DreamHost’s Support Sucks
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This blog was down for two days or more and DreamHost never bothered to reply or fix it. JohnTP.com was hosted on my friend Deep’s DreamHost account and it was blocked as my blog took a lot of resources.
Deep’s account hosted many other sites too and all were down because of this and another blog. I was on a visit to my Grandparents house at the time and never knew that my site was down until I visited it on my uncle’s PC. But I thought it was a temporary thing.
Later while traveling back home, Deep called to let me know about the mess created by DreamHost and that he has been contacting them for a long time with no luck.
After many hours, Dreamhost replied back and unblocked all sites except for this blog. I then created my own DreamHost account so that I can use VPS. Many more hours later of contacting DreamHost they moved my domain to the new account, but forgot to move the files and database!
I contacted them many times, but they never replied back. Luckily Deep came to the rescue and moved the files and database for me today. None of my sites have ever been down for this long and thanks to DreamHost I lost a lot of traffic and money 
I am now waiting for them to move the files and database of my hardware review blog to my new DreamHost account. I won’t say DreamHost sucks but their support really sucks!
Have you faced any problems with DreamHost?
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Posted on December 30th, 2007 | Category: General |
Shivaranjan
December 31, 2007 at 12:15 am
Recently I also moved to Dreamhost and thankfully I did not encounter such issues. So this things does make me think of moving to some other host.
Angelo
December 31, 2007 at 3:33 am
Glad to see you’re back online.
David
December 31, 2007 at 5:35 am
It is helpful to open up a regular channel with someone on the inside of the building. I did this by saving a previous correspondence. Every time something comes up or I have a question I go back to it.
Because they say at the end of every message ‘If you have any question about this please let us know.”
They “know me” and respond right away. Maybe they think I am that crazy old guy who will write about them if they aren’t helpful. I don’t care. Just keep the back door open.
Rohit
December 31, 2007 at 6:58 am
This has never happened to me. In fact their support staff reply immediately as far as I remember. Maybe this was a one of thing or maybe you really pissed them off.
Benedict Herold
December 31, 2007 at 7:11 am
John, I was just wondering why you didn’t make a decision on move? Lately, I have been seeing lot of people writing worse about DreamHost. Might be this is time for you too for testing out MT!
Martin Jones
December 31, 2007 at 8:23 am
I know a lot of people say check out my host and then try and refer you to an affiliate link, this is not the case here. Take a look at TotalChoiceHosting.com and you’ll be glad you did.
I’ve been with them a few years now and they are one of the best. Live tech support, active forum, immediate assistance with problems and issues.
Search on Google to see what others are saying about them or look at their forum.
Deep
December 31, 2007 at 8:37 am
Actually, their support is many times quick but it is quick only for the minor issues.. if you are facing major issue like this, it takes ages for them to reply.. and forget getting reply during nights (in US)..
JohnTP
December 31, 2007 at 11:04 am
Benedict Herold - I already payed for a new DreamHost account for a year and their web host ain’t bad, its just that their support sucks.
Judi Sohn
December 31, 2007 at 12:29 pm
I left Dreamhost a year and a half ago for exactly this reason. They are a great webhost when everything is running well. But if there is a problem they took way too long to reply to urgent tickets, or they’d wait until the problem resolved to reply. If I’ve got someone screaming at me that their email doesn’t work, I want to be able to give them an explanation quickly, even if it’s something that can’t be fixed instantly.
I will never work with a webhost again, no matter what the price or features, that doesn’t have phone support.
I can’t remember the last time I actually had to call Pair or MediaTemple (the two webhosts I use now for various sites) but it’s comforting to know that option is there if/when I need it.
PC
December 31, 2007 at 7:03 pm
The support might be poor because of the year end holiday season and some staff out on holidays… or maybe not.
Ronald
December 31, 2007 at 7:54 pm
I have left DH and move to mediatemple.net. That’s good host so far.
Steve
December 31, 2007 at 11:00 pm
From my experience Dreamhost is a great hosting company. I have nothing but great things to say about them and their great response time to any concerns I have. Also, I love their admin panel area. I feel your friends experience might be the exception rather than the rule.
Davinder
January 1, 2008 at 12:54 am
Out of all hosts that I have tried till now - Dreamhost is the best.
Even your decision to remain with dreamhost (new a/c) suggest same
Regarding support, some exceptions can happen, we all do mistakes!
nitinpai
January 1, 2008 at 2:10 pm
My site is hosted on Bluehost and almost an year has gone by. Until this I have had my share of problems too but Bluehost has very good support. Apart from one issue all the rest have been solved by the very next day. The response time of the hosting is also impressive. I would recommend Bluehost to you too.
Lucy Dee
January 1, 2008 at 11:44 pm
This makes me worried. I was RECOMMENDED Dreamhost by an affiliate member whom I also bought a package off of, and I’m regretting even having my 2-yr contract with them. I plan on doing some major traffic heavy marketing for my blog. This is probably the 5th BAD review I’ve seen about Dreamhost.
Is there any way to get out of their contract? I heard if the site crashes enough, they’ll refund you, and end the contract amicably.
(I’ve also taken note of all the other sites recommended on this post.)
For those who weren’t paying attention, here are a bunch of hosting companies that I’ve been researching:
- Bummer Hosting - FULL SERVICE–really worth checking out!!! (http://www.bummerhosting.com/)
- Cari.net
- Site5.com (I’ve heard 1 or 2 bad reviews about them)
- Pair - http://www.pair.com/
- WebKeepers - http://en.webk.net/
- BlueHost - http://www.bluehost.com/
- Total Choice Hosting - http://www.totalchoicehosting.com/
- MediaTemple - http://www.mediatemple.net/ (I find them expensive)
Ronald
January 2, 2008 at 9:10 pm
Dee - Yes, mediatemple is expensive, but if you have a huge traffic/day (Off course income, likes this blog), why not?
Lucy Dee
January 3, 2008 at 9:44 pm
An article on the WORST webhost providers:
http://www.nouptime.com/top-10-worst-hosts
Deep Ganatra
January 3, 2008 at 9:51 pm
hmm actually Dreamhost is pretty good just the customer support is bad.
Mediatemple - actually it’s not costly compared to what John is paying for this server but service wise, they are pretty bad even uptime is bad.. I was with them for around 3-4 months and I must say that period was the worst for me..
Deep
Steve
January 4, 2008 at 2:24 pm
I tried DreamHost, MediaTemple and WebFaction and so far WebFaction has been the most reliable. They don’t oversell like crazy, which means that the service you get tends to be better.
Martin Key
January 5, 2008 at 4:31 pm
That’s absolutely insane for a number of reasons:
1) MYSQL MIGRATION: Dream Host uses cPanel/WHM. Webhost Manager has a built migration tool. It takes 10-15 minutes tops to transfer the contents of an entire site (files, email accounts, passwords, databases) from one location/account/server to another.
2) IGNORANCE: Dream Host clearly had no idea who you were or how *far* your blog reaches. In the past, whenever we had a client that generated an insane amount of traffic, we would waive their hosting bill, put them on a dedicated server, and ask for some banner impressions. It’s amazing they didn’t contact you (or Deep) prior to shutting your site down to work something out.
I think Dream Host is *very* lucky they have such an unforgiving client like yourself. Best of luck on your new VPS!
Simonne
January 10, 2008 at 12:32 am
I’ve been with Dreamhost since more than one year now, and I’ve experienced one very serious interruption (almost two days) and a few smaller ones. The customer support was pretty quick in answering my questions, but sometimes they were not able to fix their problems quick enough for my taste. It is true that I never had such spikes in traffic to put them in the situation to shut down my sites.
kpriss
January 10, 2008 at 3:54 am
Yesterday, my website was down for 4h30′. I wrote for an explanation and I received an answer after 3-4 hours. I think they have a good web hosting and also a quite cheap one.
Matthew
January 12, 2008 at 4:00 am
Dreamhost is the host host I have ever used. My FTP, website, and mail server was always down or extremely slow. No wonder why they give you so much for so little - they s-u-c-k. I wouldn’t recommend them to anyone and the only thing they did right was refund me for the few months I suffered with them.
We’re on a dedicated server now and life is good - the wallet isn’t, however.
Michaelsviews
January 24, 2008 at 5:55 pm
DH , yea the ones that got evicted from there previous office space, oh yea I want them for hosting. There are lots of OUTSTANDING host’s out there at great prices also. A Small Orange, Little Oak, Freshly Pressed. I started with Freshly Pressed, and am currently with A Small Orange, paid for a year and got 2 months extra. The support is AWESOME, I do not have any COMPLAINTS with them at all. Currently in the process of reconstructing my Blog’s and finding some solid themes and getting things up and running again
Andrew
January 26, 2008 at 9:57 pm
Move yourself to a better host. For a VPS (semi-managed), I would suggest Knownhost (www.knownhost.com). I have been with them for more than a year and they are excellent. Use their TX-based plans, as the bandwidth is provided by better carriers than the CA datacenter.
Ashish
February 1, 2008 at 12:54 pm
Don’t you think there are better alternatives for a VPS than Dream Host?
I am lucky enough to have a DH account for free (well almost). I would have really repented if I would have paid their actual charges.
Lance
February 4, 2008 at 10:17 am
I agree. It’s frustrating that Dreamhost’s support is through email. I’ve waited for a day or two before hearing something back. That being said, once I did get someone’s attention, they were very helpful and quick to fix the problems.
Rebaca
February 13, 2008 at 1:48 pm
It is helpful to open up a regular channel with someone on the inside of the building
Ross
June 12, 2008 at 6:39 am
I never had any problems with dreamhost when I used them years ago however I have seen their outages get really ugly since then.
Ross
- http://www.hostdisciple.com
Thomas Riehle
June 28, 2008 at 2:23 am
I am an extremely low-maintenance customer of Dreamhost. My website gets almost no traffic, and never will. I use them solely for email with my domain name on it, and have been at Dreamhost since October 2005. Once a month, I use MS Mail Merge to send an email to about 1100 clients and colleagues, always the same people, each one of whom asked to be put on the list. Suddenly this spring, when I sent the Mail Merge email, outgoing email was blocked–not only all the Mail Merge emails, either. All outgoing email was shut down for an hour. I started chatting with “Craig”–following David’s advice to stick with one person who “knows me.” Two gems from Craig, just today:
1. “I did not say that you could freely send …emails …however you saw fit” and
2. I said: > Once a year in September, I conduct research involving
> polls of political leaders in 121 countries. The team that
> oversees that work includes about 15 people at HQ, plus at least one
> contact in each of 121 countries. The whole email list is probably in
> excess of 200 people. They will send an email CC: ing everyone on the
> list to review the project. They will ask me to respond with REPLY
> ALL to everyone.
>
> If I reply to that email, will you block delivery?
Craig said, “Yes, our automated process will block that email.”
So they have (1.) Effectively disabled my MS Mail Merge capability; (2.) Told me I could not email “as I see fit,” and (3.) Told me they could not handle a REPLY ALL on an email with 200 people participating. I am not a spammer. These activities are just part of normal business operations for me. Now Dreamhost is denying me the ability to conduct my business “as I see fit.” I’ll be investigating MediaTemple and others to find a web hosting company that does not dictate to me how I run my business.
By the way, OP, don’t count on Dreamhost to make the data move painless. When I asked my new pal “Craig” about procedures for moving to another web hosting company (”as I see fit”), he said: “Unfortunately we do not have file forwarding services.” HELPFUL!
tom thompson
July 31, 2008 at 10:57 pm
Never been with Dreamhost, all of your here and countless other posts say similar- stay away! I can’t validate.
I have been with LunarPages VPS. Pricey but very dependable, two outages in one year, not bad!!!!!!!!
Now I am with webkeepers.com -note, there is another webkeepers but they are full dedicated.
Webkeepers.com has been excellent for almost one month. $10/MO for a full year, full VPS!
The only potential problem with them is they offer NO support and DO say so up front.
If you are comfortable with Plesk and setting up a site yourself, this can save you $$.
So far, I am 100% with them.
If you use MySql/PHP this is it. ANYONE’s shared hosting for database/php is going to be a waste of your time.