DreamHost?

Freeway
1

Anyone on here use DreamHost to host their sites? Any comments on the quality of their service?

An area publisher is designing websites, including one for us, probably a 2nd one down the road. They do a lot of heavy lifting CMS work.

Our smaller publishing company designs a few websites, using Freeway, mostly static websites with minor updates that we take care of from within Freeway. We want to be open to adding some light CMS to some of our websites eventually (probably WebYep).

Trying to decide if we should go with DreamHost to have some consistency with our publishing partners, or if we should consider a provider like MacHighway. We are not web nerds/programmers people, we are publishers & designers, so would want a company that makes moving domains and sites around easy (for example, an existing advertising client of our print publications might want us to design their website, that may need to be moved from their existing host that they are unhappy with, to our host).

Also, I am wanting to move our email hosting from a MacOS X Server to the host provider’s servers - both our own email addresses at our publication’s domains, and also to keep the option open for our website customers to have email addresses at their domains.

Joe

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2

I used them for one client (another Freeway user) and our experience was pretty good. It really depends on how deeply you need to customize the environment how you will do. We started with their basic shared hosting (to take advantage of their unlimited storage) but then had to move to a VPS to fine-tune the versions of Apache and ffmpeg. Their prices were average, the support staff were occasionally brilliant, and occasionally average.

Walter

On Aug 3, 2012, at 11:04 AM, Joe Sporleder email@hidden wrote:

Anyone on here use DreamHost to host their sites? Any comments on the quality of their service?

An area publisher is designing websites, including one for us, probably a 2nd one down the road. They do a lot of heavy lifting CMS work.

Our smaller publishing company designs a few websites, using Freeway, mostly static websites with minor updates that we take care of from within Freeway. We want to be open to adding some light CMS to some of our websites eventually (probably WebYep).

Trying to decide if we should go with DreamHost to have some consistency with our publishing partners, or if we should consider a provider like MacHighway. We are not web nerds/programmers people, we are publishers & designers, so would want a company that makes moving domains and sites around easy (for example, an existing advertising client of our print publications might want us to design their website, that may need to be moved from their existing host that they are unhappy with, to our host).

Also, I am wanting to move our email hosting from a MacOS X Server to the host provider’s servers - both our own email addresses at our publication’s domains, and also to keep the option open for our website customers to have email addresses at their domains.

Joe

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3

I have been following a recent thread on MacHighway and wonder how the 2 compare to each other? About a year ago, I was trying to work with Fatcow.com as my hosting site, and was trying to move an auctioneer’s website from his current host provider (aitdomains.com) to fatcow.com as he wanted us to maintain his website as we can more timely update it. The auctioneer is already a printshop and newsprint advertising customer. Trying to get the website hosting and domain transferred was a difficult, nonproductive experience. His website is still on the original host, but we were able to get FTP credentials to maintain his website on the current host. I’m really looking for a good, easy to deal with host that is great at handling the technical side (transferring websites and domains, I would assume setting up a new, from scratch website with a previously unused domain name should be easy with any of them). The host we’d use (and I wouldn’t have a problem using them for the domain registration either, just to keep things simple) would need to be home of at least 5 sites, and perhaps as many as 20.

Joe

On Aug 3, 2012, at 10:50 AM, Walter Lee Davis wrote:

I used them for one client (another Freeway user) and our experience was pretty good. It really depends on how deeply you need to customize the environment how you will do. We started with their basic shared hosting (to take advantage of their unlimited storage) but then had to move to a VPS to fine-tune the versions of Apache and ffmpeg. Their prices were average, the support staff were occasionally brilliant, and occasionally average.

Walter

On Aug 3, 2012, at 11:04 AM, Joe Sporleder email@hidden wrote:

Anyone on here use DreamHost to host their sites? Any comments on the quality of their service?

An area publisher is designing websites, including one for us, probably a 2nd one down the road. They do a lot of heavy lifting CMS work.

Our smaller publishing company designs a few websites, using Freeway, mostly static websites with minor updates that we take care of from within Freeway. We want to be open to adding some light CMS to some of our websites eventually (probably WebYep).

Trying to decide if we should go with DreamHost to have some consistency with our publishing partners, or if we should consider a provider like MacHighway. We are not web nerds/programmers people, we are publishers & designers, so would want a company that makes moving domains and sites around easy (for example, an existing advertising client of our print publications might want us to design their website, that may need to be moved from their existing host that they are unhappy with, to our host).

Also, I am wanting to move our email hosting from a MacOS X Server to the host provider’s servers - both our own email addresses at our publication’s domains, and also to keep the option open for our website customers to have email addresses at their domains.

Joe

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4

Joe Sporleder wrote:

Anyone on here use DreamHost to host their sites? Any comments on the quality of their service?

I use them for a client to host their Wordpress site. No problems or
complaints. But then the client’s needs aren’t demanding.

Todd

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5

Joe Sporleder wrote:

I have been following a recent thread on MacHighway and wonder how the 2 compare to each other?
I currently use both hosts, both for myself and clients. I’ve had more
need to interact with MacHighway because I’ve been with them longer so
my experience with them is more extensive. That said they seem very
similar in most respects, nothing really stands out, good or bad.

Todd

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6

On Aug 3, 2012, at 1:13 PM, Joe Sporleder email@hidden wrote:

Trying to get the website hosting and domain transferred was a difficult, nonproductive experience. His website is still on the original host, but we were able to get FTP credentials to maintain his website on the current host.

This is a really bad sign. It may point to a lack of experience on your part, which you can easily remedy with some reading and study. But more likely, it may point to a “roach motel” design ethos on the part of the host – see GoDaddy for the canonical example – where they want the switching cost to be so high that you never leave, and design the check-out process like that of a grocery store, so you’ll buy lots of things you don’t need.

I’m really looking for a good, easy to deal with host that is great at handling the technical side (transferring websites and domains

I would urge you to split up these tasks, so that a failure at your DNS host doesn’t cause your hosting or registration to fail. It’s more expensive. But it’s far less likely to fail in a catastrophic way.

I buy my names from Network Solutions. I host DNS at EasyDNS. I spread the Web hosting around: some at Joyent, some at ModWest, some at RackSpace, some at Linode, some at RimuHost.

If EasyDNS should go off line, I could set up another host in a couple of hours, and everything would be back. Likewise for everything except registration, but registration is far less damage-prone than the others, and NS has a very long track record with me (starting in 1994, when I first registered a domain). I don’t expect them to go anywhere.

Walter

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7

Yeah, I’m not too experienced on those things, gee, thanks! :smiley:

Joe

On Aug 3, 2012, at 12:37 PM, Walter Lee Davis wrote:

On Aug 3, 2012, at 1:13 PM, Joe Sporleder email@hidden wrote:

Trying to get the website hosting and domain transferred was a difficult, nonproductive experience. His website is still on the original host, but we were able to get FTP credentials to maintain his website on the current host.

This is a really bad sign. It may point to a lack of experience on your part, which you can easily remedy with some reading and study. But more likely, it may point to a “roach motel” design ethos on the part of the host – see GoDaddy for the canonical example – where they want the switching cost to be so high that you never leave, and design the check-out process like that of a grocery store, so you’ll buy lots of things you don’t need.

I’m really looking for a good, easy to deal with host that is great at handling the technical side (transferring websites and domains

I would urge you to split up these tasks, so that a failure at your DNS host doesn’t cause your hosting or registration to fail. It’s more expensive. But it’s far less likely to fail in a catastrophic way.

I buy my names from Network Solutions. I host DNS at EasyDNS. I spread the Web hosting around: some at Joyent, some at ModWest, some at RackSpace, some at Linode, some at RimuHost.

If EasyDNS should go off line, I could set up another host in a couple of hours, and everything would be back. Likewise for everything except registration, but registration is far less damage-prone than the others, and NS has a very long track record with me (starting in 1994, when I first registered a domain). I don’t expect them to go anywhere.

Walter

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