DreamHost Web Hosting Review (2019)

DreamHost has been around for nearly two decades. More than 1.5 million websites are hosted by this provider.

They have over 400,000 customers, and more than 750,000 WordPress installations throughout 100+ countries worldwide.

These figures alone show that DreamHost is definitely a top player in the web hosting industry.

But how good is their web hosting service? Like most providers, DreamHost offers a wide range of web hosting types, plans, and services.

I’ll give you an in-depth analysis of everything they offer, so you have enough information to decide if DreamHost is the best web hosting service for your website.

DreamHost Web Hosting Plans

Compared to other web hosting providers, DreamHost definitely has one of the most extensive lists of hosting options to choose from. They offer a wide range of hosting types and price points to meet the needs of nearly any website.

Shared hosting

DreamHost has two tiers of shared hosting plans; Starter and Unlimited. They offer three-year, one-year, and month-to-month contracts for each plan. Although the longer you commit, the less expensive your rate will be.

Pricing for the Starter plan starts at $2.59, $3.95, and $4.95 per month, depending on the length of your contract terms. The Unlimited plan goes for $5.95, $6.95, or $10.95 per month.

As the name implies, the Stater package is made for new websites that are just starting out.

The Unlimited plan doesn’t have a cap on how many websites you can host. It also comes with free email for your domain, which is a paid add-on with the Starter plan.

Both of these shared plans are best for beginners who are on a tight budget.

VPS hosting

The virtual private server plans offered by DreamHost are definitely a step up from the shared options. You’ll benefit from managed performance, along with enhanced security and updates.

A VPS from DreamHost gives your website its own server resources, which speeds up the loading times.

As your website grows, your VPS plan allows you to upgrade your storage and RAM in less than 10 seconds. It’s extremely easy for anyone to set up, regardless of your technical skill level.

All VPS plans are managed, meaning you won’t have to worry about dealing directly with any servers. This is fully handled by the support and operational teams at DreamHost.

The VPS hosting options also support reseller and sub accounts for those of you who plan to manage websites for your clients.

There are four different tiers of VPS pricing from DreamHost. Here’s a comparison of all four.

As you can see, they have plans that support a wide range of website types and business needs. All of the pricing shown above is for three-year contracts.

The price per month will increase if you go with a one-year contract or month-to-month plan.

Dedicated hosting

DreamHost’s dedicated servers can be rented annually or month-to-month. Unlike the shared and VPS plans, they don’t offer three-year contracts for dedicated hosting.

With that said, the dedicated hosting plans provide the most extensive and customizable options.

Plans are segmented into two categories:

• Standard
• Enhanced

But within each category, you can choose how much RAM and disk space you want.

The Standard plan has three options, and the enhanced plan has six options. So overall, you can choose between nine different plans for your dedicated server.

As expected, price increases as you add storage. Rates range from $149 per month to $379 per month for annual contracts.

The dedicated servers from DreamHost are for those of you who want complete control. You’ll have full root access, and the ability to fully manage your websites, email addresses, and domains.

Cloud hosting

DreamCompute is the cloud hosting service offered by DreamHost. It’s a great choice for those of you who want more control, without the added cost.

Cloud hosting gives you the ability to change your settings on-demand. This highly benefits people with growing websites that see traffic spikes.

The best part about this plan is that the pricing is flexible.

Unlike every other plan we’ve seen so far offered by DreamHost, the cloud hosting is not billed at a fixed monthly rate.

Instead, they have a maximum amount that you’ll get billed per month, depending on the size of the server you choose. But you only get charged for what you actually use.

Flexible pricing is definitely one of the top benefits of cloud hosting in general. Not every web hosting provider offers cloud hosting plans, so it’s nice to see that a reputable company like DreamHost has this option for its customers.

WordPress hosting

DreamHost has plans that are specifically intended for WordPress users as well. Considering that more than 30% of the entire Internet is powered by WordPress, it’s a great option to have if you’re using this CMS.

Along with BlueHost and SiteGround, DreamHost is one of the three web hosting providers that are “officially” recommended on the WordPress website.

DreamHost offers:

• Shared hosting for WordPress
• Managed WordPress hosting
• VPS for WordPress

If you take advantage of one of these options, DreamHost will install WordPress for you. You’ll be able to set up everything with just one click. You’ll also benefit from automatic WordPress updates and automated daily backups of your WordPress site.

Benefits of DreamHost for web hosting

Now that you’ve had a chance to get familiar with the wide range of web hosting options offered by DreamHost, it’s time to look at the top features and benefits of this provider.

Sufficient loading speeds

Truthfully, DreamHost doesn’t have the fastest loading speeds we’ve seen compared to other web hosting providers. This metric is definitely one of the most important factors to take into consideration when you’re evaluating a web host.

But with that said, they definitely aren’t the slowest either. Here’s a look at the average response times on a DreamHost test website through the first half of this year.

Overall, the average response time for the year is 740 ms.

In reality, that’s very fast. But again, I’ve seen sites that load in roughly half the time of DreamHost. With that said, I’d say these averages are sufficient. They aren’t necessarily the fastest web host on the market today, but you should still be happy with their speeds.

High uptime rates

If you look at the uptime rates on the same chart above, you’ll see that DreamHost has a 99.928% average uptime so far this year.

According to a recent case study conducted by Hosting Facts, the average uptime of 32 popular web hosts is 99.59%. So DreamHost is above that average.

With that said, they fall outside of the top 10 hosts in terms of uptime.

You can look at this the same way you look at their page loading speed. It’s a high number, and more than sufficient for your website, but it’s just not the best compared to the competition.

According to the DreamHost terms of service, they guarantee a 100% uptime rate. So if they don’t meet that standard, you’ll receive a credit for one day of service, for every hour that your site is down.

However, that credit will max out at 10% of your next prepaid hosting renewal. This means that it’s a credit toward the next time you’re billed, as opposed to a refund for what you’ve already paid.

It’s also worth noting that any scheduled maintenance or user errors that cause downtime don’t apply to this promise.

Money-back guarantee

Web hosting providers don’t typically offer free trials. In order to see if you’re happy with their service, you’ll need to sign up.

We’ve seen lots of web hosting providers offer a 30-day money-back guarantee. So if you’re not happy with your service in the first month, you’re entitled to a refund.

But DreamHost goes above and beyond anything we’ve seen in terms of a money-back guarantee.

Yes, you read that correctly. Your eyes are not playing tricks on you.

DreamHost offers a 97-day guarantee! That’s more than three months to try out their web hosting plan to see if you’re satisfied.

It’s worth noting that this only applies to web hosting fees, and not any add-ons that you paid for.

But when I see a hosting provider offer something like this, it tells me one thing—they stand behind their services. If they thought that the majority of their customers would be asking for refunds, they wouldn’t set up this policy.

This guarantee reduces your risk and makes you feel more confident about your purchase. I’m always more inclined to buy services from companies that stand behind what they’re selling.

Environmentally friendly

DreamHost is a “green” web hosting provider, which means they are environmentally conscious.

I know that this doesn’t necessarily impact your site’s performance, but it’s still an important factor to take into consideration.

In order to reduce their carbon footprint, DreamHost uses LED and low-mercury lighting, optimized HVAC plants at their offices. DreamHost data centers have high-efficiency coolers, use renewable energy sources, and participate in “clean wind” programs in certain areas.

Low renewal rates

It’s a common practice for web hosting providers to offer low introductory rates, and then jack up the prices when it’s time for the contract to renew.

Depending on the web host, those prices can nearly double.

But DreamHost is one of the few providers that doesn’t use this pricing strategy. Prices don’t automatically increase when you renew your contract.

Instead, DreamHost offers price breaks based on the length of your contract, which we saw earlier when I showed you their plans.

Unlimited features

DreamHost offers lots of “unlimiteds” with their web hosting plans, which isn’t always common in the industry.

With a couple of exceptions, you’ll get unlimited disk space and bandwidth with your web hosting plans. They also offer unlimited network transfers and unlimited email options.

Other considerations

DreamHost isn’t perfect. Even in the benefits listed above, we learned that although they have high uptimes and fast loading speeds, they’re not industry leaders in those categories.

That aside, there are a few other things that you should keep in mind when you’re evaluating DreamHost as a potential service provider for your website.

Paid site migrations

Lots of web hosts will throw in a free site migration as an incentive to switch to their service. But that’s not the case with DreamHost.

Unless you have a managed WordPress hosting plan, you’ll have to pay $99 for this service.

While it may not be a big deal if you’re only moving one site, this can add up quickly for those of you who are managing websites for your clients.

There are some restrictions for migrations as well. They can’t move multisite WordPress sites or website builder sites.

You can find a step-by-step instruction guide on how to do this manually on their website, but it’s not an easy task. I wouldn’t recommend this process if you’re a beginner.

Limited support

This piggybacks off of our last point. It seems like other web hosts out there are more willing to do some heavy lifting for their customers.

Beyond that, they have a knowledge base and forums that can be helpful for finding solutions to any questions or problems you might have.

They claim to have 24/7 support, but if you call or try to get help via live chat after hours, you won’t always get what you’re looking for.

The chatbot on their site seems to have limited responses, even in the middle of a weekday.

This is a clip of a conversation I had when I was browsing for cloud hosting plans. The fact that “sales rep” or “sales team” didn’t register another triggered response from this AI bot is kind of surprising.

Conclusion

DreamHost is a reputable web hosting provider. While they don’t lead the way in every performance category, they still have great options for you to consider.

Would I recommend DreamHost? Absolutely.

I like this provider because they have such a wide range of hosting types and plans for you to choose from. Unlike other providers out there, DreamHost is transparent with their pricing, and won’t jack up your rates when it’s time to renew.

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The 5-4-3-2-1 Goal Setting Method, Applied to Financial Goals

I’m a big goal setter.

I find incredible value in having things in all areas of my life that I’m shooting for. Having goals gives me purpose with which to aim my efforts each day so that they build into something far greater than what I can achieve this afternoon or this week or this month. The process of making slow progress in a positive direction and witnessing changes as they’re happening and I’m moving toward things I want in life is invigorating.

I find financial goals, along with health-related goals, to be the most powerful of all, simply because progress on those kinds of goals is almost always progress that you never regret. You never regret having money in the bank, even if your goal changes. You never regret losing weight or getting in better shape, even if it’s not as central to your life any more.

The biggest obstacle I have in terms of making forward progress on goals is deeply understanding the connection between the seemingly small things I do today and the big goals I have for myself.

Take a dietary goal, for example. Let’s say my goal is to achieve my ideal BMI in some length of time – let’s make it a year. I need to lose some significant number of pounds to get there.

It’s easy to see what that big goal is, but that goal is far enough off on the horizon that it doesn’t seem really tangible. Like most people, my mind often defaults to looking ahead at the next few days.

Thus, when I’m making a decision regarding that goal, it’s often hard to directly relate a small choice today to that bigger goal. If I’m feeling a bit hungry and there’s a nice tempting sandwich just waiting for me, it’s really hard to see the connection between this 800 calorie sandwich and my goal of losing 50 pounds (or whatever). It takes consuming 3,500 calories less than I’m burning to lose a pound – that 800 calories is just a fraction of one pound. It feels insignificant next to that big goal, and I’m hungry, so I’ll go for the sandwich.

You can see the same thing in a financial goal. Let’s say your goal is to pay off all of your debts. You have $30,000 in student loans and credit card debts, with some of it having nasty interest rates.

You’re making a few extra payments on your credit cards, but you’re really tempted to buy some new decorations for your drab apartment. The decorations you want are only $35. You’re still going to make an extra payment this month… and the $35 is just a tiny sliver of a part of that overall goal. It won’t make a difference, right?

This is why big goals often don’t work. The goal you’re aiming for is often so big that the little actions you take each day don’t seem to connect to the big goal in any meaningful way. They feel like a drop in the bucket, one that doesn’t really matter.

So, what can you do about it?

One approach that works well for me is to stop worrying about the bucket and instead worry about putting drops in a thimble. Bear with me for a minute.

Let’s say that rather than worrying at all about that bucket, you’re focusing entirely on filling up a thimble with drops. That’s a much easier goal – you can fill up a thimble with just a few drops.

When that thimble is full, you empty it into a small cup. You can see the difference the contents of the thimble made in that cup – it’s making a real difference, and it won’t take too many thimbles to fill up that cup.

When that small cup is full, you pour it into a pot. You can see the difference that the contents of the cup made in the pot – it’s making a real difference, and it won’t take too many cups to fill up that pot.

When that pot is full, you pour it into the bucket. You can see the difference that the contents of the pot made in the bucket – it’s making a real difference, and it won’t take too many cups to fill up that pot.

If you can just fill up the thimble, it feels good. You can see the cup filling up.

When you manage to fill up a cup, that feels even better. You can see the pot filling up.

When you manage to fill up a pot, that feels incredible. You can see the bucket filling up.

And, soon, the bucket is full.

So, if you just focus on that dropper and make sure that the drops are getting into that thimble, you’re going to fill that thimble up real quick. Everything else from there is just a series of progressively larger successes that feel great when they happen, but you don’t really need to worry about them because they’re going to happen if you just fill up that thimble.

In other words, you’re creating a whole bunch of milestones for your big goal and just aiming for the next milestone. It’s like running a marathon and focusing on nothing else but the next quarter mile marker.

I like to call this approach the “breakdown” approach, or the 5-4-3-2-1 approach.

What’s 5-4-3-2-1?

The 5-4-3-2-1 approach is basically this concept of goal setting broken down into a simple meme so you can easily remember it.

Let’s say you have a big 5 year goal. Maybe you want to save up for a 20% down payment on a house. Maybe you want to turn an idea for a side business into something that can employ you full time. Maybe you want to pay off every drop of debt you have.

Whatever it is, it’s a big, aspirational goal.

The first question is… what can you do in the next 4 months to move that goal seriously forward? Maybe you can sell off a big collection you have that you don’t do anything with any more item by item to put money in your pocket. Maybe you can start creating episodes of your podcast and get your name out there in your target community on Twitter and Instagram.

The next question is… what can you do in the next 3 weeks to move that four month initiative seriously forward? Maybe you can build up a standard operating procedure for selling off the pieces of that collection so it’s easy to move them out. Maybe you can write and record the first episode of your podcast.

The next question is… what can you do in the next 2 days to move that three week initiative seriously forward? Maybe you can do an inventory of your collection by pulling out the 50 or 100 most valuable pieces and making a list of them. Maybe you can sign up for social media accounts for your new project, or outline the basic framework of your first podcast episode.

The last question is… what can you do in 1 hour today to move that two day initiative forward? Maybe you can simply figure out where the best place to sell your items is and what the best way to organize them for sale is. Maybe you can just sign up for a Twitter account and an Instagram account and join in a few conversations and follow a few people of interest that are small enough that they’ll engage you in conversation.

That’s it. 5 years. 4 months. 3 weeks. 2 days. 1 hour. 5-4-3-2-1.

Your drop is what you can achieve in an hour. What is literally the next thing you can do to start filling up that thimble? Those are your drops.

Your thimble is what you can achieve in two days. What can you do in two days that really moves your goal forward? You fill up that thimble, a drop at a time, with your immediate efforts.

Your cup is what you can achieve in three weeks.

Your pot is what you can achieve in four months.

Your bucket is what you can achieve in five years.

And when the bucket is full, you win.

Refactoring

A huge part of this strategy is refactoring. Refactoring simply means that each time you fulfill a part of the goal, you consider what the replacement piece is and what needs to be done under it to make it happen.

So, for example, each time you do an hour’s worth of effort toward your goal – filling up the thimble, in other words – you think for a moment about what the next hour needs to be to take you to your two day goal.

When you complete a two day goal, you stop and think for a moment about what your next two day goal is. Will this move me toward my three week goal? What one hour step or steps fit in nicely under this? Furthermore, does my current three week goal still make sense for me, given what I learned about the goal and what I learned about myself while completing it?

When you complete a three week goal, you stop and think for a moment about what your next three week goal is. Will this move me toward my four month goal? What two day steps fit in nicely under this? Furthermore, does my current four month goal still make sense for me, given what I learned about the goal and what I learned about myself while completing this piece of it?

When you complete a four month goal, you stop and think for a moment about what your next four month goal is. Will this move me toward my five year goal? What three week steps fit in nicely under this? Furthermore, does my current five year goal still make sense for me, given what I learned about the goal and what I learned about myself while completing this piece?

The thing is, as you go through those questions, you’ll see that your goal slightly morphs over time, changing with you as you change. This is hugely important, because it means that the big goal you’re aiming for remains relevant in your life even as your life undergoes gradual changes.

What about sudden changes? For the most part, the progress you’ve made toward goals that are focused on your health, your finances, and your transferable skills are ones that are still useful even when your life suddenly changes. Health is always good. Money in the bank always helps. Useful, employable skills always have value. A sudden life change may cause you to abandon a big goal, but you’ll almost always be happy with the progress you made toward a personal improvement goal.

The Dashboard

One of my favorite tools to use with this strategy is what I call “the dashboard.” It’s simply a document (I use a spreadsheet, but any digital document will do) that lists each level of a particular goal together in a meaningful way so that you can see them all at once and see how the little steps flow into the big ones.

For example, you might have a goal of saving for a down payment. Your dashboard might look like this…

Five years: Save $40K for down payment
+ Four months: Save $5K for down payment
++ Three weeks: Sell off contents of guest bedroom closet
+++ Two days: Sort through items in closet for sale
++++ One hour: Completely empty out closet and initially sort items

… or it might look like this at a different stage…

Five years: Save $40K for down payment
+ Four months: Cut housing and transportation costs by 50%
++ Three weeks: Move to less expensive apartment near work
+++ Two days: Visit three possible places to live
++++ One hour: Find ten potential apartments to look at

One detail I like to add is to use the finishing date for each goal. So, the above one might look like this:

December 1, 2022: Save $40K for down payment
+ October 1: Cut housing and transportation costs by 50%
++ July 30: Move to less expensive apartment near work
+++ Tomorrow: Visit three possible places to live
++++ Today: Find ten potential apartments to look at

That way, I have an immediate sense that the goals are really coming up and it’s instantly clear when things are due. Plus, it’s better to have a tangible date for your five year goal when you’re in year three of it rather than just continuing to call it your “five year goal.”

Debt Repayment: A Detailed Example

Let’s roll back to our earlier suggested goal of debt repayment. Let’s say you decide that you want to pay off your $40,000 in student loans and credit card debts by August 1, 2024. You’d start off with that as your five year goal:

August 1, 2024: Pay off all student loans and credit cards

What can you do in four months to start moving in that direction? Start brainstorming ideas. Maybe you could sell off your car and move to using a bike and mass transit? Maybe you could sell off all of the stuff you’ve accumulated that’s stuffed in your closet? Maybe you could move to a cheaper apartment? Maybe you could simply set yourself up for your next career move so that you can get paid more? All of those are great four month goals that lead right into that five year goal, so pick one:

+ November 1: Sell off your car and use mass transit for everything

You’re giving yourself some breathing room because this will require some experimentation and a few changes. What things need to be done? You need to get completely used to doing everything on mass transit. You’ll also have to figure out how to actually sell off the car and then make that happen. Time to pick a three week goal that leads you there… and it makes more sense to get used to mass transit first.

++ August 1: Figure out how to get everything done using a mass transit pass

This leads right into some sensible short term goals. In the next couple of days, you need to figure out the very basics of using mass transit daily:

+++ Tomorrow: Ride mass transit to and from work and also get groceries on mass transit

And the very first step down this path is a simple one:

++++ Today: Get a 30 day mass transit pass so that riding the train is easier

There: you have something on your to-do list for today that’s an actionable item and leads right into your other goals.

Now, let’s say you switch to using mass transit for almost everything when August 1 rolls around. It’s time to come up with another three week goal:

++ August 22: Put my car up for sale locally

What can you do to start getting ready for this?

+++ Tomorrow: Get the car cleaned outside and inside

And that gives you an action to take care of today:

++++ Today: Take the car to a car wash

Each day, you make sure that you have at least one task that takes at least a little time that moves you toward your goal. Maybe tomorrow, you finish cleaning up the inside of the car, so now it’s ready to sell. After that, you look into exactly how to sell a car locally. You figure out the details of your car, write a good listing for Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace, and put a For Sale sign in the window. You get calls, set up appointments, and get that thing sold by August 22… and then you’re onto figuring out how to handle corner cases with mass transit, like moving big items. Or, maybe you do that first and put off selling the car.

The point is that each day has a task to move you forward toward your big goal, one that makes sense as part of a chain of things that leads you there.

Final Thoughts

As I’ve mentioned before, I have a lot of goals going on at once, and I actually use a system very similar to this. Rather than the nice 5-4-3-2-1 mnemonic, I do the same breakdown but with 5 years, 1 year, 3 months, 1 month, 1 week, and 1 day. However, it doesn’t really have a catchy name for it (I call it “the pyramid,” but to each their own) so the 5-4-3-2-1 system is a lot catchier.

I usually have at least one goal for each of the nine major areas of my life going at the same time – physical, mental/spiritual, intellectual, marital, parental, social, professional, leisure, and financial. I try to have goals in each of those areas at once so that I always feel like I’m moving forward with my whole life.

These goals all use that same structural breakdown, all leading to things I can work on today to move things forward, and I have a weekly review where I think about each of the broader level goals a bit. I do a larger quarterly review and an even bigger annual review of my life, just so I’m sure I’m still on a page I’m happy with.

This system works well for me. It keeps me feeling like I’m always making progress toward being the complete person I want to be, a little better than I was before (but never even close to perfect).

I encourage you to give the 5-4-3-2-1 system a try. Make a list of the big five year goals you want to achieve in your life, then start breaking them down into smaller goals. You can use the 5 years – 4 months – 3 weeks – 2 days – 1 hour divisions if you’d like, or my own 5 years – 1 year – 3 months – 1 month – 1 week – 1 day divisions, or your own choice that works well for you. At the end of it, you should have a checklist of actions you can take right away, and that’s how you start filling your thimbles.

Good luck!

The post The 5-4-3-2-1 Goal Setting Method, Applied to Financial Goals appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

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