11 sep 06
When I bought my first domain name back in 2000, I hosted it with Dreamhost. Even back then, they were the cool kids on the block, albeit smaller. I eventually ditched them in search of greener pastures—I was a poor college kid and they charged a setup fee, their plans weren’t as good as they are now. I’ve used a few different hosts over the years, some good and some not so much. But a few years ago for their birthday, Dreamhost offered a hosting deal way too good to refuse, and I switched back.
Mostly I’ve been completely happy. Their plans are insane, and they allow you to host unlimited domains on an account (big plus for me). The thing is, lately I have been completely unhappy.
Perhaps you read about all the problems they experienced in July. Looking back, I’m lucky my sites were up for my demo installs for my talk at BlogHer. Anyway, what kills me about that explanation they posted, and while I understand power outages at their datacenter is something they maybe don’t have control over, is all of the comments praising their transparency. Are you kidding me? I mean, I’m glad they’re honest about everything, but it really doesn’t make up for all of the downtime and problems I experienced.
At the time I thought, okay, that sucked, but it will never happen again. However, it’s happening again. I experienced intermittent downtime in August. My site was down this past Friday. This morning I couldn’t connect to my database, which ruined my main page. I feel like I must be on bad machines or something, because sometimes I experience problems when other Dreamhost customers are not.
Winn and I talked about this a little today, and he said, “Well, I think the question is whether or not these are growing pains or if their service is just really going downhill.” I’m not sure which it is. I can’t have my site down all the time, but it’d be a shame to throw away years of great service and a great plan for some temporary and hopefully fixable problems.
(P.S. No need to pimp your host. If I move, I already know where I’m going.)
C / 11 sep 2006 / 8:14 p.m.
I read at some popular blog - someone who was earning about 30K in referrals. I suppose sometimes those seem to be the most compelling reasons to stay.
Even though I don’t use them because I really dislike their user panel interface, I recommend them to people because everyone seems to laude them. But as I work on my friend’s site and it drags and drags - I regret that recommendation immensely.
Colleen / 11 sep 2006 / 10:58 p.m.
I wasn’t on Dreamhost for long, and I was pretty satisfied during the year I had a domain hosted there. But I had to move off when they used TypePad’s problems last fall as a marketing ploy in one of their banner ads. Ok, yes, I work for Six Apart but aside from that, I just thought it was crappy. It’s ironic that they’re experiencing similar “growing pains” now. Do unto others!
Dan / 11 sep 2006 / 11:36 p.m.
I’ve never been with Dreamhost but the company I have been with for the past few years has been fantastic. It’s not the cheapest in the world but the downtime is virtually nil. They add servers pretty regularly. It’s where I direct most of my clients to and I know a lot of colleagues that do the same and use the service themselves. That is if your switching, but I’d stick out for a little bit. Switching servers anywhere is a pain in the butt. Check these guys out though, they’re worth a peak anyway :). Media Temple
Dan / 11 sep 2006 / 11:39 p.m.
Opps, I got the address wrong. Media Temple (I’m totally banned now aren’t i? )
Richard Barkins / 11 sep 2006 / 8:01 p.m.
I’ve been with Dreamhost from the get-go and although there have been bumps along the road, I never thought of switching. They offer some of the best deals, customer service, and features around, for the price.
Sure there are intermittent problems here and there, but I’ve come to expect this sort of thing from any host. Who knows, maybe other hosts have worse problems…