://panel.dreamhost.com/index.cgi[/URL]]

Software error:
Can't call method "quote" on unblessed reference at /usr/local/lib/site_perl/Ndn/Common/Db.pm line 703.For help, please send mail to the webmaster (support@dreamhost.com), giving this error message and the time and date of the error.

Great indeed !

[Lastbutnotleast]

And of course my websites are down !

I do have a network of 200 domains/sub domains hosted there

I used to like DREAMHOST and now I HATE THEM

[blacktulip]

they've had too much down time recently. It's OK for playing around but absolutely not good for serious uses

[Lastbutnotleast]

Yep

I do have sooo many work to move many of my sites to another hosting company



And the major issue are the sites based on scripts and databases like Wordpress blogs



DREAMHOST : definitely NOT recommended

[FireFox]

Nonono, not recommended for running something you really want to use. As I said it was just for working on some projects of mine now and then. If that's what you're using it for then it's nice and cheap. Otherwise don't use it.

Actually, it was interesting because it went down while I was in the middle of writing the post.

Again, if it's just to play around with some of your projects, it's nice and cheap. For a site you need to stay up, don't bother.

[ldcdc]

My account expired on January 15 of this year and my account had still been active with them until today. When I was sent an email that my account had been suspended because I had not renewed I was a bit worried as I, being the bad programmer, hadn't backed up my most recent work or the database. I contacted support asking if I could get my files and the database and sure enough, with a very fast response time, my account was reenabled and I was able to get everything copied.

Given the circumstances, I must say that was pretty nice of them. You were pretty lucky, as there are plenty of providers that wouldn't do the same.

Again, if it's just to play around with some of your projects, it's nice and cheap. For a site you need to stay up, don't bother.

Well, from your first post I would have thought you were downright recommending them, so the further explanation is definitely welcome.

[cagilaba]

I have been with Dreamhost for a couple of years and after a very bad couple of months (billing fiascos, unscheduled downtime, etc.) I am finally thinking of moving. I have signed up with Hostgator to try them out. My very brief testing seems to show quick load times on my Drupal site.

However, coming from Dreamhost, Hostgator seems really restrictive. Their SSH environment is very limiting; there are lots of things you can't do and you have to specifically ask them to activate commands like wget. Furthermore, I really dislike cPanel. Dreamhost is, by comparison, a "dream." I find their control panel attractive and functional. I like the fact that you can create real MySQL hostnames (instead of using localhost). And domains are managed much more cleanly than cPanel's infuriatingly clunky "add-on domains" feature. And the Dreamhost command line is a pleasure to use. By comparison, Hostgator is toy-like.

The problem is Dreamhost's reliability (or lack thereof). Just today all the central services went down, and even the Dreamhost status blog wasn't working. Furthermore, MySQL is often slow.

Does anyone have recommendations for hosts that are comparable to Dreamhost in features and price (even a bit more expensive would be OK), but are actually reliable and perform well? And preferably with a custom control panel (in any case, not cPanel). So far I haven't come across any that seem credible. There are thousands of web hosts out there and it's really difficult to tell which are fly-by-night operations and which are serious contenders.

[DWebby]

My friend used them for a simple wordpress blog, and I can tell you from first hand experience when viewing his site, it was dead slow. Even off-peak times! The mysql over their is deadly slow.

[johnder]

Question -- how/why does Dream Host offer such ridiculously generous plans when they can't keep your sites up and running?

[mattdunn]

I've had great luck with Dreamhost.

[FireFox]

Overselling is why they can offer that, johnder, but their network connectivity is a separate issue from that.

[Orien]

For non-mission critical websites, DreamHost is a steal for what they provide.

[FireFox]

Originally Posted by Orien

For non-mission critical websites, DreamHost is a steal for what they provide.

Exactly. I wasn't running anything I needed to have up at the time, otherwise I would've gone with a dedicated server, but this worked out perfectly. And with their coupons it was <$20 for 1 year, plus a domain.

[mounty]

The dreamhost package is very good, but my sites have been inaccessible since the weekend which is rather unhelpful