Let me tell you about DreamHost

Beware web sites that claim to impartially review and compare web hosting services.
Many, maybe most of them are angling for a commission. I am, too, but I'm simply telling you
about how much I like the hosting service I use.

Update 2013-04-25: DreamHost is as great as ever! I tired of updating this page because they keep making so many improvements, including their pricing. One improvement is that they now do domain registrations. I moved all my registratins to DreamHost, too. They are the best.

Update 2020-12-09: DreamHost just keeps getting better.

In April, 2004, I could tell from the magazine ads in Wired that the web hosting provided by my ISP was bullshit. Too expensive, not much disk space, no features, crappy admin interface, ...

Shortly thereafter, I saw mention on the MacInTouch web newsletter of a hosting service some people like a lot. It had some hard-to-find features, yet it was very cheap and offered huge disk space and huge bandwidth, so I checked around on Google and found nothing but rave reviews.

DreamHost has been around since 1997, making it one of the pioneers in this business, so they’ve been refining their service for all these years. DreamHost was founded by a bunch of guys in college, and I understand that one of them is now using the money he makes to put himself through Stanford. This is no behemoth, impersonal corporation.

Anyway, I signed up, and I can’t rave enough about these guys.

Here are some high points:

The price is amazingly cheap.
Reliability is excellent.
Support is excellent.
DreamHost is small, with people you can talk to, not a big, impersonal corporation.
You can have unlimited top-level domains or subdomains.
You can have multiple linux shell login accounts and even your own unix group accounts.
Mac users can can mount their DreamHost directory with true Apple File Sharing!
You can host shared calendars with WebDAV.
You can host QuickTime Streaming movies (like this).
They allow you to administer your own DNS.
The Admin interface is deep and excellent.
You can have your own wiki, mailing lists, blog, all using standard opensource software.

My friend David Asprey, co-founder of the Professional Services Division and later Director of Strategy for Exodus Communications (for a time the largest web hoster in the world) says, “I have been hosting for almost 7 months with DreamHost; they are the best hoster for the money, hands down.”

The lowest-price plan is $8/month for

20GB disk space, adding another 160MB every week
1TB bandwidth per month, adding another 8GB every week

Two steps up, the plan I have is $20/month for

60GB disk space, adding another 480MB every week
1.6TB bandwidth per month, adding another 16GB every week

They used to guarantee the same features and price for the life of your account. But that wasn’t great enough, so they put in place a program to heap on extra disk space and bandwidth every week, while holding the price the same. When they did this, on July 6, 2005, they retroactively upped everyone’s accounts, pro-rated for how long they’ve been with DreamHost, up to one year. Then on August 31, boom! They doubled my disk space! Then again. And again. So my disk space is now 79.200GB and my bandwidth is 2,256GB! I tell ya, I love these guys! (Of course, almost no one uses all of this, even me. They have to hype these numbers like everyone else to compete.)