Formerly Outstanding Company - Growing Faster than They Can Support Their Customers
Written: Apr 14 '05 (Updated Jul 14 '06)
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Pros: Falling prices.
Rising service caps.
Growing feature list.
Cons: Bitten off more customers than they can handle and it's showing.
The Bottom Line: Don't dismiss them, but don't believe the self-promoting or referral-based hype. The service measures are showing the strain of their growth.
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| foo10019's Full Review: Dreamhost |
This is an update to the the earlier review, which appears below in its entirety:
July 2006 -
Support and service continues to decline. On any given day, it seems, something will be down, unavailable, or just plain irritating with my service. I'm not talking about the entire Dreamhost plant, either. I'm talking about service failures, interrupts, or slowdowns that affect me, personally. Either my webservers, mail server, database server, or access to the web panel, personally, will be a source of aggravation.
Dreamhost has openly admitted they are overselling their service. Like the airlines, if every one of their clients, they admit, took them up on the full extent of the services they offer, they'd be completely swamped and unable to deliver. They tout, reasonably, that the size of their client base permits them to run the numbers and come up with a reasonable expected estimate of actual demand.
This number, they contend, they are able to serve satisfactorily.
Our survey says!
NO!
While I like the pricing and extent of offerings, it just seems like it's been one damned thing after another this year. Either the web panel is broke and I can't look at my stats or recover a password, or revise a service, or the mail server is taking a nap.
On one hand, I've been here long enough that I'm really reluctant to move. I'm sure I'd pay more than I am now. On the other, I'm getting a bit fed up with the spotty service.
So -- the question seems to be:
which is better?
to pay steak sandwich prices and get a steak sandwich,
or
to pay bologna sandwich prices for a steak sandwich, and get served, instead of either, a swift kick in the crotch.
Another Grimacing Doubled Over Hosting Customer
----------- (Original Review) -----------
Been with DH about 8 years now.
First seven years, I had nothing but good words about them. Constantly adding new features and capabilities to the accounts and increasing levels on the existing limits - upping bandwidth limits, storage, mailboxes, and dropping limits on mySQL connects and queries. Added streaming, WebDAV, and a host of other neato features.
Recently, say in the past nine months, however, service has taken a dive. Service is down, both in quality and promptness. Server response times are generally up. More site failures and increased time to restore. & co., & co.
Perhaps not by coincidence, DH has been crowing (loudly) about picking up their 100Kth domain.
Better for New Dream Network revenues and share prices, perhaps, but for the hosting customer - not so great. True, they are trebling storage and bandwidth caps to "celebrate" their expansion, but what good is a terabyte of bandwidth when your pages take ten or fifteen seconds to load, and the response from support is more than occasionally a lot of finger pointing.
DH CSR: Hmmm, sounds like an SEP (somebody else's problem). Must be some other server on your path to Dreamhost. Oh, error id: "bad_httpd_conf"? What? Again? Uh, we don't support that particular feature/application/function. (Cha-ching! Support request #255943 closed. Another Happy Dreamhost Customer! Woo-Hoo!)
As the Kid would say - I was born at night, but not last night, baby. (Puffin' a Winston; Drinking a four-oh.... but I digress)
Feels like NDN has gotten too big for its britches and its growth in client base has outstripped its ability to deliver.
So -- Tough to dismiss DH out of hand, because I know they know how to get it done right. The question, then, is: will they? They could catch their falling performance metrics and decide to plow some investment into service infrastructure, e.g, bandwidth, server farms, support staff -- and pull back from the brink.
Or Management could remain so pleased with the rising revenues they ignore the Greek Chorus gently crooning off in the background... until we rats start to scurry down the mooring lines en masse.
A lot of companies have slid over the edge into the Customer Abuse abyss, never to return - AT&T Wireless for example.
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The GOOD
On their face, the plan prices are very good: lots of storage, lots of bandwidth, lots of domains, lots of mailboxes.
Referral system - play the pyramid and pay for your account, and them some. 2 levels of referral tracking. Become a Diamond Direct Distributor and drive a pink Caddy. Get the bumper sticker - "Get Hosted Now. Ask Me How."
Some nifty features - "one button" installs of a couple of Content Management Systems, including phpbb and wordpress. (Nice, but CMS performance is horrendous)
Cutesy little community feel to it, what with the newsletter and the Dreamhost site of the month contest, etc. (Though, at times, it does feel a tad contrived, in a sort of L. Ron Hubbard/Marshall Applewhite/Jim Jones/Werner Erhardt kind of way.)
The BAD
There is no telephone support. It's all by the web panel or by email. Turnaround time and issue queues have risen sharply. The quality of the response has declined and often takes the form of glib fingerpointing.
Hosted sites and web panel are becoming very laggy and content management system response times are laughable. True: unlimited connects and queries, now. However, it helps if you don't mind five and ten second turnarounds between screens.
The referral system is starting to smell like Amway or some other Ponzi scheme. You definitely need to be on Dreamhost for a few months before you risk referring someone whose opinion of you is important to you, e.g., business associates, friends, or, say, someone who could hurt you.
Technically - It's still up time, for statistical purposes, even when the http request turnaround is so slow that it times out.
The (extended) BOTTOM LINE
I liked it better when they only had 50K domains and service didn't come dangerously close to bordering on sucking.
If you're a bare HTML, CSS sort of personal homepage designer - you may not be discouraged by the slip ups. (But then, the bells and whistles wouldn't be much of a selling point, either.)
Eight years at DH. First seven never had a reason to look around. I'm looking now.
... And, no, I'm not referring anyone anymore -- at least until they get their act together.
Oh... and all those other 4 and 5 star reviews on this page? Like I'd tell you if you had a container of milk up to your lips -- check the date before you do something you'll wish you hadn't. Sure, back in '00, '01, and '02, I'd've been right alongside the Dreamhost Booster Squad.
Hey Dreamhost, Dreamhost quit screwing around with phpBB! Don't care 'bout no one-button installs, just serve up the http. Please!
Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you got 'til it's gone...
Recommended:
No
Monthly fees (US$): 16
Platform used: Linux
Hosted on Secure Server: No
Database used: MySQL
Main focus of Web site: Customer service and retention
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Epinions.com ID:
foo10019
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Reviews written: 2
Trusted by: 0 members
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