When I got a website last summer, I did my research (or so I thought). I looked into guaranteed uptime, and all those numerous factors I’ve completely forgotten about since. I thought I had found a good solution to my needs when I found DreamHost.
Positivity before negativity: I never had space issues–I was always able to put up whatever I wanted. Mostly, I love their selection of “one-click installs;” that is how I came by running my site on WordPress. DreamHost makes available many more themes and options than a regular for-free WordPress user. I was able to create a site easily that got tons of compliments. The customer service is prompt and, up until recently, was always able to help and/or solve the problem.
Now for the bad: as I said in my previous post, I began having unexplained technical problems with my site at least three weeks ago. First, I noticed I wasn’t able to get onto my site from my laptop–the connection would time out. After a quick survey of my friends, I learned that some of them could access it and some couldn’t. There didn’t seem to be any consistencies from browser to browser and operating system to operating system. One by one, pages began disappearing, and where I had been able to access my site from a different computer in the house, I was no longer able to. It gets weirder: this whole time, I wasn’t able to get onto DreamHost’s user panel, nor my WordPress log-in for my site. The one thing that remains functional is my email, though I won’t have that once I switch hosts.
Throughout this shenanigan, customer service was entirely unhelpful. They consistently left some questions unanswered, and the ones they did answer garnered the same solutions over and over, despite my saying I had tried them already and they hadn’t worked.
All in all, I felt very disrespected by DreamHost. They didn’t acknowledge my complaints, and what they did recognize was entirely unhelpful. DreamHost offers a great package of stats, programs, installs, etc., but the people are an even bigger part of the experience. If there isn’t a team behind my site on whom I can rely, what good is the service?
UPDATE: I did write to DreamHost about the whole fandango, and was refunded for two months. Best to leave on a positive note.
Morgan Bailey Keaton 