Dreamhost: the host with the most ;)
Written: May 10 '02
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Pros: Features, price, customer service
Cons: No phone support, setup fee if you don't pay a year in advance
The Bottom Line: Dreamhost has an *enormous* feature set, great customer support, and great value. If you're looking for a reliable host, check 'em out.
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| floydabazz's Full Review: Dreamhost |
I've been hosting with Dreamhost for about a year and a half. I'm more of a 'hobbyist' than a professional web designer, but I host 8 domains, and have been doing web development for about 6 years. I don't plan on ever switching to another host unless I someday learn enough about Linux/Apache to host my sites from my home.
I've read both of the negative reviews, and I can honestly say I have no idea where they're coming from. Their customer service has always been extremely prompt in answering my questions and in setting up new features. They also state very clearly on their site that they only offer 24/7 e-mail support in order to keep costs down for their customers. Therefore, if you're looking for 24/7 phone support you shouldn't expect to find it here.
That said, the support that they DO offer has been superb. Anytime I've had to e-mail support about a technical question or billing inquiry, they have always gotten back to me within 12 hours (holidays included). They are always extremely friendly and professional, and I never feel like I'm customer #83473947934, which is very important to me. Additionally, they also have an extensive knowledge base and FAQ section that answers probably 90% of any questions you could come up with. In a year and a half, I've had maybe 10 minutes of downtime, and have always been notified well in advance of any planned maintenance. Their announcements always come from "The Happy Dreamhost x Team", and their newsletters are hilarious, which just helps illustrate to me how much the staff loves doing their job.
Their feature set is superb, even on their cheapest plan. I especially appreciate the Control Panel (which allows you to manage domains, billing, services, and any other "admin" functions), the shell accounts (which lets you dig around in the nitty gritty Unix stuff), unlimited MySQL databases (this way when I'm trying out a new script, I can make a test db and don't have to risk it screwing up any of the rest of my site's data), and web-based access to my e-mail. They also support just about every language under the sun (C, Java, Python, PHP4, Perl, etc.), let you do your own custom CGI programming, play with .htaccess files, and on and on. (http://www.dreamhost.com/comparison.html has a list of all their plan features)
I also appreciate that they are very security-conscious. After the PHP file upload vulnerability came out a couple months ago, they had already updated their PHP and e-mailed me about it before I'd even read about the vulnerability on some of the major e-news sites. They also provide an SSL connection to the control panel, support SFTP and SSH, keep all of their frontpage-enabled customers on a separate server, etc.
Recommended:
Yes
Monthly fees (US$): 9.95/mo - 79.95/mo
Platform used: Linux
Hosted on Secure Server: Yes
Database used: MySQL
Main focus of Web site: Sales/E-commerce
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Epinions.com ID:
floydabazz
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Reviews written: 2
Trusted by: 0 members
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