I’ve switched to DreamHost in February 2009 after getting all worked up with my previous web hosting company.

And I’m glad to say that I’m generally happy with the service from DreamHost. Yay!

Here is a list of what I like and dislike about DreamHost:

What I Like About DreamHost

Having had a bad experience with another web hosting company, these are the features on DreamHost that I like best:

1. User-Friendly & Feature-Packed Control Panel
   A control panel is like a pilot’s dashboard. It’s where you gain access to the nuts and bolts of your website, like creating of MySQL databases, setting up email accounts and installing new applications on your website. I’ve used cPanel during my one-year stint with my ex-web hoster. It is fine, but when I switched over to DreamHost, I was and still am pleasantly surprised by how easy DreamHost’s web panel really is. DreamHost uses its own version of control panel instead of cPanel, and it’s way more intuitive and easier to use than cPanel. Every step is just so straight forward, and instructions are clear, simple and in human language! Not some jargon-ridden instructions written as an afterthought by a programmer. A big plus for DreamHost!

2. Free Newsletter Mailing List Service
   Every serious business website or even blog writes its own newsletter nowadays. Newsletters are great marketing tool to keep potential and existing customers coming back to your website. To send newsletters, you need to maintain a mailing list and you’d also need to have some sort of automated processes to handle the subscribing, unsubscribing and changing of users’ email addresses. If you subscribe to a commercial email newsletter service, it’ll easily cost you at least US$19 a month, or more depending on the size of your mailing list. But at DreamHost, the newsletter mailing list service is available to you free without additional charges, and for unlimited number of subscribers! This service alone is a good enough reason for you to sign up with DreamHost, if you’re not!

3. Comprehensive & Intuitive Knowledge Base
   This feature is a God’s given! I can’t recall how many times the up-to-date and clear instructions in DreamHost Wiki have helped to answer my questions quickly without having to email DreamHost’s support staff. The wiki site is in essence DreamHost’s web hosting manual, but it also contains a whole lot of non DreamHost-specific web hosting information that are especially helpful to new website owners. No more sparse, confusing and outdated information from knowledge base, forums and guides which some web hosters have the cheek to direct new users to!

4. Unlimited Everything (Well, Almost!)
   Like other web hosting companies, you get unlimited disk space and bandwidth at DreamHost! But that’s not all. There’s also no cap on the following features:

   • Create unlimited MySQL databases. I really love this feature. The previous web hoster I’ve used only allowed me to have 2 MySQL databases. Any additional database will cost me US$1 per month! $1 a month may not seem much, but when you’ve increasingly more databases, your total costs will add up quickly.

     But you may wonder whether you really need an unlimited number of databases? You see, nowadays almost every full-blown web application that you installed on your website, like blogging or discussion board software, requires a MySQL database. Database is required to store anything from settings that you’ve customized, writings that you’ve created, to names and email addresses of fans you’ve collected.

     Say you install WordPress, a popular blogging software, and phpBB, a highly recommended discussion board. Then, you’d have used up 2 databases! And the more applications you plan to install, the more databases you’ll need. If you’re maintaining more than one site, needless to say, the number of databases you need also increases. Trust me, you don’t want to pay each time you need to install a new software!

   • Host unlimited number of domains. A domain name is basically a website address, for instance http://www.cnn.com is a domain name. Every website needs an unique website address that needs to be bought (unless it’s a sub domain that resides under a main domain such as http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/ and http://money.cnn.com). (BTW, every new DreamHost account is bundled with one free domain name registration, which otherwise costs $9.95 per year.) I find DreamHost’s ability for me to host unlimited domains great for future expansion. If you plan to create additional websites (think one website for every family member, or a website for every new line of products), then you’ll appreciate this feature. My previous web hoster only allows a maximum of 6 domains to be hosted in one account. Of course, I can host more if I’m willing to pay more. But DreamHost let me host unlimited domains out right with its basic package! Even if you don’t need this feature now, the fact that there’s no limit to the number of websites you can host already gives you a peace of mind.

   Having said that, there’s actually a caveat which you will read more below.

5. Affordable Price
   To be frank, my last web hoster charged me only US$6.95 per month, while I’m paying US$9.95 for a DreamHost account now (it’s lower if you pre-pay for a longer period). But what I get from DreamHost is way more than the additional US$3/month I pay every month — namely, less frustration and more time to work on my website. How’s that for 3 bucks?

6. Green Hosting
   Although this is not a deciding factor, the fact that DreamHost uses power-efficient computers, takes steps to reduce the use of office resources and more importantly, purchases renewable energy credits, mean that my website is carbon neutral and causes less harm to our ailing environment.

7. More Control
   If you’re a more advanced users, you’ll appreciate the level of control you’ll get at DreamHost. Previously, when my website wasn’t hosted by DreamHost, I didn’t have direct access to my domain names which means I couldn’t change the DNS and I’m at a mercy of the web hosting company that locked up my domain name and prevent it from being transferred. The experience was, needless to say, painful and messy.

   But at DreamHost, everything is under my control and I can change things without having to contact support. I can even terminate my account, change the DNS, transfer my files and have a clean break with DreamHost any time I want via the web control panel, though I don’t see that happening any time soon. (Not unless DreamHost screws up something big in the future.)

8. 97-Day Money Back Guarantee
   Before I signed up with DreamHost, I was kind of skeptical with its claims. Are there hidden costs that are not explicitly stated, I wondered. Is the service worse than what I’ve had? So it helps to know that DreamHost gives a no risk, no question asked 97-day money back guarantee (excludes domain registration fees) for every new account. Since there’s really nothing to lose, but everything to gain, I signed up right away. And I’m glad to say that one year later, I’ve renewed my web hosting plan with DreamHost!

9. Comprehensive Features
   When I sign up for a DreamHost account, I get the web hosting services and features that are comparable, if not better than those I found in other web hosting companies.

   Click here for Full DreamHost Features »

What I’m Not So Sure About DreamHost

Having sang the praises of DreamHost, I think it’s only fair to give you the other side of DreamHost. So here it goes:

1. Not Truly Unlimited Bandwidth & Harddisk Space
   Many web hosting companies, including DreamHost, say there’s no limit to the amount of bandwidth and harddisk space you can use. But, this is untrue. If you read their Terms of Service carefully, you’ll find clauses like the ones DreamHost has:

   “The customer agrees to make use of DreamHost Web Hosting servers primarily for the purpose of hosting a website, and associated email functions. Data uploaded must be primarily for this purpose.. DreamHost Web Hosting servers are not intended as a data backup or archiving service. DreamHost Web Hosting reserves the right to negotiate additional charges with the Customer and/or the discontinuation of the backups/archives at their discretion. If you exceed your allocated transfer bandwidth for a month, you will be billed at the rate of $1 per additional 10GB.”

   “Servers are shared with other customers, and as such IRC-related activities or severely CPU intensive CGI scripts (e.g. chat scripts, scripts which have bugs causing them to not close properly after being run, etc.) are not encouraged. Any application that listens for inbound network connections (even if the application would otherwise be allowed) are not permitted. BitTorrent clients, proxy servers/scripts, IRC bots and bouncers (BNC) specifically may not be run on any DreamHost Web Hosting server. If your processes are adversely affecting server performance disproportionately DreamHost Web Hosting reserves the right to negotiate additional charges with the Customer and/or the discontinuation of the offending processes.”

   These clauses allow DreamHost to raise your web hosting fee if they find that your website “exceed(s) your allocated transfer bandwidth for a month”, or “adversely affecting server performance disproportionately”. This could happen when your website becomes wildly popular with millions of visitors per month or you run a very popular web application (like chat rooms).

   On the other hand, when your website does reach the point where you’ve a massive crowd, that’s the time when you should seriously consider upgrading from a shared web hosting service to a dedicated server hosting, which DreamHost also provides. The upgrading process is usually seamless and has little impact on your existing service.

   Note that the clauses highlighted on top are not unique to DreamHost. You will find similar terms in other web hosting companies that boast unlimited bandwidth and harddisk space. This is to prevent some users from hogging bandwidth, CPU processes and harddisk space, and affecting other users’ web services. The terms are not unreasonable in my opinion, provided the web hosters do not use them to raise your fee any old how even when your website traffic is light or moderate.

   So far, my website traffic is pretty light, so I shouldn’t be seeing any increase in my web hosting fee anytime soon. And one good thing about DreamHost is that they reward loyalty bandwidths the longer you stay with them! Every week that you host with DreamHost, they’ll bump up your total bandwidth amount. That’s a nice gesture!

2. Customer Support
   Since DreamHost’s wiki and control panel did such a good job, I only have limited experience with DreamHost’s support team. So I can’t vouch for its level of support service. The two times when I contacted support, the responses came back within a day. Not too bad if you ask me. Frankly, I’m always weary about contacting helpdesk, not just that of DreamHost but any helpdesk, as I rarely have any good experience with overworked support staff. Whenever possible, I prefer to figure things out myself through the online channels provided. So, it really helps that DreamHost runs an excellent self-service wiki site and web panel.

3. Uptime
   To be frank, I do not monitor the up-time of my website. So far, I’ve only experienced one failed connection when I tried to transfer some files to my account on February 16, 2010. To date, no user has complained to me about the availability of my site too. But there could be micro-downtime that I’m not aware of since I don’t monitor actively.

   On hindsight, I should have reported the only downtime I’ve experienced to DreamHost’s support and ask for a support ticket. The ticket will entitle me to one day of free hosting for every hour of service interruption, capped to a maximum of 10% of the next prepaid hosting renewal fee. This is possible because DreamHost gives 100% uptime guarantee! Note to self: Remember to report unscheduled downtime to support for free credits!

Is DreamHost For You?

It depends very much on what your needs are really. But for the price you pay for a DreamHost shared hosting account, I think it’s very good value. And should you decide to go with Dreamhost, just click here and tell them theconsciouslife.com sent you.

Don’t worry, there is a 97-day money back guarantee, remember? If things don’t work out for you, you can cancel and get a refund within the free trial period.