Features and Ease of Use
The company provides shared hosting, game hosting, radio servers, VPS/VDS hosting, dedicated servers, and colocation services. You’ll find the following features with DreamServer’s shared hosting packages:
- SSD storage
- Multi-domain hosting
- Softaculous auto-installer with 400+ applications and scripts
- User-friendly cPanel
Interestingly, while DreamServer advertises a 99.9% uptime guarantee, a closer look at the Service Level Agreement (SLA) reveals that the company offers credit when 100% uptime levels are not met. The caveat is that downtime is only measured from the moment you open a support ticket, which means you’ll have to keep track of your website closely and send in a ticket as soon as your website goes down.
DreamServer also uses superior technologies available in the market today, such as the CloudLinux OS, CageFS file system, OptimumCache, and MySQL Governor. All this means is that you’ll have above-average security and performance for your website.
DreamServer also supports advanced scripting languages such as Ruby and Python. However, one downside is that it only offers PHP support up to version 5.6, so your PHP scripts may be noticeably slower than the norm.
Pricing and Support
DreamServer’s prices are fair for what you get. These packages certainly aren’t the cheapest, but you can host multiple domains even on the entry-level plan.
Unlike most of the competition, DreamServer also features a performance credit clause in its SLA: you’re entitled to a refund of 5% of your monthly hosting fees for every 30-minute downtime interval your website goes through. Other than that, though, there isn’t a money-back guarantee.
DreamServer only has monthly billing terms available. This is both good and bad: you won’t be tied down with long contracts, but you also won’t be entitled to any discounts if you’d prefer to stay with DreamServer for the foreseeable future. The company offers a three-month free trial of its web hosting services, but it appears that there’s limited availability for these slots, so you’ll have to check back from time to time.
Available support channels include live chat, email, and phone. To my surprise, when I tried to connect with them over live chat, I was told that I was number 37 in the queue. After waiting a number of hours for my turn, I finally gave up.
