$61 Off First Year (Highest Value), DreamHost Coupon Code: SAVE61BUCKS
$40 Off First Year + Free Domain, DreamHost Coupon Code: 40OFFPLUSDOM
Free Unique IP Address, DreamHost Coupon Code: UNIQUEIPFOSHO
*Copy one of the codes above and paste it at dreamhost.com.
Types of DreamHost Coupon Codes
DreamHost has gotten much better with coupons. They used to use some very vague ones (like 100% more bandwidth, even though they claimed to give you unlimited bandwidth), but the coupons and discounts that they have now are fairly straightforward. This is great, because DreamHost’s service is fairly expensive when compared to similar shared hosts.
The lower valued DreamHost coupon is 40OFFPLUSDOM. This gives you $40 off your first year of hosting along with a free domain. This will save you about $50, which isn’t bad, but the other coupon is slightly better. You can enter SAVE61BUCKS to get $61 off the first year of hosting.
They also have a third coupon that’s good for people who need a unique IP address. If you enter UNIQUEIPFOSHO, then you’ll get a free unique IP address added to your account.
Like most hosts, DreamHost offers a lower monthly price if you pay for additional hosting, but they savings aren’t quite as much as with other hosts. If you pay for just one year of hosting, then it’s $9.95 per month. However, that price goes down to $8.95 if you pay for two years of hosting. While some hosts might be worth this price, you may want to reconsider before putting any money down.
Other than DreamHost coupons, what’s there to like?
The first benefit is that you can get a free two-week trial that will really give you to opportunity to become accustomed to the host, its control panel and the admin tools. You’ll also get to see if the speed and uptime are to your liking. While most hosts give you a free trial, the majority of them just last for a few days to a week.
The money-back guarantee is fairly good on one hand, but terrible on another. It’s good because you get a full 97 days to decide whether or not you want your money back. That’s great because most hosts only give you 30 to 60 days, but there are two words of caution to attach to this guarantee. The smaller warning is that PayPal payments cannot be refunded, so use a credit card when signing up. Secondly, you can’t get a refund after the 97 days. Most hosts will give you a prorated refund, but DreamHost won’t give you a single cent after these 97 days.
Some shared hosts are limited in the services that they offer, but DreamHost has three major hosting services: shared, VPS and dedicated. If you like the service, then you can easily upgraded from shared to VPS to dedicated as your website and audience grow in size. This is convenient, and it also ensures that you can keep using DreamHost for your needs.
You can add unlimited domains to your account without a premium package (even though you’re paying premium prices already). This is a handy feature if you plan on building many different websites at once. Even though most hosts are moving towards hosting unlimited domains, a few are holding out and forcing users to upgrade before offering this service. At the same time, the premium packages needed for unlimited domains often cost the same or less than DreamHost’s basic plan.
All or most of the support staff is from America. This ensures that you won’t have to battle a language barrier on top of your tech issues, which makes things a little easier. The support staff is fairly good at answering questions, but the wait times aren’t as good.
Cons
One of the biggest issues is that the host is quite expensive. There’s nothing wrong with paying close to $10 a month for hosting. Some hosts give you more than enough bandwidth and power to justify this price point, but there are plenty of hosts that offer a similar level of service as DreamHost for less than $5 a month. While DreamHost seems to have quite a following, the truth is that the service isn’t really worth $8.95 and up.
DreamHost uses its own control program that allows you to perform administrative tasks. Nearly every host is now using cPanel, which is a fast and powerful control panel that gives you everything that you need. While there are some good proprietary control panels, DreamHost’s isn’t one of them. Not only is it slow, but it’s clunky and difficult to navigate. However, the billing is found right in the control panel, which is fairly convenient.
Support can be an issue at times. First of all, there’s no phone support, which can be a nightmare if you’re dealing with a catastrophic issue. Secondly, the response times are pretty bad. If you email them during normal business hours, then you might get a response in about four hours, but most hosts will respond in two hours or less. It can take much longer during non-business hours. You’ll normally get a knowledgeable response, but it will definitely take some time.
Another huge issue is their uptime guarantee. First of all, DreamHost offers a 100% uptime guarantee, which is impossible to maintain. Their true uptime is a subpar 99.54%. The standard uptime is around 99.9%, so DreamHost has some catching up to do. However, the biggest problem might be how their deal with uptime issues.
Let’s say that your website is down for a few hours. Most hosts will apologize and give you free hosting for a few weeks or a month. DreamHost will give you a prorated refund based on how much time you lost. They will refund you a whole day per hour down, which breaks down to about $0.06 per hour. Is that all your website is worth? If you’re selling products or making money, then this is a laughable policy.
Final Thoughts
DreamHost has a very high price point for its level of service that might make you think that you’re getting a premium host, but you can easily find the same level of service for less than $5 a month. While support is domestic and there shouldn’t be any language barriers, the response times are slow, even during normal business hours. The uptime and money-back guarantees are also terrible. In other words, it’s in your best interest to look for a better host. But if you insist, please use one of the above DreamHost coupon codes to save some dough.
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