Web hosting can be more than just renting a server, and DreamHost shows that.
In this 'One Hour With' series I'm getting stuck in with some of the best web hosting providers - the last edition saw me get reacquainted with WordPress via Hostinger.
I never start with a goal, I just see where I end up, and with so many features at DreamHost, I'm keen to get stuck in - so let's go!
Start the clock 0:00
Signing up
After a short bit of upselling for email and DreamShield Protection I'm directed to the main dashboard. No one likes upselling, and pushing security features at checkout is extra unlikeable in my opinion - hosting should come secure (and usually does) as standard.
Sure, there is an argument for; if you don't know what you're doing it's best to have the security features and before there is a problem is the best time to ask if you want it. But, to me, any time security features are upsold at checkout, it feels too pushy.
DreamHost's plans are some of the cheapest but after these two optional add-ons, the plans are no longer that afforable, now sitting in the same pool as other lower-level hosting plans - and when compared side by side on price and performance (like in our Hostinger vs DreamHost feature) DreamHost comes up short.
OK, that's a lot of negatives but there are positives. DreamHost is still cheap if you don't buy additional features and while it is less powerful you do get a lot of business and ecommerce features included that you don't get with other hosts.
01:23
I didn't want to spend time making a website so I decided to use DreamHost's offer to build me a personalized website.
I describe that I want a site that is a vertical list of comic strips.
On the left I want months in a navigation bar so a user can jump further down the list - I don't know how user friendly this will be but I don't care at this point, as this website will be scrapped by the end of the day.
Oops. I didn't read with enough attention, and skimmed past the first five minutes and didn't read the "tomorrow" part.
I'm so used to website builders being no more than templates or a generic AI creation that I just assumed this would take moments, not an entire day - which, to be fair to DreamHost is still decent if there is actually a human making a site for me.
I don't have a day to wait, I have minutes - so I decided to scrap this and use another method to get my site made. It's a pity I do want to see what this site would have turned out like - but time for that another day.
While answering questions about my site I was told to acknowledge that this would overwrite any existing site I had on my server. That makes sense - if I have a one-site plan then of course an existing site will need to get the chop.
The thing that made me question this was the phrase "We'll deliver the website to your email address" - to me, this reads like the website files will be given to me via email. If this is correct, why should my site need to be deleted?
Even though the site will likely be deleted tomorrow anyway, sometimes I need to go in and take a few extra screenshots. I didn't want it disappearing unexpectedly. So, I decided to contact support.
06:57
The chatbot didn't understand a word I said. I gave it some feedback on how unhelpful it is, it apologized and gave me a link to click to contact DreamHost.
And...back to the same Chatbot. If there is one thing worse than a bad chatbot it's a bad chatbot that loops around to itself.
I took a breath and looked around the page to find 'Talk to an agent'.
20:11
Support confirmed that if I had started to make a website, it would be deleted when the new one was made, because I have one temporary domain and a placeholder website had been created with this domain.
So, I had to delete my temporary domain which would unlink the new site to my account.
No problem. It was easy and when I went back to the Websites tab I was (for once) happy to see an error message telling me that no websites could be found.
I decided to use Liftoff, a website builder developed by DreamHost, to make my site, as I still didn't want to make it myself.
It didn't take too long to go through the standard questions you get on website builders - typical queries such as, 'do you want to create a blog or landing page?'
However, it did take while for WordPress to be installed. How long? I'm not sure because I got bored and started doing something else while I waited (it was less than 10 minutes though).
30:11
Not great. I asked for a white website. I also didn't get the navigation bar on the left side. At least I did have one single image.
I tried again with a similar prompt but with the addition of pointing out what the AI builder did right and wrong.
Still black, still no navigation bar, and this time I have multiple images in a container instead of one scrolling linear feed.
I gave up. This isn't a website builder review after all. I replaced some of the images with my cartoon strips and decided that was enough of that.
34:39
Without a business plan, it can be hard to focus your time and resources where it counts.
DreamHost's AI business tools make creating a business plan easy and it also provides unique and useful suggestions to grow your business. It doesn't take too long to fill out the questions and receive bespoke recommendations.
Many of the suggestions are kind of obvious but it still takes times to write them down and create a final draft of your plan. The AI Business Planner definitely saves time in this respect.
There was one issue - when I tried to download the business plan to a PDF, the PDF was blank. I tried multiple times and waited for a while but I was never able to download the content.
45:55
I moved on to the Business Advisor. It's important to note that because I only played with this tools for a few minutes, I'm not getting the most out of them. The more the tools know about my business the better it can advise me.
Instead of me telling you about the tool, you can read about it in DreamHost's Business Advisor overview.
Part of the advisor is a content generation tool. I tried creating some content with it but after going through the motions I was stuck on the text blocks being generated.
60:00
Overall impressions
I felt like I was waiting around a lot for DreamHost, but I was in a rush to get things done. I know that this hour spent with DeamHost might paint it in a bad light, but I still recommend them as best for beginners.
While the servers were slow to install WordPress, in our speed tests the performance of your site is good value for the money (if you don't buy additional features). I didn't get anything spectacular out of the AI business tools but I only gave it really basic information so I shouldn't expect much.
From a beginner's perspective, for the price and the tools you get, I think DreamHost offers good value.
- I've also rounded up the best WordPress hosting providers
