Why I Love My Host
I love DreamHost. I've been with them since May 2005. I switched to them because I had a long list of failed hosting providers.:: My hosting nightmare story :: (Skip this section)
Over the course of about a decade I first ran through every free host in the book. Then about a year ago, I decided I was going to be done with other people's ads once and for all, as well as crashing sites every other day, so I started paying for hosting. I grabbed the absolute cheapest host I could find that had a database and a scripting language (PHP and MySQL).
Their support was awful. I had been on their free plan before I started paying, so I thought the level of support and attitude towards me would get better once I was a paying customer. I was wrong.
When my site would go down, I'd submit a support ticket from their website (full of mostly broken links). I'd wait a few hours or a few days only to get a response like "You must be going crazy. It works fine for us." or "Our logs show that nobody has tried to access the page, so your firewall must be blocking you." Then after another day or two, it would magically start working again.
I asked them once which hosting plan I was on, since the services I had didn't match the website description of the services provided at any level. Their reply was "We only keep this one page current (link). The rest of the site is out-of-date. But we'll be updating it in a week." As far as I could tell, they hadn't updated it since I started with their free plan 2 years before!
The last time my site went down, I waited days for a response, then resent my question again. They replied to my second email with: "We already responded to your first email." That was all. I replied with a nice rant about how completely unhelpful that was, since I obviously didn't get their other response (otherwise why would I have resent the question?). So they wrote back saying that my email provider wasn't delivering my messages to me. (Convenient how nothing is ever their fault.)
And then the final straw was their explanation of why my site was down this time: "You must have given your password away because someone with a Kuwait IP address has deleted most of your files." I don't give passwords away, I hadn't used this password anywhere else, and it was relatively strong (alpha-num, not in dictionary, etc.). My yearly renewal was coming up, so I told them to not renew me, switched to DreamHost with my (regrettably old) backup files from my computer, and settled into my new hosting home. (Then I installed about 3 flavors of anti-spyware stuff on my computer, changed passwords everywhere, and made them even stronger than before. Just in case.)
Shortly thereafter, I got a series of emails from my old host saying 1) We were severly hacked. [See, I knew it wasn't me!] 2) We're working on restoring backup files. 3) We've gone bankrupt. 4) We've been bought out. 5) Welcome to your new host. Sorry we can't recover any files from your old host. Talk to them about that. (contact email address)
So I was glad to be at Dreamy DreamHost. I was even able to donate some of my webspace to my sister for her missonary newsletter because I had more storage, bandwidth, and domains to be hosted than I needed!
:: End of nightmare! ::
How DreamHost ended the nightmare:
According to me:
- I'm paying less than $10/month for hosting.
- Dreamhost has a control panel where you can do everything from change your password to add a new domain to your hosting plan. No need to wait for customer service to get around to you.
- Dreamhost offers CGI, Perl, Python, PHP and MySQL, so you can have a dynamic site.
- You can add a WordPress Weblog, a phpBB Forum, and a MediaWiki Wiki each with one click.
- A free guestbook is available through DreamBook.
- Between the knowledge base, discussion forum, and technical support, all your questions are answered!
- If their site should ever go down, they have an off-site page where they can keep you updated on what's happening.
- They are FRIENDLY!!!!
- There is an unconditional 97 day money back guarantee on all accounts, we have no hidden costs, no minimum monthly contracts and a price freeze in effect guaranteeing that any price you sign up for on a recurring plan will never, ever, increase!
- Canned CGI scripts, full CGI access, PHP4, SSH and Telnet, raw log files plus analyzed access statistics, unlimited email forwarding, aliasing, auto-responding, vanity domain names, MySQL, e-commerce, plenty of disk space and transfer allowance are available on our numerous service plans (prices range from $9.95 to $79.95/month).
Seriously, if you use promo code "GlazedSentYou" you'll save $10!
Go back to Erin's page.
These pages were created by Erin Potter. glazeddoughnut@hotmail.com