Dreamhost Review

Dreamhost Website
Rating: 8/10

In this review of Dreamhost, you’ll be able to find out the reason why I switched over to Dreamhost, and all of the little things that I’ve found so far.

Since I market in a wide array of niches, each of my niches have their own domains. In the past, the problem I had was getting reliable and affordable hosting. Although the price of web hosting has gone down in the recent years, initially finding the right host was pretty difficult.

Who could you trust? I went to various forums to get advice. The problem that I ran into was that many of them were advertisers instead of unbiased opinions.

So then I searched more in Google. I ran into a blog that had a Google PR of 7. I thought to myself, if this guy is getting much traffic to his blog, I have to find out what host he’s using.

I found out he was using Dreamhost. I’ve never heard of it before. I searched the web and related forums to find out more about it.

Here’s some of the things I liked about Dreamhost:

  • I could host as many domains as I wanted
  • I don’t have to bother and wait for my host administrator (which wasn’t me) to set up my domain
  • I didn’t have to worry so much about bandwidth issues
  • I could have a huge amount of email accounts
  • Hosted software was easy to install
  • I could setup multiple MySQL database
  • I would have less compatibility problems
  • Free automatic responder
  • The price was affordable

While there were plenty of other features, that was enough for me.

Unlimited Domains
It’s great to have the ability to setup domains. While it might seem great having other people do the task for you, I realized it wasn’t good as it seemed. My previous web host did all the configuration for me. What I didn’t like about this is the time it took to do it. There was also a lot of miscommunication through email. Although my previous company was great for a small handful of domains and for ASP hosting, I don’t recommend them for serious niche marketers.

Huge Bandwidth
Dreamhost starts you up with 1 terabyte of bandwidth each month. The plan I have increases 8 gigabytes each week. So this builds up some loyalty with the company. The longer I’m hosted with them, the more bandwidth I get.

A Huge Number of Email Accounts
Right now, I can set up 3000 accounts. My previous host allowed me only 2 email accounts per a domain. Since I have people working for me, it’s great to them personalized email accounts too. I could access email through POP3, IMAP, or through their web interface.

Easy Software Installation
Many cPanel hosts have something called Fantastico. It a collection of various softwares with automated installation. Dreamhost doesn’t have this…but they have their own 1-click installation software. Whether you want to install Wordpress, Joomla, or a lot of other web software, they provided a way to easily do it.

Unlimited MySQL Databases
If you’re planning to make several websites, having separate databases to store your data is a great feature. Dreamhost takes it even further by providing unlimited databases. Although this is great, there is one big issue I ran into - the databases can be slow at times.

I’m currently using Wordpress as a content management system (CMS) on several of my sites. To get past the slowness of my databases, I use a plugin called WP-Cache. It has a variety of options to cache my pages and improve performance. So now, the performance is almost as good as having a static site.

Less Compatibility Problems
With my previous hosting company, I ran into compatibility issues since my sites were set up in Windows IIS. I found out that I couldn’t make search engine friendly URL’s since the host didn’t support mod rewrite. I later found out that I could request a UNIX hosted account (which wasn’t publicly advertised).

With Dreamhost, I now have search engine friendly URL’s. If you’re not familiar with these, they allow the search engines to easily index your pages. Since the host is UNIX based, there are more applications that are compatible with Dreamhost.

There is one compatibility issue I have run across - handling remote files with PHP. This is more of an advanced issue. If you’re writing or using PHP code that utilizes allow_url_fopen, you’ll will be running into problems. Dreamhost (and many other hosts), have disabled this for security purposes. They have provided an alternative using CURL.

Free Automatic Responder
In marketing, one of the most effective marketing strategies is email marketing. Even with all of the SPAM out their, email marketing is still highly effective. Dreamhost offers a free automatic responder (AKA autoresponder). This will allow you to build your own mailing list (via an opt-in form), and broadcast messages to it. Dreamhost calls this an announcement list. The only drawback of their system is that it is not a sequential autoresponder. So it doesn’t allow you to preload a bunch of scheduled messages.

Affordable Web Site Hosting Package
I first purchased my package at $7.95 a month. After comparing all of the packages out there, I’m sure you’ll see that this is truly a bargain. There are many web site hosting packages that offer only 1 hosted domain at a similar price (with less features).

Even though I’m currently using Dreamhost and highly recommend it, I suggest that you consider your needs. If you need a super fast dynamic host, this host is probably not for you. The way I see it, if you’re looking for the perfect package, you’re probably never going to find it. If you need a super fast and reliable system, you might want to take a look at a dedicated server (which Dreamhost also offers).

Learn more about Dreamhost.