Choosing between DreamHost and SiteGround for your site? Both of these hosting companies are very good choices and if you end up with either one of them, you are in good hands. Having said that, there are some areas where one is better than the other and we’ll help you out by comparing the two.
In this comparison, we’ll take a look at their features, performance, plans, and more. To start things off, here is a comparison of their shared hosting plans.
Contents
| DreamHost | SiteGround | |
| Â |  |  |
| Price | Check Price at DreamHost.com | Check Price at SiteGround.com |
| Sites | Starter: 1 site Unlimited: Unlimited | StartUp: 1 site GrowBig: Unlimited GoGeek: Unlimited |
| Disk Space | Starter: 50Gb Unlimited: Unlimited | StartUp: 10GB GrowBig: 20GB GoGeek: 40GB |
| Bandwidth | Unmetered visits Unmetered traffic | StartUp: 10,000 visits, Unmetered Traffic GrowBig: 25,000 visits, Unmetered Traffic GoGeek: 100,000 visits, Unmetered Traffic |
| Starter: Available for Purchase Unlimited: Unlimited | Unlimited | |
| Databases | Starter: 6 Unlimited: Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Free Domain | Yes | No |
| SSL | Free | Free |
| Support | Tickets Live Chat Phone Callback (Paid) | Tickets Live Chat Phone |
| Money Back | 97 Days | 30 Days |
Pricing
DreamHost has more hosting options and their prices are cheaper.
For DreamHost there are two shared plans – Starter and Unlimited. Discounted prices starts at $2.59/month for Starter and $4.95/month for Unlimited – both are for 3 year billing cycles. These prices are only for the first contract, when it’s time to renew, both prices will revert to their normal prices.
Aside from shared hosting, DreamHost also offers other hosting options such as WordPress, Managed WordPress, WooCommerce, Cloud, VPS and Dedicated servers. They have an industry-leading 97 days money back guarantee.
As for SiteGround, their shared plans are StartUp, GrowBig and GoGeek. Discounted prices start at $6.99/month for StartUp, $9.99/month for GrowBig and $14.99/month for GoGeek. The discounted price is for a 1-year term. Just like DreamHost, renewal prices are much higher.
SiteGround also offers Managed WordPress, WooCommerce, Cloud, Reseller and Enterprise hosting. Aside from Cloud and Enterprise hosting, all their plans are priced the same.
Features
DreamHost and SiteGround both have exclusive features, choosing which host to go for will depend on which features you need.
Both DreamHost and SiteGround are reliable hosting companies that have features you can’t find in other companies. Let’s start by looking at SiteGround.
- On Demand Backups – You can create up to 5 on-demand backups for your sites in case any issues arise.
- Staging – One click staging is available so you can test plugins, themes or other changes before pushing it on your site.
- Speed Boosting Caching – SiteGround offers caching options that can improve your site’s performance.
- Choice of Data Centers – You can choose your preferred data center location upon signing up.
As for DreamHost, here are some of their features.
- 97-Day Money Back – Their money back guarantee is unmatched by other hosting companies.
- Remixer Site Builder – A free and easy to use site builder.
- Unlimited Storage and Bandwidth – DreamHost offers unlimited SSD storage (50GB for shared starter plan) and unmetered bandwidth in their hosting plans.
- Hosting Services – They have a lot more hosting options: Shared, WordPress, Managed WordPress, VPS, Dedicated Servers and Cloud hosting.
As you can see, they both have a slew of features to offer. You should choose a host that has the features that you need.
Performance
Both hosts perform very well, with a slight edge to DreamHost.
Speed and uptime are the two most important factors that you should consider when looking for a host. Features, customer support and user-friendly UIs will not matter if your site is not performing as you would like. If your site is slow, you will lose visitors and potential sales or leads. Same with uptime, if your site is down for extended periods of time, users will not be able to access your site and you will lose out. It will also have a negative effect on your SEO efforts if your site is not performing well.
Both SiteGround and DreamHost have a 99.9% and 100% uptime guarantee, respectively. They also like to feature their fast servers for performance. We tested both hosts with a simple WordPress site, identical of course. The results when it comes to loading times is an average of around of 600-650ms for SiteGround and 500-600ms for DreamHost. Clearly, DreamHost performed better. However, there are a lot of factors that can influence site speed and you might have a different experience when it comes to your sites. The take-away is that both hosts are very good when it comes to load times with DreamHost having the slight edge.
For uptime, both were able to keep their guarantee within a 7-day period. After a month, SiteGround dropped to 99.96% from 100% while DreamHost dropped to 99.95%, both of which are still very good.
Performance-wise, DreamHost has a bit of an advantage when it comes to speed but only by a small margin. Either way, you’re going to have a very good experience with both of these hosting companies.
Ease of Use
Both DreamHost and SiteGround use custom control panels.
SiteGround and DreamHost both created their own custom control panels. If you are a first-time site owner and you haven’t had any experience with any type of control panels, you will have a very easy time navigating and using these customized control panels. However, if you are a seasoned webmaster, it may take some time to get used to them as they are quite different from other management panels. While they are different, it doesn’t mean that they are hard to use. Both of these control panels – Site Tools and DreamHost Panel – are very intuitive and easy to navigate once you get used to them.
As for how fast you can get your site up and running, both hosts offer easy to use site builders. For DreamHost, they have Remixer – an easy to us drag and drop builder. They also support applications such as MediaWiki, WordPress, Joomla and more.
For SiteGround, they integrated Weebly into their platform for users that lack the technical knowledge to work with more demanding applications. Weebly is a drag and drop builder that’s very easy to use. They also support WordPress, Joomla, Magento and more.
Both DreamHost and SiteGround make it easy for users to create their sites and manage their accounts. Even if you are not the most technical person, you can still get a site up and running in no time with their easy to use site builders or startup wizards.
Customer Support
SiteGround has more customer support options.
When it comes to support, SiteGround has the edge as they offer tickets, live chat, phone and email support. They also have a knowledge base section in their site that covers a wide area of topics that has answers to basic and even advanced queries.
DreamHost offers live chat, tickets, email and optional phone callback (paid). Since their phone option is paid, they automatically lose to SiteGround, who offers phone support for free. Aside from those, they also have a knowledge base section in their site. They do have a forum but it’s not a very active one.
Verdict
Both hosting companies are great, so choosing between the two comes down to your budget and the features that you need.
Choosing a host will mostly depend on what you need. For first-time site owners or those on a budget, DreamHost is the better choice as their prices are on the cheaper side. They have a 97 day money back guarantee as well. SiteGround, on the other hand, is a great choice for more experienced site owners. Their prices are a bit on the expensive side but they offer a lot of features that experienced site owners will appreciate.
FAQs
Yes, DreamHost is a good host with a lot of hosting options to choose from. Their shared hosting plans are very cheap.
Yes, SiteGround has a lot of features that can improve your site’s performance.
No, they use their own custom-built control panel.
No, unlike DreamHost, SiteGround does not offer free domain registration.
