DreamHost hosting

My blog is hosted by the famous Los Angeles based hosting provider DreamHost due to several reasons which I will explain below.

Introduction

Choosing the right hosting provider for your website or blog is one of the most important things to do when setting up a new venture. A few years back when I was starting up doing serious websites on the Internet, I was faced with a dilemma. To choose a cheap web hosting and to have high hopes that my websites would be accessible most of the time, or to select a little bit more expensive but quality hosting which will keep my sites up and running 99.9 % of the time.

Well, this is hard to admit, but I chose the first option and in the beginning everything seemed alright. My websites were opening all of the time and I was happy for scooping such a good and cheap deal. As you could imagine, the things got shaky after a few months when my money back guarantee period was no longer valid and, of course, the sites started having all sorts of problems. The SQL server frequently crashed, the Apache server started showing configuration errors from time to time and I knew I was in trouble with the cheap hosting provider I had chosen. I looked around; red a few reviews of different hosting providers, compared their various features and finally came across DreamHost’s services. I was a little bit sceptical about the quality of their hosting, because, you know, everybody claims to be the best and once they get your credit card details and your money back guarantee period expires, that’s it, the service starts deteriorating rapidly without any prior signs. This could not happen with DreamHost though because their money back guarantee period spans 97 days, which gives you a plenty of time to test their service hastle-free. Just remember that you can use your 97 days money back guarantee only if you have paid by debit / credit card, otherwise you would not be able to claim your money back should you wish to do so.

Ok, so I decided to try them out and 5 years later, I am still a happy DreamHost customer.
I can assure you that DreamHost are one really great company and if you don’t believe me, see for yourself what are some of the advantages you could get for just $119 a year:

 

Advantages:

  • Unlimited disk storage
  • Unlimited Monthly bandwidth
  • Unlimited hosted domains
  • Free installation of a single domain worth 9.99USD
  • Free Google AdSense credit worth 75USD
  • Unlimited full Shell / SSH / FTP / SFTP users
  • Unlimited email accounts (Pop / Imap / webmail)
  • Google Aps email and hosting possible
  • One-click installer for many popular applications such as WordPress, Drupal, Moodle, Media Wiki, ETC
  • Unlimited MySQL 5 databases
  • Hosted on servers running Debian linux operating system
  • 97 days money back guarantee
  • Green web hosting provider
  • IPV6 support
  • and much, much more.

Of course DreamHost have their fair share of problems as every other hosting provider in the world does, so I will emphasise a few famous cases of hiccups that have arisen throughout my relationship with them:

 

Disadvantages:

  • Poor accessibility of their custom-made control panel. Although the panel is great in terms of features offered, its accessibility is not that great. For example, if you would like to install a new software on your domain through the one-click installer and you are using screen reading software, you would not be able to do this, because the two buttons that control the installation modes within the installer are not currently accessible after the latest changes to the panel
  • No phone support. If you are one of the few people who prefer to communicate with technical support over a conventional old-fashioned phoneline and you live outside the United States, you would be disappointed to learn that DreamHost currently offer premium phone support only for their US-based customers and the service quite frankly is too expensive I think
  • No CPanel. As you have probably already realised, DreamHost offer their own custom-made control panel with their hosting plans, so CPanel is out of the question. For most people this is not a problem, because in my opinion, DreamHost’s panel is much more intuitive and easy to use than CPanel, but if you’d prefer to use CPanel instead of custom-made solutions, DreamHost is not the right hosting provider for you.

I am scratching my head hard to come up with more negative points, but this is not an easy task and I cannot really think of something else that could be negative about DreamHost than the things I already mentioned here.

As you can see from my review, I highly recommend DreamHost for your online needs, because I really believe that they are one of the greatest hosting providers in the business and because their eponymous and world famous monthly newsletter is hard to miss.

Feel convinced? go and join the millions of happy Internet users and webmasters who use DreamHost on a daily basis and read their hard-not-to-laugh and hilarious monthly newsletter.

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