DreamHost
DreamHost is a very popular shared hosting provider that has many attractive features at a low price. Here is a list describing the basic features available to you.
Core Resources
- Disk Storage at signup: 500 GB
- Automatically Increases Weekly By: 2 GB
- Monthly Bandwidth at signup: 5.0 TB
- Automatically Increases Weekly By: 40 GB
- MySQL 5 Databases: Unlimited
- Operating System: Debian Linux
User Accounts
- E-Mail Accounts (POP/IMAP): Unlimited
- Full Shell / FTP Users: Unlimited
- POP / SMTP Access : Yes
- IMAP Access: Yes
- Web-Based Email Access: Yes
- Procmail Mail Filtering : Yes
- Spam Filtering - SpamAssassin: Yes
- Email Addresses (Aliases): Unlimited
- Announcement Lists: Unlimited
- Discussion Lists: Unlimited
- Vacation Auto-Responders: Unlimited
Domains
- Free Domain Registration (A $9.95 Value!): Yes
- Free Domain WHOIS Privacy: Yes
- Domains Hosted: Unlimited
- Subdomains Hosted : Unlimited
- Domains Forwarded/Mirrored: Unlimited
- Custom DNS: Yes
Programming
- PHP4 Support: Yes
- PHP5 Support: Yes
- Full Unix Shell: Yes
- Crontab Access: Yes
- Full CGI Access: Yes
- Ruby On Rails: Yes
- Canned CGI Scripts: Yes
- Server Side Includes (SSI): Yes
- CVS Repository: Yes
- Subversion Repository (SVN): Yes
Advanced Features
- SSL Secure Server (req. Unique IP): Yes
- Enhanced Web Security: Yes
- WebDAV: Yes
- Snapshot Data Backup: Yes
- Daily Access Statistics: Yes
- Access to raw log files: Yes
- Banner-Free DreamBook.com account: Yes
- Passworded Directories (.htaccess): Yes
- RealAudio and Video (http stream): Yes
- QuickTime Streaming: Yes
- Anonymous FTP Server (req. unique IP): Yes
- Jabber TM Chat Server: Yes
- One-Click Automatic Software Installers:
- WordPress, phpBB, Advanced Poll, ZenCart, MediaWiki, Joomla, Gallery, WebCalendar Yes
Support
- 24 hour Technical Support (E-Mail): Yes
- 97-day money-back guarantee: Yes
- Web-Based Account Control Panel: Yes
- The DreamHost Wiki: Yes
- The DreamHost Forum: Yes
CMS Hosting Perspective
There are a lot of features listed above, but there are a few that stick out for those looking to host a CMS. First of all, for those who are inexperienced, they have easy, one click installs for several popular CMSs (Wordpress, Joomla, Moodle, and more). This makes it easy to get up and running quickly with a basic site. Additionally, DreamHost offers unlimited MySQL databases. Since pretty much every CMS will use at least one database, this provides plenty of room for growth and experimentation. Other nice features include the ability to choose which version of PHP you want to run. PHP is the most common language for CMSs (as well as most other web applications), so you can be sure that you’re running a compatible version.
DreamHost also supports Ruby on Rails, another web framework which has become popular in past years.
Other features, such as full SSH shell access and the ability to manage e-mail lists without an outside tool, make
DreamHost very attractive for the price. However, if you choose one of their shared hosting plans, there are a few things to keep in mind concerning performance. Since the web server and the database server are being shared by many people, performance suffers somewhat, which may be an issue if you’re launching a very high traffic or database intensive site. For people like this, DreamHost offers dedicated hosting plans which gives you your own server, with all of the great features listed above (and many more). Whatever your hosting needs are,
DreamHost is sure to fit the bill.
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User Reviews
One Review for DreamHost
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DreamHost really does provide great features for the price. The ability to host unlimited domains and unlimited MySQL dbs comes in handy. I’m a big Wordpress fan, and having Wordpress as a one click install makes it really easy to get sites going quickly. I’m also a fan of the shell account features. That being said, since this is shared hosting, its not always the fastest. I find that using Wordpress with WP Cache alllows for pretty quick performance most of the time, though. Overall, I reccomend it, it offers good features for the price.