A few years back, I added a DreamHost hosting account to my online properties. I wanted to try something new, see if the grass was any greener on the other side of the fence, and secure some more space and bandwidth for future domain names and increased overall traffic to my collection of websites.
Now, my first web host was Bluehost. I researched it for weeks, compared prices, compared features, compared policies and yes, user and customer reviews. I have always been happy with Bluehost so the fact that I signed up for a Dreamhost account isn’t any sort of rejection of my other hosting company.
In addition to hosting websites on both Bluehost and Dreamhost, I’m also a member of each company’s affiliate program. I like to promote all of the hosts I use and appreciate, and this more than offsets the up front costs of hosting. Regardless of which one you pick today, be sure to look in to how you can earn money back by promoting their services and sharing your own experiences online.
Hosting Similarities:
Both sites offer unlimited domains on a single account, automatic script and software installation, and a free domain name with registration. They also have privacy options for registered domains, which can be a useful way to avoid spam or scams directed at webmasters. One difference with Bluehost is that you’ll have to pay a little bit extra each year to use the domain privacy plan. PHP and MySQL are both up to date, and I haven’t seen any software or database incompatibility issues on either site.
BlueHost Advantages:
BlueHost offers more server storage space and bandwidth right now, at a ratio of 3:1. Of course, if you’re using up 5 or 15 terabytes of bandwidth in a month, I hope you’re also making enough from your website to afford a dedicated host! Some people have criticized their earlier promises of “unlimited storage” and “unlimited” bandwidth, but functionally it is unlimited for the purposes of most smaller web publishers.
I had no problems with the “Digg Effect” and 17,000 unique visitors in a one-day period. The Bluehost servers just kept serving data as long as users were asking for it.
I have also found that the CPanel in Bluehost (the place where you manage your domains and sites) is a lot more intuitive and generally easier to use. The options and controls on both hosts are essentially the same, but Bluehost seems to organize these choices in a better way with more graphical icons. Bluehost wins again when it comes to installing software. There are a ton of options to auto-install up-to-date CMS software, and its instant as opposed to DreamHost’s “we’ll email you when its done” approach.
Click here to learn more about BlueHost or read the full Bluehost review
DreamHost Advantages:
If you use a coupon like Saves50 then DreamHost is cheaper than BlueHost. The current maximum discount for a DreamHost coupon is $50, so this brings the cost of one year of hosting down to about $70. Bluehost only costs about $85 for a year (prices before tax) so its honestly not even that much savings.
Another advantage to DreamHost – definitely the big one – is that you can re-sell server space. You can set up websites for your customers and charge them for the hosting that you purchase from Dreamhost. As soon as you have an account, you are free to charge anyone whatever you want to share some space on that account. Also, not only do they allow beta versions of software packages, some are even included with their auto-installers. Keep this in mind if you are considering a Pligg run website (they can be tough to install manually, but Dreamhost makes it easy!)
Click here to sign up or learn more about DreamHost or read our full Dreamhost Review
(Remember, use the coupon SAVES50 to get the maximum price savings or click here to see more coupon and promotional codes)
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I was a DreamHost member from December 2007 to March 20th, 2008, and started using BlueHost since then. Here’s my experiences with DH, in point form:
- Mediocre up-time (compared to BlueHost so far — I was on the “Blingy” server with DH, and it was constantly down — e-mail was unreliable.)
- SQL databases are on a DIFFERENT server than the actual website, and thus have slower loading times for sites that need access to SQL.
- Load times for regular content (html, pics, etc) were fine.
- Good CP
Since I’ve switched to BlueHost, I miss some of the features DreamHost has (catch-all e-mail, for one), but reliability and speed are a must for me.
I’ve been hosting with Bluehost for some time now and I have to agree: their reliability and speed are fantastic, but I’d like to add that their technical support and customer service are some of the best there is.
One disadvantage of dreamhost which I think should be pointed out; If you have over 5k unique visitors daily. they suspend your account and force you to buy VPS.
But bluehost won’t do this.
Bluehost is down right now. It has been down for most of the hour. It impacts all of our e-mail accounts (about 300) and all of our websites (over a dozen). They installed something on the production server and discovered a conflict. They then installed a patch and it is still down. Not very professional for a service supposing to serve the business community.
Here’s a good comparison. I have a site on Dreamhost shared that’s having server overload problems. They tell me that I need to upgrade to VPS, yet I only get 15k-30k page views/month.
My friend has the exact same wordpress theme/setup and gets 100k page views or more per month on bluehost. Unlike me, he doesn’t have any server overload problems. His site is about 3 sections faster than mine by pingdom too.
Was a customer with Dreamhost since 2004. Was happy with my Dreamhost experience up until about a year ago when things started to roll downhill. Eventually it got to the point where I was constantly being told that either my scripts were being killed, memory was being overused, that it was faulty equipment, and so-on and so-forth.
After checking out some other hosting companies, reading up on some reviews, and checking prices, I settled on Bluehost (yesterday, in fact). From what I can tell, I made the right choice.
I’d probably recommend Dreamhost to people who want to host a website that they don’t really care if it’s not up when they need it to be.
I have been delaying my decision on which web hosting service to use because I wanted to know which one suits my needs better. After reading this article and the comments from other readers, I am definitely signing up with BlueHost. Thanks, guys!
My site at hosted on bluehost often gives error establishing database connection…I am fed up with it,…
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