DreamHost used to be a good web hosting company
DreamHost used to be a good web hosting company. Their server downtime was rare. Service disruptions in the middle of the day were unheard of. Unfortunately, in the last couple of years the company has grown so much that its service is suffering, badly.
I’ve recommended DreamHost to friends and clients without hesitation. Their shared hosting plans are incredibly cheap, but now it seems, you get what you pay for — mediocrity. The dream was too good to be true and now a lot of people are waking up, looking for alternatives.
Unreliable
If your business or blog depends on a rock-solid web host, then I can’t and won’t recommend DreamHost. Whenever one of their servers goes down, my clients phone me as if I was DreamHost tech support. Dreamhost doesn’t have telephone support for their basic hosting plans so the guy that recommended them gets the blame when things don’t work properly.
Today, DreamHost decided to bill all of their customers for the next year and beyond. To drive their customers crazy they send out lame messages like:
Ack. Through a COMPLETE bumbling on our part, we’ve accidentally attempted to charge you for the ENTIRE year of 2008 (and probably 2009!) ALREADY (it was all due to a fat finger)!
A lot of my clients can’t stand these messages and it reflects poorly on DreamHost. It makes them look really unprofessional.
I received a couple of dozen emails from DreamHost today for incorrect charges to various accounts. If that wasn’t bad enough, this pathetic apology was stuffed in by Inbox:
Thank you very very much for your patience with this.. we PROMISE this won’t happen again. There’s no need to reply to this message unless of course you have any other questions at all!Sincerely,
The Foolish DreamHost Billing Team!
Hobby or Business?
Despite the server outages and spotty service of late, Dreamhost is still a great deal for some small businesses and bloggers on a budget. You get an awful lot with your DreamHost account and most of the time it works. So don’t panic just yet.
If you’re hosting needs go beyond a hobby site or small blog then I would start second guessing DreamHost, now. If your business depends on your website then invest in solid hosting and don’t take a chance with DreamHost. The money you’re saving now on cheap hosting may cost you down the road. Why take a chance?
Shared hosting is tired
There have been a lot of rumblings about shared hosting environments of late. Alex Payne recently wrote that shared hosting is a ghetto:
As a web developer, dealing with shared hosts is a nightmare… The constraints, the instability, and the unpredictability of a shared hosting environment are a big part of the reason why the web hosting business is moving towards virtualization everywhere you look.
If you want a clear understanding of what’s wrong with shared hosting and Dreamhost in particular, then head on over to The Dark Side of DreamHost (and Shared Hosting).
Media Temple
I’m seriously looking at (mt) Media Temple as an alternative to DreamHost. If anyone has switched or has some experience with (mt) I would love to hear about it.
Posted in Web Development at 10:15 AM
