Dreamhost was one of our very first web hosting providers we had. At the time we were naïve enough to sign up with Dreamhost back in 2006 for a 2 years contract. At first everything was good; we didn’t have any problem since at that time all of our websites were static HTML web pages.

Dreamhost introduced us to Wordpress because it had what they called “1 click installation” which is exactly what it does. You select any open source they have on their list like Wordpress, Joomla and many other open source software. With one click inside Dreamhost’s control panel you can have that software install into your domain in a minute.

Once we started switching our websites to Wordpress which take resources from the database resources and when we grew our Wordpress websites and with bigger database. That was when we realized there was a problem. We notice that our Wordpress websites were lagging and we contacted Dreamhost support. Their support would recommend us to use a Wordpress plug-in called “super cache”. We installed it and nothing happened, no improvement.

Again we contacted Dreamhost support and they would only recommend us to use the same plug-in. We ask their support to move our websites to another server with better performance and they responded that nothing is wrong with the server. Apparently, Dreamhost had been accused for squeezing in too many users into a server and that was exactly what was happening to us.

There were too many people and websites on the Dreamhost’s server we were on. Their tech support did not help us at all even when we followed all of their instructions. We decided to cut our losses and move on to another hosting provider and this time we would only pay the new hosting provider monthly, no more multi years contract. Since we already paid Dreamhost the 2 years contract and it has been over 30 days and therefore we cannot ask for a refund. We lost all of that money for the 2 years contract and there was still more than 1 and a half years left to our contract when we decided to move elsewhere.

Overall, we would not recommend Dreamhost because they seem to be squeezing too many people into one server which cause poor server performance. Their tech supports sometimes can be quick and sometime it takes days for their reply and overall they were not helpful.

Remember if you do sign up with Dreamhost ONLY sign monthly with them. Don’t get caught up with all of their marketing gimmicks with the lower pricing if you join for 1 or 2 years because if you sign for 1 or 2, years contract with Dreamhost and something happen after your 30 days. You cannot ask for a refund. Don’t do what we did, if you sign with Dreamhost, go monthly. That way if something wrong happen you can always change provider or tell their tech support if they don’t do something you’re going to leave them. In most cases when you threaten them about leaving they usually help you out, like switching you to a better server. Don’t do what we did and sign a long term contract with Dreamhost. Of course it is your money, it is up to you to sign a long term contract or go monthly. This is base on our experience. Good luck.