In the year of 2008, when I was about to set up my first website, I asked one of my best friend Nick which hosting provider to choose, who had an experience of web hosting for more than 5 years, “That would be definitely Dreamhost.” He said.
“Dreamhost? Name sounds good, but is it really the best one?” With this question I made a lot of survey on the internet and finally found the answer, which led to my final choice.

The reasons why I choose Dreamhost could be divided into three parts:
Appealing Feature
1. Unlimited Bandwidth and Storage Space
Even the 8.95$ per month plan is a bit expensive; you could get Unlimited Bandwidth and Storage Space. Bandwidth is important because a link on Digg or Slashdot can drive huge site traffic and finish your limited bandwidth in a few hours, then you have to pay extra fees to let your site stay online. Now many other companies offer this feature, but do you know what real “Unlimited Bandwidth” means? Real “Unlimited bandwidth” means that your site runs smoothly even when you get over 1000,000 pageviews per month. And that’s what Dreamhost offer. With the wordpress plugin wp-Supercache, your website could run even faster under heavy traffic.

Also, you can back up your own server to your Dreamhost account, it’s a great off-site backup solution and you can use them for high bandwidth files which are served from your own server.

The speed of sites hosted under Dreamhost is pretty fast and you can go to ozspeedtest.com and run the Dreamhost speed test under ‘international’ to try it out. Moreover, they never complain about your dodgy scripts or large bandwidth usage.

The only shortcoming of Dreamhost (If regarded as a shortcoming) is that your website shares IP address with like 5-15 other sites unless you pay extra for each. But compared to some shared companies that cram hundreds and even thousands of sites on the same IP, 5-15 isn’t too bad.

2. One click Installations
You can build all kinds of websites like Blog(wordpress), forum(PhpBB), wiki(MediaWiki), image album(Gallery), store(ZenCart), CMS(Joomla) etc. with just one click. All you need to do is to point at your finger, say “install”, then you have installed it.

3. Host unlimited Domains, Subdomains, Subaccounts and Databases
You can host all your domain names on one account, for each domain you can create a unique database. Some other providers lowered the database hit level so when you publish a post it brings down your database, which is a stupid limit.

Dreamhost’s most clever marketing idea is their free sub accounts. For example, our first website was build under the sub account of a friend. So we have to pay 0 cents for it and we can manage our website using our own account.

4. Easy Using Control Panel
Even you’re a non-tech, it will be a pleasant thing to use the Dreamhost control panel. When you upload a zip or tar file, it would be unzipped automatically.
You can even edit the files online using the control panel. There are three ways to manage your server files: web control panel, ftp and ssh. Web control panel and ftp are used to upload web pages or small files (no larger than 2 MB). For big files (hundreds of MB), use ssh.

Excellent Customer Support
Dreamhost offers 7/24 customer support and 99.9% times (not 100% because no company could guarantee that) they guarantee your websites will be up. Sometimes they have a few outages, but they’re honest and prompt about dealing with the problems. Usually the problems will be solved quickly. There will be an Email informing you of the fix and a survey about your feedback. Dreamhost offer different feedbacks according to different users (e.g. They do not feedback professional webmasters and sysadmins like novices). User can keep track of all his/her support history.

Dreamhost is also famous for its reliable service. They have a discussion forum to support their service (Although with the exception of a couple of problems beyond their control, you won’t get 100% uptime but it’s still very acceptable).
Some people like their newsletter even more than their hosting. My friend Nick uses Dreamhost for about 7 years now, and has never lost any data, he is very happy with their service.
“I searched more but didn’t find any hosting service which provides all needed features at cheap rate. And you can’t find a web hosting provider who has better reputation than Dreamhost” said Nick.
Do not believe what I say? Check it by logging into their Dreamhost Control Panel Demo site, email them and contact them by phone, they’ll be very patient in explaining you by breaking down the jargons in a common language. I’m sure this will shock you.
You can easily monitor the usage of resource yourself with the aid of a chat system, technical support, ticketing method and free calls.

Even when you feel your site runs a bit slowly, you can contact with them and they will take your problem seriously.

High Reward
Join the dreamhost reference program. Every person you refer to Dreamhost becomes an affiliate of you, and you get 10% of their hosting fees for life or you can get a $97 bonus at once. Besides, you also get 5% of the hosting fees of whoever they refered.
You can use the $ you earn to pay for your future hosting plan, or just encash the money via Paypal anytime you like.

Some Other Tips You Should Know
Dreamhost is now hosting more than 850,000 domains, and they are doing something meaningfull. If you are a charity organization registered at USA, they host your site for free. When you chose Dreamhost, you have done something good for the world climate. Because Dreamhost is powered by green energy(Low carbon hosting).

As I mentioned in the beginnig, my choice of Dreamhost is due to one of my close friend, who helps me a lot in building my first website too. I sign up under his affiliate link. It does not make any difference to sign up individually or through affiliate link. But with his affiliate link, he would get paid a small amount of money. And I am happy to do him this act of kindness.
This is my affiliate link (I hope you could be happy too).
You can also use the promo code DHOSTPROMOCODE (enter whenever you’re asked) during your registration.
What extra benefits will you get via our DHOSTPROMOCODE?
One free top domain name (save you $15)
$20 discount for your yearly hosting plan
$20 discount for your two years’ hosting plan

So, is there anything to worry about? The 97-day money back guarantee puts off all your doubts. If you’re not satisfied with dreamhost for any reason, you can get all your money back within 97 days. Just click here to start your Dreamhost journey.