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DreamHost
Independent and transparent
An employee-owned independent host with month-to-month billing, a 97-day money-back guarantee, and an unusually principled stance on privacy. A favorite among developers and privacy-conscious site owners.
Where DreamHost actually fits
DreamHost is best understood as a shared host built for privacy-conscious users, monthly billing fans. Plans start at $2.95/mo and are backed by a 97-day money-back guarantee window, which gives you a realistic runway to test under your own traffic before committing to a renewal. Support is handled via 24/7 chat, ticket-based — a detail that matters far more once something breaks at 2 a.m. than it does on the day you sign up.
On performance, our composite Perf Index puts DreamHost at 83/100 across 3 data-center regions. Readiness for modern workloads breaks down as good for SaaS and not suitable for AI-adjacent workloads — numbers we re-check quarterly rather than inherit from a brochure.
Our take: The most transparent pricing in the industry.
The specs that matter
- Uptime
- 100% uptime guarantee with credits
- Support
- 24/7 chat, ticket-based
- Refund window
- 97-day money-back guarantee
- Starts at
- $2.95/mo
- Perf Index
- 83/100
- Data center regions
- 3
- SaaS-ready
- Good
- AI workload-ready
- Not suitable
Perf Index is Hostilo’s composite of TTFB, sustained uptime, and median support response — scored 0–100. See our methodology for the full weighting.
DreamHost — findings, not adjectives
3 support audits · How we test
- Support first response
- 8m 04s avg6 chat tickets, Feb–Apr 2026
- TTFB (Frankfurt, cached)
- 198 ms p507-day Pingdom, Apr 2026
- Refund honored
- 1 of 197-day money-back tested, Mar 2026
- Renewal multiplier
- 1.7x$2.95 intro → $4.95 renewal, shared starter
- Industry-leading 97-day refund window
- Monthly billing available
- Privacy protection included
- Independent, employee-owned
- No phone support
- Custom control panel takes adjusting
What you get
DreamHost intro vs. renewal — tracked
Observed intro price over time from our automated checks, plotted against the disclosed renewal rate. Hover any point for the source and date.
Every point is an observed intro price from our automated checks against DreamHost’s public pricing page. The dashed line is the disclosed renewal price.
Honest renewal pricing and monthly billing available.
Managed WordPress via DreamPress with built-in caching.
We’d revise DreamHost’s score if…
- Renewal pricing rose materially above the $2.95/mo bracket without a corresponding feature uplift.
- Median support response time exceeded our category threshold across two consecutive monthly probes.
- Measured uptime fell below the 100% uptime guarantee with credits commitment in a 90-day rolling window, or a confirmed outage went unannounced.
- The refund window (97-day money-back guarantee) was narrowed, or readers reported friction actually claiming it.
Every revision is logged on the public corrections log. If you have evidence that one of the above already applies, email corrections@hostilo.net.
What's actually changed at DreamHost
Every price move, outage, policy change, and ownership shift we’ve verified — chronological, sourced where possible. This is the record behind the score.
- PolicyEditorial
Money-back guarantee shortened on monthly plans
Annual plans still 97 days; monthly plans reduced to 14 days.
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