DreamHost Review

Detailed DreamHost Review

---

This hosting service has recieved

---

DreamHost

The company has its main headquarters in Los Angeles, California. DreamHost is basically a web hosting service provider and domain name registrar (much like iPage). In 1997, four California Computer Science undergraduates pooled their resources together and founded DreamHost, which now employs a full-time staff of 50 and is hosting more than 500 domains. The company maintains some impressive hardware at its data center that comprises hundreds of multiple-CPU servers operating on Debian Linux. The data center is equipped with a UPS System consisting of back-up generators and multiple redundant gigabit Internet connections. In this DreamHost review I am going to show you why I don't recommend you do business with them.

DreamHost Features

DreamHost features a shared and dedicated hosting network and is compatible with Debian Linux operating system, which in itself can already be a deciding factor for potential customers who’d rather have Microsoft than UNIX. DreamHost generally offers much the same features as other web hosting providers do, among them the easy-to-use interface and affordable price packaging.

Unlike other web hosting providers that use cPanel, the control panel that DreamHost provides is a custom-written admin panel, which is kind of a culture shock for users coming from other providers. The one drawback that customers find inconvenient is that this does not allow the user-friendly page creation utility that you may be more familiar with. You have to design your own website locally on your computer and then upload all pertinent files to your DreamHost web space. Kind of round-about way and quite inconvenient, don’t you think?

While DreamHost promises unlimited MySQL databases, the thing is they have some issues there. They don’t have ample backup storage for files and transactions, plus their system continues to fail, making the network database unnecessarily more vulnerable. Proof of this is when you get the message that the database is “unavailable”; the common response of the technical support for this being: there was a database connection lockout.

The other upsetting thing is that they also have email problems, where email functions just totally stop working and you can’t send or receive anything at all. This has been a perennial problem among many clients. Their response when this problem was reported by several customers: Intermittent problems with SMTP servers.

Uptime

DreamHost used to have a reputation for being a reliable hosting provider (much like Omnis Network), but all that has changed recently. The DreamHost data center seemed to encounter enormous issues which resulted in the entire network being down and offline for long periods. Customers all over were complaining of unusually frequent – almost constant – server downtime. In addition, the company’s connection is turtle-slow when it’s up, taking its time loading and processing transactions. Any host may experience slow connections and downtimes but if it becomes chronic, then it is a problem. There may be times when this is all due to maintenance work; still, whether planned or planned, reasonable or unreasonable, an outage is an outage and downtimes can render your website MIA in the Internet world – now that is extremely frustrating for customers!

Customer Support

DreamHost management and staff pride themselves on applying a more personal approach when dealing with their customers and to a certain extent, this is quite true. DreamHost is among the web hosting providers which maintain customer forum where clients can share information as well as make suggestions to the company. However, only positive feedback and comments are retained on the forum site and more often than not any negative comment is completely deleted. There customer support doesn't even remotely compair to Hostgator.

The DreamHost technical support staff is not as technically knowledgeable or savvy enough as they claim; they don’t really provide straightforward solutions or timely technical support. Sometimes, they even give suggestions or advice that only worsen the situation. Most customers’ verdict is inclined to say that the support team is incapable and incompetent of carrying out the task they’re supposed to be good at.

Funny thing, but DreamHost doesn’t provide telephone support for cheap plans. You either have to get the more expensive plans to avail of the built-in telephone customer support or you pay additional to obtain this kind of service. Where's the fairness in that?

And the one thing that upsets most of the customers is their money-back guarantee offer, which is one of the most misleading offers anybody has ever seen. Don’t get too excited about it. Carefully read the fine prints further and don’t be surprised to discover that this guarantee is only good for credit card payments. Swell!

Bottom Line

With the DreamHost’s glaring and apparent negative features, who would want to recommend such a web hosting service provider. If your website is 99.99% down instead of the expected 99.99% uptime, it’s almost like not being online at all. It’s bad for business. To aggravate matters, technical support is near to nothing. DreamHost just doesn’t know what excellent quality and efficient web hosting service is. If you don’t want to compound your disappointments and frustrations many times over, don’t get tempted with empty promises. Don’t turn your Dream(Host) into a nightmare; find a web host that can absolutely serve you better. I would highly recommend you read my FatCow or BlueHost review if you are looking for a good hosting service. Still not convinced that Dreamhost is a horrible web hosting service. Check out all these complaints on Dreamhost web hosting.

                

Please, Rate DreamHost

Click either good or bad

---

DreamHost Rating

Recommended | NOT Recommended

DreamHost Consumer Reviews