You may not have heard much about Dreamhost. Yet, Dreamhost hosts over 1.5 million websites, blogs, and applications. And over 750k WordPress installations.
DreamHost has been providing web hosting since it was founded in 1997. It’s one of the best shared web hosting solutions on the market, with a fast loading speed and great uptime at a low price.
In this Dreamhost review, we will cover everything you need to know about the Dreamhost web hosting service to help you know more about it and make the right decision for web hosting.
What Makes DreamHost Stand Out?
There are many things that DreamHost is good at that make it stand out, and here are some of them:
- DreamHost offers one of the fastest and most reliable shared hosting services.
- Super easy to use and clean interface, and handy customer support.
- Many features and integrations, and web hosting at a low price.
- Monthly billing on every web hosting plan. You can get hosting without committing to a yearly payment.
Who is DreamHost Best For?
We have a good experience with Dreamhost, we host many websites with them, big ones and small ones. All their web hosting solutions are good, but we recommend their shared and WordPress hosting the most. So, DreamHost is best for:
- Brand new and portfolio websites.
- For those who are on a budget and can’t afford to pay much money from the beginning.
- Small to medium-sized blog websites are looking for reliable web hosting.
- Small to medium businesses.
You can always start small and scale up your website performance and resources while you gain more authority and traffic.
Nevertheless, larger business websites could find a good partner with DreamHost’s VPS web hosting services too. But, if your website is a really big business with a lot of traffic, we would recommend Cloud hosting provider such as Cloudways.
Pros and Cons
DreamHost Pros:
DreamHost has gained a lot of trusts because users are satisfied with their services after they sign up because of what they deliver.
- Multi-year, yearly & monthly plans: Unlike many web hosting providers, DreamHost offers monthly billing on every web hosting plan, so you can pay month by month. The best prices still come with longer terms.
- 24/7/365 customer support: Live chat and email (ticket) support around the clock, both from the DreamHost panel.
- Unmetered bandwidth: Bandwidth is unmetered. The Launch plan is sized for about 40k monthly visits, but DreamHost says that’s a guide, not a hard cap.
- 1-click WordPress install: The one-click installation feature in Dreamhost allows you to quickly set up new WordPress installations in the DreamHost panel with minimal input.
- Free services: DreamHost gives you a free domain for the first year on yearly or multi-year web hosting plans, free domain privacy, and a free SSL certificate.
- Free WordPress migration plugin: DreamHost has a free plugin that moves your WordPress site over yourself. If you’d rather have their team do it, the paid migration service starts at $99 per site.
- Automated daily backups: DreamHost automatically creates a daily backup of your site, and you can also create additional manual backups once per day.
DreamHost Cons:
- Only four data center locations: The closer your website hosting server is to your clients and visitors, the better the load speed and performance. DreamHost used to be US-only. It now runs data centers in Ashburn (Virginia), Hillsboro (Oregon), Amsterdam (added in 2025) and Singapore, which is still a short list next to bigger rivals.
- Phone call support at extra cost: DreamHost has no call-in phone number. On most plans you pay for callbacks: $9.95 for a one-time callback or $14.95/month for three callbacks a month. Only dedicated servers and the DreamPress Plus and Pro plans include free callbacks.
Plans and Pricing
Dreamhost provides many types of web hosting plans to host your websites. Depending on your budget and the type of website, you will have to choose the right hosting plan.
It offers shared hosting, WordPress hosting, DreamPress hosting, Cloud hosting, as well as VPS and dedicated servers.
Shared hosting overview:
DreamHost’s shared hosting now comes in three plans. The Web Hosting Launch plan starts at $2.89 per month for the first year on a 1-year term and renews at $10.99 per month. It hosts up to 25 websites with 25GB of NVMe SSD storage.
Next up is Web Hosting Growth, which starts at $3.99 per month for the first year and renews at $12.99 per month, with 50 websites and 50GB of storage. The top Web Hosting Scale plan starts at $9.99 per month (renews at $25.99) and gives you 100 websites and 100GB. The old Shared Starter and Shared Unlimited plans have been retired. Here’s the current lineup.
Launch and Growth plans comparison:
| Comparison | Launch | Growth |
|---|---|---|
| Websites | 25 | 50 |
| Free Domain | Yes (1st year, yearly or multi-year plans) | Yes (1st year, yearly or multi-year plans) |
| Free domain privacy | Yes | Yes |
| Bandwidth | Unmetered | Unmetered |
| Storage type | NVMe SSD | NVMe SSD |
| Storage space | 25GB | 50GB |
| Business emails | 3-month free trial, then paid | 3-month free trial, then paid |
| Email and chat support | Yes | Yes |
| Phone call support | Paid callbacks | Paid callbacks |
| Free SSL | Included | Included |
| Daily backups | Yes | Yes |
| Free site migration | Free plugin (DIY) | Free plugin (DIY) |
| Monthly billing | Available | Available |
| First-year price (1-year term) | $2.89 a month | $3.99 a month |
| Renews at | $10.99 a month | $12.99 a month |
Performance
The performance of any web hosting provider should be a very important indicator for you when you decide to sign up for web hosting. It is what makes or breaks websites in Google and in users’ eyes.
Search engines love the website that provides the best experience for their visitors, fast web page loading, an optimized website, great uptime, and more. So keep an eye on your website performance all the time.
Read What to Look For in a Web Hosting Service?
Uptime:
Website uptime is vital for your website experience. If your site goes down, clients and customers will be unable to find you or access your products or services.
As an online business, you do not want to lose your website visitors and then revenue because of website downtime.
Consider this: when Amazon’s site went down for about an hour on Prime Day in July 2018, one estimate put the lost sales at up to $99 million.
DreamHost guarantees 100% uptime. If it ever falls short, you get one day of hosting credit for each hour (or part of an hour) of downtime, capped at 10% of your next renewal fee.
With that being said, in our earlier tests DreamHost’s actual uptime was 99.98%, which is impressive for shared web hosting.
Loading Speed:
Google recommends that the main content of a page loads within 2.5 seconds (the Largest Contentful Paint target in Core Web Vitals), and it says good Core Web Vitals line up with what its ranking systems reward. So your website speed matters.
Of course, optimizing a website can affect your loading speed, such as optimizing images, fonts, plugins, and themes. But the web hosting that hosts the website plays the main role.
We put DreamHost to the test in our earlier reviews, and it showed solid website speed every time. Compared to other shared web hosting, its speed was exceptional.
DreamHost Alternatives
Dreamhost is one of the best shared hosting providers out there, but if you are not fond of it, there are alternatives to DreamHost which is also considered as one of the best.
- Hostinger: The best alternative shared hosting for DreamHost. It provides similar features at a lower price.
- Hosting.com (formerly A2 Hosting): Fast NVMe web hosting with daily off-server backups. Prices start at $1.99/month on a 4-year term (renews at $13.99/month). Read our Hosting.com (A2 Hosting) review.
- Cloudways: Fast and reliable managed cloud hosting provider. Its Flexible plans start at $11/month and let you host unlimited websites. Read Cloudways review.
Conclusion
If you plan to make a website and host it on a shared hosting provider, Dreamhost is one of the best choices you should consider.
It is well known for its reliable services and excellent uptime, with over 1.5 million websites hosted on its platform. Still deciding? See how it stacks up in our Bluehost vs DreamHost comparison, or follow our guide to creating a WordPress website on DreamHost.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need an active hosting plan to host email at DreamHost?
No, DreamHost offers paid email-only hosting plans. You can also have your domain name registered at Dreamhost, then point your DNS to another hosting company to use their email service.
What operating systems can I install on DreamCompute (VPS Hosting)?
DreamHost offers several Linux distributions for you to install. These include popular choices like Debian and Ubuntu.
Can I install Windows on DreamCompute (VPS Hosting)?
Only Linux distributions are available when creating a DreamCompute instance.
