Flutterby™! : Dreamhost 2006-12-07 00:57:17.205521+00

Dreamhost

2006-12-07 00:57:17.205521+00 by Dan Lyke 5 comments

So speaking of hosting options, what's the catch to Dreamhost? Do they screw you with or have unreasonably low limits on CPU use? Is the cost for overages super high?

I'm just not getting the other pricing plans as I look around (I'd like to find somewhere running PostgreSQL), and the performance I see on sites hosted on Dreamhost looks just fine.

DreamHost's pricing seems pretty much in line with the going rates. I'm paying a little less for my Bluehost account. I know Bluehost gives me 100 Postgres databases as well as 100 MySQL databases. However, DreamHost allows unlimited hosted domains whereas BlueHost limits to 6 unique domains (enough for me, really).

I've also been enjoying the Cpanel/Fantastico installable scripts on Bluehost (which I'm sure Dreamhost does as well). I just used PHPlist to create a mailing list for Asha's upcoming yoga workshops in Chattanooga and didn't have to fool with the configuration much.

After years of running my own server and the associated hassles, I'm finding it's much, much cheaper and easier to make someone else do the dirty work.

One caveat with Bluehost, ,a href="http://mattheaton.com/?p=58">the owner is a bit of a prude and doesn't like porn. But they have had perfect customer service with the couple minor issues I've had.

#Comment Re: made: 2006-12-07 04:19:12.789158+00 by: mvandewettering

I used dreamhost for a couple of years to host my podcasts, but since I sort of stopped playing in that field, I decided to not renew. I never used even 10% of the available bandwidth, but never had any difficulties with them at all. I'll give 'em a thumb's up.

Bluehost looks good aside from that, but I think that sort of attitude (and potential for hassle) is a deal killer for me.

Most of the rest of the hosting operations I'm finding are way more expensive than those two, so I'm definitely going to have to poke around a bit, especially since I may actually be able to find some place with PostgreSQL.

My only real bandwidth concern is that Flutterby has occasionally been hit with either DOS or referer spam attacks (I'm not sure which), and I don't want to be on the hook for a few bazillion dollars in bandwidth overage charges because of it.

I've been with DreamHost since '99 or '98 or so IIRC and I'd say that 99% of the time I've been happy with them. The 1% of the time when things go awry there is annoying, of course, but not worth the hassle to leave over it. They've had the occasional strange outages, but we're talking an average of a couple of hours once a year or something like that.

I've never had any extra charges for bandwidth or disc or processing or anything like that. Ever. They've seriously upped their allotments for all these things over the years, but I didn't run into issues way back when either.

Only contact when things go awry is via email or their web interface, which can frustrate those used to being able to actually call someone.

I was just made aware of HostMonster. They are $4.95/mo for 50GB space, 999GB/mo xfer and 100 Postgres databases... Wait.. sorry... It's BlueHost with a different wrapper... And cheaper too!