Shared hosting is great for new sites or sites that don’t get much traffic. However, once those sites reach a certain amount of traffic every month, shared hosts just won’t cut it anymore. The next step is VPS hosting and if you’re looking for one, DreamHost is a provider that is often recommended by most hosting review sites.
Is DreamHost VPS good? Should you consider it? In this DreamHost VPS review, we’ll look at how it performs and help you decide if you should go with them. Here’s a comparison of their four VPS plans.
DreamHost VPS Plans Comparison Chart
| Basic | Business | Professional | Enterprise | |
 |  |  |  | |
| Price | Check Price at DreamHost.com | Check Price at DreamHost.com | Check Price at DreamHost.com | Check Price at DreamHost.com |
| Ram | 1 GB | 2 GB | 4 GB | 8 GB |
| Storage | 30 GB SSD | 60 GB SSD | 120 GB SSD | 240 GB SSD |
| Sites | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Bandwidth | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| SSL Certificate | Free | Free | Free | Free |
| Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
Dreamhost VPS Plans
DreamHost plans can be paid monthly, annually or every three years. The longer the term, the bigger the discount.
DreamHost offers four VPS plans and the only difference in all of them are the RAM and storage. All their plans can be paid monthly, annually or every three years. The longer the subscription, the bigger the discount. The basic plan starts $15.00/month if you opt to pay monthly, $13.75/month for annual and drops down to $10.00/month every three years.
As stated above, all their plans have access to all VPS features that DreamHost has to offer, the only difference is the memory and storage capacity. Features such as unlimited domains, free SSL certificates, unlimited emails, unlimited MySQL databases and a lot more are available to Basic, Business, Professional and Enterprise subscribers.
Performance
DreamHost VPS guarantees 100% uptime.
DreamHost VPS plans all use SSDs for storage in order to decrease load times. It works very well as their performance when it comes to speed is very good. Page load times are around 400 – 500ms from multiple sites that we tested that currently use DreamHost VPS hosting. These numbers are very good and show that when it comes to speed and loading times, DreamHost is a top-tier hosting provider. They have data centers in Hillsboro Oregon and Ashburn Virginia.
DreamHost guarantees 100% up time. This is quite a claim and, to be honest, it’s impossible because even the best hosts will have issues at some point with their servers. So far, from what we’ve seen and tested, up time for sites hosted with DreamHost VPS have an average of 99.98%, not 100%. This is still very good though. Performance-wise, DreamHost is up there with some of the best hosting providers.
Control Panel
The DreamHost panel is very easy to use.
The control panel that DreamHost uses is customized but it’s very simple and easy to use, so it won’t take you a long time to get used to it. It has a minimal look to it and everything you need to manage your account and websites can be accessed through the menu on the left side. You can change your configurations and settings, manage your domains, access your billing/invoice tab, use the website builder, and contact support. Overall, it’s very intuitive and easy to use, and some might even prefer it to a cPanel UI.
The Billing & Account page is very handy as you can view and manage your invoices and how you want to pay for them. Payment is made through the panel for added security. You can also backup your account from there, using the one-click backup option. This is a great way to secure your account in case anything happens. Bandwidth and disk usage are also accessible from the page and although DreamHost does offer unlimited bandwidth, it’s still nice to know how much you’re using just to assess how your website is performing.
Customer Support
DreamHost has a good in-house customer support department.
Aside from performance, one thing that you should always factor into your decision on which host to choose is customer support. You WILL encounter issues no matter what hosting company you choose to go with and knowing that their support department can help you is very reassuring. Having said that, DreamHost support is great.
Their support department is in-house and the staff is very knowledgeable when it comes to technical issues. They have a very good solve rate and they respond quickly to email and chat. Other hosting companies usually outsource their support outside the US in order to save money. As a result, their service suffers. With DreamHost, this is not an issue.
Verdict
Overall, we are very happy with DreamHost’s VPS hosting and we recommend them to site owners – small or enterprise level.
DreamHost VPS
DreamHost VPS is a good hosting solution for any site owner – individuals or businesses. Performance is great with very good load times and above-average up time. Their in-house customer support has been very helpful and they are very reliable with any issues regarding your account and websites. If you are looking for a VPS, DreamHost is a very good choice and you should definitely put it on top of your shortlist.
FAQs
DreamHost’s performance is up there with other top-tier hosts. Their up time and load times are very good.
No, they use their own custom control panel.
Their data centers are located in Ashburn Virginia and Hillsboro Oregon.
It depends on your experience. If you are a more advanced user, you will find DreamHost to be better but if you are a newbie/inexperienced site owner, Bluehost might be better for you.
