Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

The_Equivocator · Sep 23, 2003, 03:11 PM

So, what do you guys think about DreamHost?

Apparently they are having this 3 day special (ends tomorrow) where their top-of-the-line, $80 a month service is only $10 a month for as long as you have that account.

I've been wanting a hosting service for a while now, but they all seemed pretty expensive for the features I wanted. This deal seemed pretty good, so, I signed up for it on a whim, something I don't usually do.

So, I was wondering what the rest of you think about DreamHost/this deal? Was it worth it? How does it compare to whatever service you currently use? And for those current DreamHost users out there: what do you think of their service/uptime/features/interface/etc? Am I going to want to keep this service past the first month? What are your major complaints?

Oh, and they apparently have some sort of referral system which I haven't yet bothered to check out. But, if any of you think it is a good deal and am glad I mentioned it here, my referral ID is scelis.

nonhuman · Sep 23, 2003, 03:15 PM

Or, if you like me better (just kidding Sebastian

) reference nonhuman.

The_Equivocator · Sep 23, 2003, 03:16 PM

Originally posted by nonhuman:
Or, if you like me better (just kidding Sebastian ) reference nonhuman.

Heheheh.

You use them, too? For how long? And do you like them?

nonhuman · Sep 23, 2003, 03:23 PM

I signed up yesterday after Chris posted on Caucus. So I like them so far, but that's not really saying much. At the moment I'm still waiting for Carleton's DNS servers to update so that my domain will actually point to their server for people on campus (should happen tonight at 5, I think). Then I'll actually be able to start using their services for real. Just the fact that I can get 1600 MB of storage, webhosting, email hosting with POP, IMAP, and webmail access, and webDAV and Samba access for just $10/month convinced me to get it. Once the DNS servers are updated so that people will actually be able to send me email through my domain I intend to get rid of my .Mac and use this instead. All the other features (free verisign certificate for ssl! free ecommerce software and space! free mysql databases! all sorts of other crap!) are just icing on the cake that I may or may not get around to using later on.

The_Equivocator · Sep 23, 2003, 03:30 PM

Originally posted by nonhuman:
... I intend to get rid of my .Mac and use this instead.

Yeah,lately I've been debating about whether or not to renew my .Mac membership. With the features that this deal has, I don't think I will. It makes .Mac look pretty pathetic...

100MB of storage?

soul searching · 04:36 PM

Originally posted by The_Equivocator:
Apparently they are having this 3 day special (ends tomorrow) where their top-of-the-line, $80 a month service is only $10 a month for as long as you have that account.

I'm about to change my hosting company (my current one is a bit too expensive for my needs) so I might use you as a referal if there are no hidden charges, suprises of any kinds, etc.

EDIT:

How big are the email quotas? Can you use FTP to upload your files?

EDIT #2:
You get all of your money back except for $25 to pay for the "free" domain.

The_Equivocator · 04:58 PM

Originally posted by soul searching:
EDIT:

How big are the email quotas? Can you use FTP to upload your files?

EDIT #2:
You get all of your money back except for $25 to pay for the "free" domain.

From one of their "Knowledge Base Articles":

Is there an attachment size limit for email.

Yes. Our mail servers will reject attachments greater than 40 Mb for either incoming or outgoing mail.

For files larger than this, you should upload the file to an anonymous FTP server or to your website, send the recipient a link to the file.

And yes, you apparently get full FTP access, both for yourself to upload files, as well as for anyone who wants to use your site.

As for your edit #2, I assume you are talking about what happens if you cancel your account with them within the first x days, hoping for a full refund. If that is the case, hopefully it is not something I will have to worry about. Unless the service is bad, I'm not planning on canceling my service right away.

EDIT: Oh, I may have misread your first question. Actual e-mail storage quotas are simply deducted from your overall storage quota.

Alias · Sep 23, 2003, 04:58 PM

SWEET!
I had just signed up with pair.com last night because I needed to move my hosting. I was going to be paying about $40 a month and not even have all the features offered by dreamhost!

The WebDAV is the feature that sold me on the service. I have never seen that offered before. The SSL will come in very handy as well.

I'm really excited about this place. Even if it turns out half as well as I hope, that will still be 500x better than my current place at the exact same cost.

schk · Sep 23, 2003, 05:26 PM

I used Dreamhost for a few months to host a in-progress site and found the features and price pretty decent. However, I ended up switching because of their limits on database queries. If you don't plan on using php/mysql then this is of no concern to you. They are the only host I've seen that counts "hits" to your databases. While my code is all efficient and does not needlessly query a database, it is extremely limiting and punishes you if you have a heavily visited site. They even have recommendations to use persistent connections in their knowledgebase which is even worse in a shared server environment such as theirs. The typical limits you run into in webhosting is bandwidth only, but Dreamhost limits you in a second way which is frustrating considering the rest of their offerings are decent.

The_Equivocator · Sep 23, 2003, 05:34 PM

Originally posted by schk:
I used Dreamhost for a few months to host a in-progress site and found the features and price pretty decent. However, I ended up switching because of their limits on database queries. If you don't plan on using php/mysql then this is of no concern to you. They are the only host I've seen that counts "hits" to your databases. While my code is all efficient and does not needlessly query a database, it is extremely limiting and punishes you if you have a heavily visited site. They even have recommendations to use persistent connections in their knowledgebase which is even worse in a shared server environment such as theirs. The typical limits you run into in webhosting is bandwidth only, but Dreamhost limits you in a second way which is frustrating considering the rest of their offerings are decent.

Yeah, I saw that. The plan the special covers, though, allows for 25 million database connections a month. You'd have to have a pretty popular site to go over that... (a la Slashdot)

I can see how it might be annoying for the lower plans, though.

schk · Sep 23, 2003, 08:45 PM

Originally posted by The_Equivocator:
Yeah, I saw that. The plan the special covers, though, allows for 25 million database connections a month. You'd have to have a pretty popular site to go over that... (a la Slashdot)

I can see how it might be annoying for the lower plans, though.

Actually, 25 million sounds like a lot, but in fact it's barely anything. For example the site I was using on dreamhost gets over 1,000 unique hits daily (which is barely any traffic). I did a grossly underestimated calculation and was able to easily get 2 million "conueries" as they call it and that doesn't account for multiple visits to teh page, visitors refreshing pages, or browsing further than the main page of each section of the site. On top of that, that doesn't include the php/mysql based online store which will easily cause the limit to exceed 25m. Basically, if you don't have any plans on using a php/mysql online store, or message board, you should be fine.

itistoday · Sep 23, 2003, 10:11 PM

I don't know... this seems realllly fishy... It sounds too good to be true. Or maybe I'm just pissed off cause I registered with tera-byte...
*secretly hopes it's a scam*

The_Equivocator · Sep 23, 2003, 10:17 PM

Originally posted by itistoday:
I don't know... this seems realllly fishy... It sounds too good to be true. Or maybe I'm just pissed off cause I registered with tera-byte...
*secretly hopes it's a scam*

itistoday · 10:40 PM

Ok, i'm drooling now... i've just read their entire "glossary". I want in!!! Can they handle domain name transfers? Anyone know?

edit: Yes they do! Now to find out if i can cancel tera-byte.com...

itistoday · Sep 23, 2003, 10:58 PM

Does anyone know if you can tell dreamhost to transfer your domain before you've received conformation of canceling from another service?

The_Equivocator · Sep 23, 2003, 11:11 PM

Originally posted by itistoday:
Does anyone know if you can tell dreamhost to transfer your domain before you've received conformation of canceling from another service?

Hmmm, I'm not sure you even have to cancel your other service. I think you can transfer services from one place to another without canceling.

If I were you, though, I would read all of their docs on transferring at https://panel.dreamhost.com/kbase/index.cgi?area=46

itistoday · Sep 23, 2003, 11:19 PM

Originally posted by The_Equivocator:
Hmmm, I'm not sure you even have to cancel your other service. I think you can transfer services from one place to another without canceling.

If I were you, though, I would read all of their docs on transferring at https://panel.dreamhost.com/kbase/index.cgi?area=46

Thanks, will do!

Ozmodiar · Sep 23, 2003, 11:26 PM

I did business through dreamhost a couple of years ago, and i just signed back up. thanks for pointing this out!

RAzaRazor · Sep 24, 2003, 12:00 AM

Cool. I just signed up my personal domain and refered myself from the business domain.

The quicktime streaming server is cool. And it will be like having a 1600 meg iDisk! You can even use it with iCal.

The_Equivocator · Sep 24, 2003, 06:26 PM

Originally posted by schk:
Actually, 25 million sounds like a lot, but in fact it's barely anything. For example the site I was using on dreamhost gets over 1,000 unique hits daily (which is barely any traffic). I did a grossly underestimated calculation and was able to easily get 2 million "conueries" as they call it and that doesn't account for multiple visits to teh page, visitors refreshing pages, or browsing further than the main page of each section of the site. On top of that, that doesn't include the php/mysql based online store which will easily cause the limit to exceed 25m. Basically, if you don't have any plans on using a php/mysql online store, or message board, you should be fine.

Hmmm, I think your math is shady. Let's say your site gets 5,000 unique hits a day (5x as many as your old site). That equals around 150,000 visits a month. To reach the 25 million limit, each unique visitor would have to perform over 164 database "conueries".

That seems to be a lot more traffic than you were implying.

davesimondotcom · Sep 24, 2003, 06:56 PM

I've been a Dreamhost customer for 5 years. They are reliable. Only thing I would change is the fact taht there isn't a 24/7 "hotline" for tech support. You have to email.

soul searching · Sep 24, 2003, 07:26 PM

Originally posted by davesimondotcom:
I've been a Dreamhost customer for 5 years. They are reliable. Only thing I would change is the fact taht there isn't a 24/7 "hotline" for tech support. You have to email.

Great. I just signed up yesterday (docholliday814 if you would like to use me as a reference

) and I'm happy so far. My new domain is now available, my old one is working just fine with the new servers. All dandy here

.

The only thing I've noticed is that their default stats page is a bit weak. I'll probably install Orchin tonight and that should solve it.

itistoday · Sep 24, 2003, 09:19 PM

Originally posted by soul searching:
Great. I just signed up yesterday (docholliday814 if you would like to use me as a reference ) and I'm happy so far. My new domain is now available, my old one is working just fine with the new servers. All dandy here .

The only thing I've noticed is that their default stats page is a bit weak. I'll probably install Orchin tonight and that should solve it.

I'm not that lucky, I changed the DNS servers yesterday and they still don't point to the right place, but whois shows the right servers... Oh well, I'll give it a day more before I start bitching.

Yeah, though they claim that the best thing is their tech support, it really sucks. It's very slow (average wait is about 2+ hours before a responce), and only 5 calls per month. Plus their "friendly service" get's a bit annoying... but maybe that's just me.

Oh well, I still think I'll sacrifice service for 4 times the space and twice the bandwidth... (tera-byte's service is amazing, sometimes they get back to you via email in less than 5 minutes, and you can always call them 24/7).

Btw, what is Orchin?

RAzaRazor · Sep 25, 2003, 02:41 AM

Originally posted by The_Equivocator:
Hmmm, I think your math is shady. Let's say your site gets 5,000 unique hits a day (5x as many as your old site). That equals around 150,000 visits a month. To reach the 25 million limit, each unique visitor would have to perform over 164 database "conueries".

That seems to be a lot more traffic than you were implying.

I found the section on the site where it talks about database hits. A "Conuerie" is a term they made up because it combines a connection and a query. The short of it is that a connection is made every time a query is made. The actual connection requires 25 times the amount of server time as the actual query. So to calculate the database usage, they combine the connection and the query. (25+1)
The catch? If you make one connection, and one query to the database, that counts as 26 Coneuries. So you are really getting only about 1 million hits to the database.

Fuzzy Math, to be sure. I'll have to see how many hits my database takes during a month, but paying for extra hits isn't a problem because at $10 a month, I can buy extra Coneuries 14 times before my bill gets up to the normal price for that hosting plan.

nonhuman · Sep 25, 2003, 03:15 AM

Originally posted by itistoday:
I'm not that lucky, I changed the DNS servers yesterday and they still don't point to the right place, but whois shows the right servers... Oh well, I'll give it a day more before I start bitching.

It's possible that the problem is that your IPs DNS server hasn't updated yet. I had the same problem. If you set your DNS servers to DreamHosts it should work just fine.

The_Equivocator · Sep 25, 2003, 08:49 AM

Originally posted by RAzaRazor:
The catch? If you make one connection, and one query to the database, that counts as 26 Coneuries. So you are really getting only about 1 million hits to the database.

Ah. I didn't see that 25+1 thing. Oh well, at least my calculations for usage were still WAY beyond what I would expect for my site.

soul searching · 12:56 PM

Originally posted by itistoday:
Btw, what is Orchin?

I misspelled it. It's Urchin.

EDIT:

Looks like all their sites come with Analog, which is free.

Turias · Mar 4, 2004, 11:05 AM

Just an update for those of you who didn't want to use Dreamhost because of the MySQL restrictions... those have been lifted. All accounts are now given unlimited queries each month!

splatq · Mar 4, 2004, 11:24 AM

I've used Dreamhost a few times in the past, and they've always had great service. The one web site was averaging 40,000 to 50,000 hits per day and I never went over the limits, except on bandwidth (I had the el cheapo plan).

Great service, and one of the few "mainstream" providers that allow you to host adult content.