ClearYourMind is our company blog about business, the Internet and everything a "web-guy" loves by Javier Cabrera, owner and principal of Emastudios, a tiny web design agency based in the beautiful caribbean-like Buenos Aires, Argentina.

April 17, 2008

DreamHost is a Smart, Bulletproof Hosting for your Web Hosting Needs


If we can say something about dreamhost in EmaStudios is that, they live up their hype. People from all over the world are choosing day after day moving their web sites, applications and projects to DreamHost; but what’s this not-so-good-looking service all about? why is placed number one on the market over the other web hosting companies? Why their success? as always, there are a lot of answers for those questions, but they all can sum up into one simple answer: they know their customer.

DreamHost is the first hosting service (as far as I know) that offers all their features for every plan. They don’t have three or four plans. They have just one big plan, with EVERYTHING in it; the only catch is you need to select how to pay and that’s where they get those little cents that makes life easier. If you choose to pay monthly, you will have also need to pay a set-up fee of $40 bucks; but if you choose to pay yearly, that setup fee is gone, caput, dead. You only pay $9.95 per month ($119.40 per year); which is really great if you have paypal. But, if you pay, two years in advance, then you get a good discount and instead of paying $9.95 per month, you will be paying $8.95 per month; doesn’t sound like much but it’s actually $107.40 per year. Pretty neat uh?

  1. DreamHost customer service is also top-notch. They answer back in half an hour most of the time; they treat the client with respect (we are paying their salary after all) they know how to talk you;… jeez, you can even choose when you are filling a support ticket how they should approach you: as a newbie, as a “I know everything” guy or as a “explain it to me like if I where a child” so their customer service is really flexible.
  2. One Click Installs: this is also another feature DreamHost offers with all their plans. Installing, wordpress for example, can be a pain even for the most experimented of us. They have this amazing feature on your account control panel that lets you install with just one click a set of web applications in your server, password protect them or leaving them for public access. You can install Wordpress, ZenCart, ZenPhoto, Gallery, Joomla, phpbb, mediawiki and advanced poll between others. That’s something not all web hosting have out there! You just need to select the database (also easy to create online, with just one click too), select the application you want to install in your web site and then click install. That’s it. That’s how I installed this Wordpress! was a second! No more going through configuration files or readme files anymore… and the best of all, you can upgrade your installs the same way.
  3. They have been here for ten years now; which is a big amount of time for any business. You don’t want those web hostings that come today and go tomorrow…
  4. 500 GB Disk Storage, 5TB (TeraBytes) per month for bandwidth (each month goes back to zero so you have 5TB renewed each month!) for $9.95 a month! And they have 500GB of Disk Storage, yes… is not 1TB like many offer, but they increase your limit by 2GB per week! that’s even more than I need! Unlimited MYSQL databases, UNLIMITED DOMAINS on your account (that means you can have all your sites hosted just for $5,95 per month!) and ONE DOMAIN REGISTRATION FOR FREE!
  5. They support RubyOnRails applications too, which is a big “oh may!” for the years to come!

All that can blow anyone’s head. But why they charge so much? where’s the catch? well, to be honest, there is no catch. They can manage this rates and at the same time, provide great customer service, up-time of all their servers and a big quality service each day.

What about more advanced features?

They also have them of course! if you are a developer like me, you need special features that suit your needs, not just one click installs and a pretty web panel; you need to be able to move fast with your hosting and be up to date with everything that comes up.

  1. If you need something installed on your server that isn’t included in the plan, you can always consult with the good guys of DreamHost and if it is possible, they will give you a hand.
  2. RubyOnRails (I said it already!)
  3. Unlimited MYSQL databases
  4. Beautiful wizard that creates the robot.txt file for our web sites
  5. Last version of PHP, always.
  6. Amazing wizard that helps us to protect a directory with .htaccess files. This is a HUGE feature I never saw before. Just a couple of clicks and the .htaccess is configured on any folder of your web site.
  7. Subversion on your site! you can have subversion and manage your projects like a champ! it’s SO EASY to configure online, almost like going through GMail.
  8. Create a QuickTime streaming service with just a couple of clicks!
  9. Flash media player for DreamHost account! I love youtube player, but if you need something more specific, you can have your .flv played with a “custom” flash media player; and also works as a image rotator.
  10. Cron Jobs. If you are advanced enough, you know what I’m talking about.
  11. IMAP email servers, which is great because you can have your email EVERYWHERE.

And those are just half of the features DreamHost has to offer. Really, when you see something this good you need to yell it to everyone around because, it’s like finding gold. We have chosen DreamHost as our hosting partner and Gmail Corporative as our email application; it’s a killer!
All that for only $9.95 a month!

There is anything more sweet?

They accept all major credit cards and PayPal too; that makes it even easier to sign up with this guys. But we didn’t talked about a Bonus feature, courtesy of your humble friends at EmaStudios. If you enter the following code:

CLEARYOURMIND

in the PROMO CODE field at the bottom of the registration form you will get a one-time $40 off on any plan
So if you sign up for $9,95 per month in the yearly plan ($119,40) you will get a $40 discount! you will have to pay only $79 bucks for the whole year! isn’t that sweet?

You need even MORE?

One-Click installs, unlimited MYSQL databases, UNLIMITED DOMAINS in your account, amazingly easy control panel (the best in the market according to users), an excellent customer service and online support, an overwhelming community ready to help you out in any problem you may have, a monstrous amount of space and bandwidth data, unlimited emails and users and you want more?

Well, the CLEARYOURMIND promo code adds 2 extra FREE lifetime domain registrations in your account! that’s coo-coo or what? We work with only the best out there, so I encourage you to give DreamHost a test-drive; you will be amazed.

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