Why I Love DreamHost
Published on March 13, 2007 (⻠June 12, 2021), filed under Development (RSS feed for all categories).
Only looking for promo codes? See the update.
I like web hosting provider DreamHost. I like DreamHost from a professional point of view because DreamHost does several things âmore than rightâ and simply provides a great user experience.
Howâs that? DreamHost:
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is relatively low-priced (taking all features into account, German provider 1&1 is about 200 times more expensive than DreamHost, which means even 1&1âs nuclear-safe data center doesnât help them anymore);
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takes aways all worries regarding both storage and bandwidth (DreamHost offers plenty of both, and you can watch your disk and bandwidth quotas grow on a weekly basis);
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provides many features (as web professionals, we like that), and that doesnât just mean the usual stuff but includes Ruby on Rails, CVS and SVN, streaming support, WebDAV, Jabber, shell access, &c.
An important point (at least to me) is the disk storage and bandwidth aspect. On the one hand these often are a problem with many providers, and DreamHost solves that problem once and for all (you have to be too successful to run into storage and bandwidth issues). On the other hand, itâs solved very interestingly through weekly bonuses. These bonuses play an important part in the overall experience since they make you feel at ease and can also offer new possibilities. (For example, the increasing storage allowed me to outsource all my project stuffâI recently dropped my local CVS setup, created an SVN repository, and yet never have to worry that thereâs not enough webspace.)
Figure: Screenshot of DreamHostâs [past] âDiskâ and âXferâ info.
Long story short, DreamHost has made me a very happy customer. A happy customer even though thereâs one thing that occasionally upsets me: Uptime could be better. (Monitoring my sites with Montastic reveals more breakdowns with DreamHost than with my German provider, the latter meaning so far 0 outages per year.) Iâm confident, however, that DreamHost brings that under control as well. Cutting the blah-blah, I much recommend to try Dreamhost by yourself (promo code âj9tâ will bring you â1 extra free lifetime domain registrationâ). DreamHost seems to get promos right, too.
Update (March 1, 2009)
Last time I played with promo codes was in December 2007; now I did it again. Overall, you might want to test the following codes when registering with DreamHost:
- âj9tâ, as described above, offers you one additional free lifetime domain registration;
- âj9tplusâ offers even more webspace as well as $20 savings;
- âeverythingâ lets you save a bit of everything (worth $63 I think).
The heavy use of referrer links and codes in this post is a bit unusual, however itâs meant to benefit everyone here. I like testing and experimenting.
About Me
Iâm Jens (long: Jens Oliver Meiert), and Iâm a frontend engineering leader and tech author/publisher. Iâve worked as a technical lead for companies like Google and as an engineering manager for companies like Miro, Iâm somewhat close to W3C and WHATWG, and I write and review books for OâReilly and Frontend Dogma.
I love trying things, not only in web development (and engineering management), but also in other areas like philosophy. Here on meiert.com I share some of my views and experiences.
If youâd like to do me a favor, interpret charitably (I speak three languages, and they do collide), yet be critical and give feedback, so that I can make improvements. Thank you!
Comments (Closed)
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On March 14, 2007, 14:00 CET, Eric said:
I 100% agree. Although in addition to uptime, Iâd have to say their overall data transfer speed could be way better. Sometimes my site takes 20+ seconds to load.
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On March 14, 2007, 16:13 CET, Bernhard said:
Wow, wow, wow!
Did I get it right? After one year using âCrazy Domain Insane!â you have about 220 GB of disk storage?
And Rails support for this little money? Why are they so cheap??? Why?
Isnât there anything like a âPferdefuĂâ?
And why didnât you tell us before? đ -
On March 14, 2007, 16:43 CET, Bernhard said:
These both blog entries and the comment of Eric shocked me a little bit.
So, it seems to be great for testing and personal presentation but for commercial websites (even very small ones) these long downtimes canât be accepted.
And I just thought and found some Rails support at an affordable price so that I donât have to care about my virtual server any longer âŠ
Or am I wrong? -
On March 14, 2007, 16:50 CET, Jens Oliver Meiert said:
Yes, uptimeâs sometimes an issue⊠yet I never had any overly long downtime periods.
See for yourself and monitor your DreamHost site (or my own WHWS, which is, unlike this site, hosted with DreamHost), for example using Montastic.
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On March 14, 2007, 17:33 CET, medyk said:
I wonder how many of you really use that hundreds GBâs of disk space or TBâs of transfer (?)
To me theyâre just marketing catch and unfortunately (up to my experiences) the uptime and speed experienced on their servers is below average. Many other host provide much more balanced service in that case for similar price.I think best advantage of Dreamhost is possibilities you have on shared server.. like building your own compilation of PHP I donât know any other host that will allow that.
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On August 19, 2007, 14:46 CEST, Web Hosting in Australia said:
Iâve used DreamHost for a few of my clients and I have always found the servers to be big on features (very important) but slow on speed. I think they cram so many web sites on their servers that it slows them right down
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On October 22, 2009, 12:32 CEST, Linto Dilt said:
In reality, if you use a large amount of disk space (e.g. 20GB for a database), they will contact you and ask you to remove it đ
It is great cheap hosting though, especially if you sign other people up.
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On May 13, 2010, 16:50 CEST, Justin said:
I have never felt the need to give DreamHost a try, something just made me think they provided terrible service. Iâll be sure to add them to my recommended list since you have shared a positive experience with them and Iâll give them a go if I start having problems with my current host or need another to host another site.
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On October 15, 2010, 13:00 CEST, Shared Sh. said:
Iâve been a pretty happy Dreamhost customer for a couple years now, but I wonât delude myself into thinking they are the best hosts around. Iâve been burned by uber-affordable hosting before. If my site, and many of my clientsâ sites, go down for a day or get throttled or the other myriad problems Dreamhost customers encounter (itâs not just the recent, third party LA datacentre), I have only myself to blame.
You always, always get what you pay for.
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