DreamHost Review – Is it Worth in 2022 [Fact Check]

dreamhost review of services

DreamHost has been in the web space business for more than 20 years. It is a recommended WordPress hosting. Its shared hosting plans are affordable and reliable. My experience with unlimited plans has led to write the DreamHost review. It is easy to install WordPress on its server and create email accounts.

One of the surprising advantages I received in these 3 years was that my Adsense revenue and metrics reached top gear compared to other popular hosting services. Uptime and Tech support are 100% as promised.

The support team is able to answer the queries quickly and unrelated questions also. Month-to-month billing and yearly discounts are an additional favor for shared unlimited plans. But in recent times, the prices of the yearly renewal have gone up. The number of servers are also less. The Apache server does not give good loading times as expected.

In this DreamHost review, we are going to see the best features, pricing structure and its pros and cons.

dreamhost wordpress hosting
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Web Hosting DreamHost

One of the foremost use of hosting service is to get a server and disk space to host your sites. All plans of DreamHost provide good CPU, RAM and SSD drives for faster performance.

You can easily find DreamHost DNS records to configure for Cloudflare or any other CDN.

What you expect of a good web hosting are all available in DreamHost. There are different type of WordPress hosting plans like WordPress Basic, DreamPress and WooCommerce hosting. In addition you get managed WordPress hosting services and plans that are affordable to bloggers, beginners and starters.

The main features include – very easy to use, additional features, quick & secure and 24/7/365 chat support. You can use the SSH access to compress files in DreamHost.

dreamhost hosting plans
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DreamHost makes sure that you are protected from bots, spammers and phishing threats. They create separate user accounts for databases and WordPress sites. One site user cannot access other site files and tables. In this way, your site remains in a sandbox not accessible to any outsider.

Shared Website hosting, VPS hosting, Dedicated server hosting and Cloud hosting makes DreamHost suitable for beginners and advanced users.

Typical site owners who would like begin with a new WordPress site use shared hosting plans. As the site grows, you can take up VPS and cloud hosting services to scale up resources and cater to the traffic needs.

Dreamhost vs Bluehost

Both are recommended hosts by WordPress official team. When it comes to dashboard, Bluehost provides the traditional cPanel compared to custom control panel in DreamHost. A new panel would require further learning curve and requires some practice to know the ins and outs.

BlueHost plans required to place an order for 3 years to get the discounts and offers. In comparison, DreamHost is more cheap and affordable as it offers monthly plan. If you want test the hosting before you dive into the lengthy billing cycle, DreamHost is the best.

In security aspects, DreamHost vs BlueHost services are a tie. Both provide malware scanners and support for SSH/SFTP access. 2FA authentication to the user account and creation of users is a double-protection in DreamHost.

Customer Support and TTFB

In customer support, DreamHost doesn’t provide direct phone support, only chat. Whereas, Bluehost provides all types of methods to contact their team. They are quick in resolution. Earlier, DreamHost only used to support business hours. But in recent times, their chat and ticket support has improved a lot.

The DreamHost control panel is much easy to use than cPanel. Initially, you need to adjust to the interface. Then it becomes easy for domain and website management.

dreamhost bot support
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The TTFB (time-to-first-byte) times are not that great in shared hosting plans of both hosts. The number of backups provided by DreamHost are more compared to Bluehost. The amount of storage and bandwidth is unlimited with some of the plans of DreamHost. But in both the web hosting, the number of server locations are restricted to US and less.

Related Post :   Know DreamHost Mail Features and Benefits

I would definitely recommend DreamHost over Bluehost if you want save your face from unwanted upselling and advertisements. But Bluehost is also equal in features and reliable support.

DreamHost Review Reddit

Lot of users on Reddit gave their opinion about DreamHost web hosting. Some of them were good and some bad. Most of them are satisfied with their price and support. But they have their cons. The servers use a 2010 CPU which is old and very slow load times.

We found out how slow the servers were, extremely slow. We had a base install of two of the fastest and lightest themes installed for testing the themes. We were running the themes Astra and Kadence for testing purposes. With no extra pages installed we got poor ratings on GTmetrix and googles PageSpeed Insights among others. All had poor ratings and at best a B rating now and then. And that was with nothing added, just the base install. It got worse with anything added to the sites.

https://www.reddit.com/r/webhosting/comments/m4he8t/dreamhost_review/

Some of them liked their new control panel as it is easy to navigate. In addition the shared hosting plan has unlimited resources. You can install multiple WordPress sites with SSL certificates for free. The best part is their documentation. Another reddit user gave a positive review about their features and pricing.

Their panel is awesome, it is the best panel in the market, people dont like it because it wasnt cpanel, but its way simpler to navigate, has way more functions and works like a charm, just go to the backups, you can revert your site, you can download a backup, you can download specific files, you can revert specific files, tell me a host that gives you these much choices just for backups…

https://www.reddit.com/r/webhosting/comments/w6pfi6/opinions_on_dreamhost/

Features, Pricing and Plan details

The WordPress basic hosting come in two plans. In the shared plan type, the server is shared among many users. But due to account security, each one has secure access to his sites and databases.

dreamhost shared hosting plans
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Shared Website Hosting

They are 1. WordPress Starter 2. WordPress Unlimited. You can take monthly, yearly and 3-year pricing structure. As expected, lengthy subscription has minimal rates at $2.59/month. But if you have more number of sites, then the WordPress Unlimited plan suits. It costs $3.95/month.

In order to know their speed and support, you can test their plan for a short period. Anyhow they have a 97 day money back guarantee period, which allows you to get back your money. In some cases, you are required to pay for annual subscription to get refund. The unlimited plan will cost only around $36 for the first year.

But beware, that their billing team will raise the prices on renewal. For last year I was paying around $155 for 1 year of Shared Unlimited hosting renewal.

Another pro with DreamHost hosting is their fast SSD storage and unlimited email creation.

DreamPress Hosting

Managed WordPress hosting plans are called DreamPress in DreamHost. There are 3 types of plans. 1. DreamPress 2. DreamPress Plus 3. DreamPress Pro.

DreamPress monthly plan costs $12/month and $16.95/month for annual subscription. It best suits for 100k monthly visitors. So if you are getting around 4k to 5k visitors per day, then this plan suits.

Beginners can always take the shared hosting plan, which supports up to ~30k monthly visitors.

1-click Staging and JetPack are the free options with this plan. Some of the new features include – free automated wordpress migrations and WP website builder. Unlimited CDN is a boost to high end DreamPress plans. 30GB SSD storage comes with DreamPress managed wordpress hosting. On-demand daily backups is another advantage. 300k and 1M+ visitors are supported in higher end plans.

Related Post :   [Review] DreamPress and TTFB - Can we get good value with DreamHost's plan?
dreampress plans pricing
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When your site crashes or hacked, you can restore back to the last day version.

VPS Hosting

WordPress VPS hosting has 4 plans in DreamHost. They are 1. VPS Basic 2. VPS Business 3. VPS Professional 4. VPS Enterprise. Just like any other plan, longer the subscription lower is the monthly cost. You can get the basic plan for $10/month if you take it for 3 years. For a month it costs $15/month.

For the basic plan you get 1GB RAM. To get 4GB RAM, you have to spend $40/month.

dreamhost vps hosting plans
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Advanced Users

Dedicated Server Hosting

Dedicated server hosting gives you full access to a single machine and there is no sharing. If you prefer performance and security, then this type of hosting can help you. But it is also costly. It is $149/month for 4GB RAM and 1TB HDD. But you can also choose SSD. Ubuntu server with DDoS protection are it’s major advantages.

Cloud Hosting

Cloud computing comes at a cheap price of $4.50/month. But you need to have the technical knowledge to use the apps and services that are installed. If you are looking to develop SaaS applications, scaling and full root access, then this type of hosting helps you.

DreamHost Review - Pros and Cons in 2022
dreamhost review pro services

In this review of DreamHost, we are going to see the strengths and weaknesses of this web hosting. Installation, Security and Tech support are it’s strength. Chat agents and tickets are quick to resolve your issue. 100% uptime guarantees that your site won’t go down. It works with free CDNs like Cloudflare and the team helps configure the settings. The first year plans are affordable. But renewal prices need to come down. For shared hosting, the response times are lot slower compared to other hosts. Traditional cPanel would be much useful. Instead of Apache/Nginx, LiteSpeed server could provide an advantage. In all, I would recommend this hosting for newbies and small sites.

Product Brand: DreamHost

Product Currency: USD

Product Price: 2.59

Product In-Stock: InStock

Editor's Rating:
4.37

Pros

  • Affordable Pricing for 1st year.
  • Customer support is great.
  • Security is good enough.

Cons

  • Renewals are costly.
  • Speed is low on Performance Tests.
  • File Manager is slow.

Speed Test Results DreamHost

One of the main reasons WordPress users look for a good hosting is their speed. No visitor likes to have a slow loading page. It makes a difference to the user experience. It will result in loss of conversions, income and bounce rate.

Since we used the Shared Unlimited plan on DreamHost for 3 years, we tested a site for its speed. We used 3 testing tools – 1. PageSpeed Insights 2. GTMetrix and 3. WebPageTest. We tested them on both mobile and desktop. WebPageTest provides clear graph of loading of resources and where you are likely to see improvement.

In all the 3 tests, we see that TTFB times are very slow. It takes more than 1 to 1.5s for the initial page to respond. Normally the industry average is less than 500 to 600ms. This makes DreamHost slower and less effective than other web hosting services.

GTMetrix Waterfall chart

slow website response dreamhost
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The WebPageTest can be used to test the site using emulated mobile, browser and from different locations. In that case also, it was showing slow performance metrics. Though the pages tested were having few images, the server should be capable to take that load. In addition, plugins and themes could cause slow speed. But I tested several websites and pages. All of them were showing poor results.

WebPageTest Speed Results

dreamhost review speed test
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speed test dreamhost reviews 2022
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Slow WordPress Dashboard

Another disadvantage with DreamHost is slow wordpress panel . Initially I thought that my ISP was very slow. But when I changed to LiteSpeed server, the dashboard was quick and phenomenal.

Related Post :   DreamHost File Manager - Is it Useful Enough?

As a WordPress admin, you do lot of operations like editing, copying, inserting images, videos, shortcodes and many others. All of them require you to move from one screen to another. But this process takes lot of time on shared hosting plan. But DreamPress plan have quick TTFB times, as mentioned in this review.

Another disadvantage with DreamHost basic plans is their file manager and control panel. You need to create different user accounts to add a domain and install WordPress. In any case, you forget the user account password, resetting may take some time. Also, the file manager takes lot of time uploading files. You cannot zip a folder or set of files on the server.

A typical video presentation of DreamHost Review of latest features in 2022

DreamHost Reviews TrustPilot

There are 3336 reviews on TrustPilot about DreamHost review. It has an excellent rating of 4.7. Out of these 85% are best ratings for this web hosting services. Even if you have a problem with WordPress install, you can raise a ticket and the support team is good enough to figure it out. An HTML coder working with DreamHost for 10 years suggests to dump GoDaddy and go for this hosting.

Site migration was a breeze with trio of customer team helping to solve the issues. Alex is a good technical expert who does the backend job quickly and saves you lot of time. The annual fee is low as compared to other hosting services.

DreamHost Email Reviews

One of the best web hosting to create email accounts with ease. Initially 250MB space is allocated by default. It can be increased to unlimited disk space. In addition you have third-party email clients integrated into the custom panel to check your email. You can also redirect your email to standard email accounts like Gmail, Yahoo etc.

The custom control panel provides way to delete and change passwords when required. The DreamHost SMTP settings are provided with clear instructions to use with email clients like Outlook, Thunderbird etc. The POP/SMTP servers are mentioned along with the port numbers. The DreamHost email settings provide server information which is simple and easy to remember.

The email clients inside the DreamHost panel are also quick. You can easily create and send an email within seconds.

DreamHost Review on Profit

I purchased the DreamHost shared hosting plan in Aug, 2019. For the next 2 years, I have seen good CPC and RPM in Adsense revenue. Also, the organic traffic has gained momentum. I have used several themes like GeneratePress and Thesis framework during these years. I could see that my CPC for US reached top price of $0.7 to $1.

Before that, I was getting less than $0.2. Also, the RPM stood still between $15 to $20 for 2 years. Though the traffic decreased due to algorithm updates, the RPM was stable till Nov. 2021.

After that, the revenue and traffic plummeted. I don’t understand this anomaly of increase in revenue and sudden fall. But this is an interesting observation with Shared Unlimited hosting from 2019 to 2021.

DreamHost Pro Services

It is another peacock feature in DreamHost web hosting. Most of the companies only provide server and resources. But, DreamHost has come up with customized paid solutions for WordPress beginners and advanced users. You can request for design, marketing, website management and custom web development services for affordable prices.

In addition, you can get featured services like the following.

  1. Custom Web Design
  2. SEO Marketing
  3. Social Media Marketing

The pro services are done by experts in their fields. Also, you can have hosting, development and optimization at the same place.

DreamHost Review – Is it Worth in 2022 [Fact Check]
DreamHost Review – Is it Worth in 2022 [Fact Check]

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