I have been with DreamHost since 2013 and enjoyed their easy custom Dashboard. It was something different from the regular CPanel I was used to seeing. To setup a website was as simple as clicking "Add Hosting to a Domain" and it would be on Shared Hosting within 10 minutes. Easy to setup, easy to host clients, and easy to host your own websites. DreamHost also offers more advanced options such as DreamPress, VPS Management, and Cloud services.
I knew that my website, Confessions of the Professions was going to be a hit. I felt it in my heart and knew the topic would attract many people in the future. Just how many, I did not know, but the website receives an average of 30,000 - 50,000 visitors per month. I knew that Shared Hosting was going to be too little for this blooming website. At the time, DreamHost came out with this new VPS called DreamPress, optimized server management for WordPress websites, and I hopped on board and purchased a plan.
For the most part, everything was smooth and easy. Uptime was about 99% and at the time. I even switched the server framework over to HHVM which made the website a lot faster and I even disabled the cache plugins I had installed. With super fast speeds and very occasional outages, I kept my Confessions of the Professions on the server for nearly 2 years.
DreamPress even had a feature for you to restart your server when it went down. Unfortunately, DreamHost removed this feature, and this would be the main cause of my switch to DreamCompute. DreamHost support was okay at getting the server up and running after I contacted them, but sometimes, it could take a few minutes, and one time, I had contacted support and waited almost an hour and a half for a response. When they did not respond, I had contacted their live support and waited nearly 10 minutes for a response.
DreamHost support when they are fast about it is good. They are relatively knowledgeable and know what they are talking about and in most cases, solve the issue. They really do take care of you and their pricing is great for what they offer. So leaving was not really something I wanted to do. I am a bit loyal to DreamHost and trust them 99% of the time. The other 1% .. I hope they eventually get there. As hard as DreamCompute was to learn, I eventually just kept practicing and finally understood it and it is fairly easy to learn, and a lot of Googling helps too.
This switch to DreamCompute from DreamPress meant that I would be giving up HHVM, but the fact that DreamCompute offered cloud computing where you could host your website for less a month was great. Considering that the website is run on donations, we were looking to save on our costs, and made the switch. While the website does go down occasionally, I can hop right on to the dashboard and manually restart the server. I also wrote a script that pings the website IP address every 5 minutes, and if it does not get a response, it restarts itself.
I am glad I made the switch. ServerPilot.io is a tool that will help you get started and save you money. Start out on its free plan and you can remain there, or you can update whenever you want. I still recommend DreamPress to anyone who wishes to have unlimited bandwidth and a worry-free experience, but eventually, you may find yourself outgrowing DreamPress as well, and eventually upgrade to DreamCompute.
