So why is Dreamhost included here? Their reputation over at WHT is dreadful! They oversell to an extraordinary degree; in fact they offer such ridiculous amounts of disk space and transfer that if just a few percent of their clients were to actually use what they’ve bought they’d be out of business within weeks.
Well, all of that is probably true, but look more closely at the reviews. First ignore about 80% of the posts – those from rival hosts expressing their outrage at the overselling (in some cases you have to suspect sour grapes – because they themselves aren’t big enough to oversell the same way!). Then take out the complaints from users unable to run their busy forum on the $10 Dreamhost account – a site that really needs a dedicated server won’t be tolerated on any shared account. What’s left (perhaps 10% of the total) is feedback from non-abusive Dreamhost clients, and it’s generally rather favourable. Clearly it’s not unusual for some clients to push hundreds of Gb per month of mainly static traffic. So far at least, Dreamhost seems to be managing their overselling without imposing unreasonable restrictions.
And for developers what they offer is indeed rather attractive – 20Gb of storage, 1Tb per month of data transfer, full bash shell for 75 SSH users, unlimited web sites, PHP4 and 5, MySQL 5, Subversion etc. All for $10 per month…
Reselling is also permitted, although clients will not get their own control panel so this will mainly suit the designer-developer who manages web sites for clients. Or any reseller wanting a backup server.
Also possibly of interest to anyone interested in search engine optimization (SEO) – different domains on your Dreamhost account often appear on different IP addresses…
The control panel is not CPanel but Dreamhost’s own clustered system – takes a little getting used to but it’s ok. It can be made to work with ClonePanel but requires a little tweaking in addition to the standard setup for CPanel accounts – more instructions coming soon.
Overall verdict – I wouldn’t recommend it for anyone looking for maximum uptime, super-fast servers or beginner-friendly service. But the bang-per-buck is impressive and overall performance is acceptable for most sites. With reselling permitted and multiple full shell user accounts it’s very capable – ideal for a hot-spare backup server.
The following section on Dreamhost discount codes has been edited in light of the new affiliate limits introduced December 11, 2007.
Dreamhost also offers introductory discounts that make trialling their service for a year fairly cheap. First came their famous 777 code (released for a “limited time” on their seventh birthday and offering up to $110 discount!) which gave users their basic plan at under $10 for the first year. Other generous offers have followed at intervals, such as 888 and 999 (original, huh!) and if you can find one of Dreamhost’s own codes still current at the time you’re ready to sign up it will probably offer the best possible price.
If that fails then you’ll find many coupon codes from affiliates offering of up to $97 off the first payment, which until recently was the maximum discount affiliates could offer. But be warned: Dreamhost now limits the maximum discount affiliates can offer to $50. So you’ll still find $97 coupons but when you try to use them they’ll only give you $50 off…
So, having made the money situation clear (in the interests of complete honesty!) ClonePanel.com is happy to offer its readers an introductory discount of up to $50 if you wish to try out Dreamhost. Just use the coupon code CLONEPANEL at the checkout.
All money earned through commissions on this code will be used to develop ClonePanel, or possibly to buy beer…