Dreamhost WordPress Hosting Review

Disclaimer: Our reviews are not sponsored, as we used our own money to purchase hosting subscriptions. Our reviews are 100% based on our sole opinions. Reviews contain affiliate marketing links where we get a commission when you purchase or subscribe to that service. Read our Affiliate Marketing Policy here. Also, please verify all product and pricing information directly with the linked brands, as product offerings change often. FastestWP.Website is not responsible for errors or product discrepancies.

We proudly host our website on Rocket.net.

Dreamhost is one of the original website hosts, having started in 1997. With over 750,000 WordPress installations and 1.5 million websites hosted, Dreamhost is also one of the heavyweights in the WordPress hosting space. Today, in 2023, Dreamhost offers a wide variety of WordPress plans, spanning from beginner plans under $5/month to dedicated server hosting for heavy-duty e-commerce websites. But how does Dreamhost perform for the beginner WordPress blogger?

In this review post, we will detail Dreamhost’s services, how they performed on our performance benchmarks and speed tests, and our overall ranking of their web hosting services. We won’t be reviewing Dreamhost’s other services, such as VPS, Cloud, and Dedicated hosting, but Dreamhost also offers these services.

Dreamhost General Features

Dreamhost offers a standard suite of WordPress hosting features. We were pleasantly surprised that Dreamhost offers a 97-day money-back guarantee on its Shared Hosting services. That is by far the longest guarantee period we have seen; only WP Engine comes close at 60 days. Otherwise, 30 days is the industry standard, which is what Dreamhost offers on its higher-tier DreamPress hosting services. Additionally, Dreamhost includes free SSL certificates and 24/7 support via live chat on all of its plans, which is great.

We recommend transferring your WordPress site using the new host’s professional transfer service, if available. By having a professional handle the transfer, you can ensure they can take care of any problems, and you can focus on running your business or blog. While DreamHost offers professional transfer with its DreamPress hosting plans, DreamHost only offers automated transfer via a plugin on Shared Hosting plans. However, it seems that you can ask DreamHost to transfer your site to a Shared Hosting plan for $99. You may want to try it via the plugin first, and then, if that doesn’t work correctly, pay for the professional transfer if you buy a Shared Hosting plan.

We also like that Dreamhost offers email hosting on almost all of their WordPress plans. If you have a separate email plan through Google as part of Google Workspace, you don’t need to worry about email hosting – Google is your email host. But if you host your own email server, you must buy a separate email hosting plan from another provider. This adds cost and complexity to your WordPress setup, so keep that in mind. Note that Dreamhost also offers Google Workspace plans as an upgrade, but weirdly they charge more than just buying the plan directly from Google.

Finally, note that Dreamhost does not include malware detection in its WordPress plans. You’ll have to upgrade to DreamShield for malware detection and less-important other security features. Although it is only $3 per month, you’ll have to account for this in your monthly budget.

Dreamhost Optimization Features

Dreamhost’s optimization features vary based on whether you choose the cheaper Shared Hosting or the more expensive DreamPress. However, several “upgraded” features of DreamPress middle and upper-tier plans rely on Jetpack Professional. DreamHost’s wording on the website makes this confusing, in our opinion, and it is not clear that DreamHost intends to keep Jetpack Professional in the future. Keep this in mind if you choose to get a DreamPress plan because of Jetpack Professional.

Additionally, note that DreamHost does not have its own CDN but instead relies on Jetpack’s CDN. Jetpack’s CDN is free to any WordPress user if you sign up, except if you need video storage on the CDN, then Jetpack Professional is required. We’d recommend comparing Jetpack’s free CDN to Cloudflare Basic, which is also free.

If you are a business catering to North American customers – especially in the Eastern United States – a CDN is not that important, and you’ll be okay. However, if you have international customers, then we’d recommend looking at a different hosting provider that bundles their own CDN or Cloudflare with its plans. This is especially true if you are considering a DreamPress plan. You can get a better CDN and plan with GoDaddy, Rocket.net, or WPX for the same price or less.

Dreamhost Shared Hosting plans also do not include a staging website or built-in caching. We believe a staging website is important to test changes to your website without harming your live website, but staging is not crucial. On the other hand, built-in caching is quite important because your website will load much faster for visitors, especially those further away from your server location (the Eastern United States for Dreamhost).

You may not need these features if you run a simple website with local customers. However, if you run a mid-tier website or rely on customers outside of North America, you’ll want to skip the Dreamhost Shared Hosting plans. Yet, we find Dreamhost’s DreamPress plans – the next level up – to be a bit expensive for what you get. Thus, we recommend looking at another provider, such as WPX or Rocket.net. Or, if you are in Europe specifically and only serve European customers, consider HostXNow.

Dreamhost WordPress Shared Hosting Plans

Dreamhost’s Shared Hosting plans are on the cheap end of WordPress hosting, which is great for beginners. You’ll want to compare these plans to those Hostinger and Bluehost offers. None of the three providers offer a CDN on their cheapest WordPress plans, meaning they are best for businesses and blogs with local customers. However, Dreamhost only offers servers in the Eastern United States, while Hostinger offers a choice of several international locations. Remember this if you or your customers are not located in North America.

If you are anything but a beginning WordPress website, you’ll want to look at Dreamhost’s DreamPress WordPress plans. They offer more advanced features and perform better than the Starter and Unlimited Shared Hosting plans.

Dreamhost “DreamPress” Managed WordPress Plans

We are disappointed that Dreamhost does not offer a CDN on the lowest DreamPress plan and relies on Jetpack’s CDN for the higher plans. For the price, you can get a better plan with Cloudflare Enterprise CDN from other providers like Rocket.net or GoDaddy.

If we had to pick a plan, we would recommend the lowest DreamPress plan, as it comes with email hosting, 30GB of storage, and unlimited bandwidth. Only go for the DreamPress Plus or Pro plans if you need additional storage capacity or visitor allowance (or you really want limited phone support). Otherwise, the bottom DreamPress plan is fine.

Another thing we don’t like is that if you manage more than one website but less than five or ten websites, Dreamhost doesn’t offer a good solution. You should look at either Rocket.net’s three-website plan or WPX’s value-oriented plans, which also have better performance and more features.

Dreamhost WordPress Performance Tests

As with all of our web hosting reviews, we tested Dreamhost using our test WordPress website to see how Dreamhost performs in real life. We ran all of these tests using the Starter WordPress Hosting plan, which is the cheapest WordPress hosting plan Dreamhost offers. Then, we re-ran the tests using the middle DreamPress “Plus” Hosting plan. We wanted to see if there was a performance difference between the two plans for our website.

Our testing has three components: Google Core Web Vitals, GTMetrix Performance, and worldwide load testing. The results are below, and you can read our detailed testing specifications on this page.

Google Core Web Vitals – Lighthouse Scores – Shared Hosting

We were surprised that Dreamhost performed rather well on the Google Core Web Vitals, considering we used Dreamhost’s cheapest plan. Dreamhost scored 88 on the Total Performance Score, which is very respectable for a beginner’s plan. The LCP score was above 50, which surprised us since many low-end plans have terrible LCP scores.

The scores above are not the actual Lighthouse values but the ones Lighthouse assigns to each metric. We chose to display these scores instead of the actual values to make comparing scores across web host providers easier. Below is the chart showing the actual Lighthouse values for those of you who are more technically minded.

Google Core Web Vitals – Lighthouse Scores – DreamPress Hosting

Re-running our website tests on the upgraded DreamPress Plus plan did not help the Lighthouse scores. In fact, the scores went down. We achieved a similar outcome with the GTMetrix performance tests further below. However, note that if you have a high-traffic or complex website or run an e-commerce store, you may experience better results with a DreamPress plan than a DreamHost Shared Hosting plan. For our relatively simple WordPress blog, the additional performance resources provided by DreamPress did not make a difference.

GTMetrix Performance – Shared Hosting

Much like the Lighthouse scores above, we were pleasantly surprised at Dreamhost’s performance with GTMetrix. As our website was hosted in North America, it is no surprise that San Francisco and Chicago did very well, including quick TTFB scores. Scores went down outside North America as times increased, but that is to be expected as there is no CDN. We expect a beginner’s plan to focus on simple websites catering to a local crowd, in which Dreamhost delivers respectable scores in North America. But if you cater to a worldwide audience or have a not-so-simple website, you’ll want a better plan from a hosting company like GoDaddy or WPX.

GTMetrix Performance – DreamPress Hosting

We tested our website with the middle plan (“Plus”) of the upgraded DreamPress WordPress hosting plans to see if upgrading would make a performance difference. It did not. The scores averaged to be about the same for our test website. Thus, for a simple blog like our site, there is no need to upgrade. However, if you have a more complex website or run an e-commerce website, then you may benefit from the increased performance of a DreamPress plan.

Having said that, we’d recommend you look at GoDaddy, Rocket.net, and WPX instead of a DreamPress plan.

Worldwide Load Testing – Shared Hosting

The Dreamhost Basic WordPress plan did not do well at all on our Global Load Test. Scores were extremely high in all locations, including North America, although failure rates were low at under 5%. As this is a Basic WordPress plan without a CDN, we didn’t expect scores to be good. Thus, this result isn’t unexpected.

Again, if you are looking for a basic WordPress site with a local, North American audience, then the Lighthouse and GTMetrix scores are good for this purpose. But if you need something more, we’d recommend looking elsewhere.

Worldwide Load Testing – DreamPress Hosting

Performance on our worldwide load test was still terrible with DreamPress, but it improved significantly from the Shared Hosting. The additional performance resources provided by the upgraded plan indeed help the performance of a highly trafficked website. Having said that, the overall performance is far worse than other hosting providers, especially in the price range of DreamPress.

Our Dreamhost WordPress Review Recommendation

We like Dreamhost’s pricing of its Shared Hosting plans, and they are some of the cheapest WordPress plans available. Yet, the performance of the Starter plan was not that great, especially outside of North America. We found that Hostinger and Bluehost offered better performance in the beginner category, although their pricing is slightly higher than Dreamhost.

If you aren’t a beginner, then we aren’t that impressed with Dreamhost’s offerings. If we had to choose, we would choose the DreamPress Plus plan, which offers many features without being super expensive. Yet, we don’t find its features more compelling than cheaper or similarly-priced plans from GoDaddy or Rocket.net.

We also don’t like that if you host more than one website, there isn’t an intermediate plan available; you have to jump to a 30-website plan that is far more expensive. A provider like WPX offers a better combination of features, performance, and price for 5-10 websites.