Founded in 1996, DreamHost are one of the most well-established independently owned hosting companies in business today. They offer a wide range of packages for all types of websites, including some affordable and feature-packed WordPress focused plans.
In this review, we focus on those plans aimed at WordPress users, including their lower-priced shared hosting packages and their premium managed WordPress hosting plans, to help you to find the right option for your website.
As well as looking at the features you get access to when hosting your website with DreamHost, we also explain the different ways those features are implemented on the various plans — and compare the performance of the shared plans with the DreamHost DreamPress managed WordPress hosting plans, so you can see which one is the most suitable choice for your project.
By using paid services such as Pingdom and Load Impact, this review doesn’t just rehash the DreamHost marketing content. Instead, you can use our data and experience of hosting websites with DreamHost to make an informed decision on whether you should host your website with this company or not, and, if so, which plan is best.
Overview of the DreamHost Hosting Plans
As mentioned, DreamHost offer basic entry-level shared hosting, as well as more specialized WordPress managed hosting, i.e. DreamPress. They also offer high-end virtual private server (VPS) and dedicated server hosting.
For those who want to host applications online, there are cloud computing and object storage hosting plans available, too (official pricing page).
However, below, we’ll be focusing on the entry-level shared hosting and premium DreamPress managed hosting plans that are both suitable for WordPress users.
To give you an idea of what’s available from DreamHost, here’s a quick overview of these different plans before we explore their best features in more depth (and also mention a few potential drawbacks).
DreamHost Shared Hosting
First up, we have the shared hosting plans that represent the cheapest way to host your website with DreamHost:
- Shared Starter: From $2.59 a month to host one website with 50 GB of SSD storage.
- Shared Unlimited: From $5.95 a month to host unlimited websites with unlimited SSD storage.
These prices may look very competitive, but you’ll have to pay for three years of hosting upfront to get access to them. Paying for one year upfront sees the monthly equivalent fee increase to $3.95 for the Starter plan and $6.95 for the Unlimited plan, while choosing to pay monthly will cost you $4.95 and $10.95, respectively. If you’re creating a website for a non-profit organization, it’s worth seeing if you qualify for the relevant DreamHost discount.
