Regardless of what you have heard about DreamHost, especially the positive mentions, it would be best if you did not decide until you have considered all available options. In this case, we are considering DreamHost alternatives. DreamHost is an excellent web host. It is recognized and recommended by WordPress.org as the go-to web host for WordPress websites, and it delivers great services to its customer.
However, despite all these good talks about DreamHost, seeing other alternatives that may perform better is more advisable. You never know. They could do better in areas that are of more value to your business than this hosting provider.
Best DreamHost Alternatives to Host Your Site in 2024:
- Hostinger
- SiteGround
- InMotion Hosting
- A2 Hosting
- Bluehost
Why You Should Consider DreamHost Alternatives
A likely reason you are still reading this is that you don’t know the weaknesses of DreamHost and how it may affect your business in the short and long runs. Here is a rundown of reasons you may want to consider an alternative web host to DreamHost.
Limited Free Email Hosting
One of the few reasons to consider an alternative to DreamHost is that there is no free email hosting on the Starter packages for Shared and WordPress Basic. Instead, you have to pay an additional $20 per year for each mailbox. This is one of the upselling tactics this web host uses that questions its integrity.
If you decide to purchase a higher and more expensive package because of the importance of email hosting to your business, you will be losing at least an additional $70. Therefore, either way, you will be overpaying for a simple essential feature that DreamHost should have provided for free.
DreamPress Packages are Expensive and Restricted
Another reason to consider DreamHost alternatives is that its DreamPress packages are too expensive. DreamPress packages come with servers specifically made to build your own website with WordPress. Thus, WP sites on these servers have high performance.
However, these packages have ridiculous restrictions, such as only one website being allowed per package. This restriction is unjustified for packages that cost at least $20 and more than $70 per month. Also, you still have to buy a security add-on on these packages.
Since these packages are synonymous with managed WP hosting plans on the best DreamHost alternatives, which have fewer restrictions and are much cheaper, we don’t see the value for money.
Inadequate Security Features
If you value your site security, it would be better to consider alternatives to DreamHost. The web host does not provide the essential security features as part of its packages. Even on the expensive DreamPress packages, you have to purchase DreamShield Protection and pay an extra $3 per month. The same goes for most other hosting types. All the add-on does is scan your website(s) weekly for malicious codes, potentially vulnerable outdated codes, permission errors, etc.
DreamHost does not even have some security features like firewalls and brute-force attack protection as inclusion on its packages at all. However, it has DDoS protection available on its dedicated server hosting packages.
Furthermore, except on DreamPress, you can neither carry out on-demand backups from your control panel to create the most recent copies of your website before making customizations, nor restore them with a click. Instead, you have to rely on the automated daily backup, which is not effective when you have many changes to make. You cannot even go back easily when there is an error. Thus, you will have to rely on third-party services for this.
In addition, there is no staging website on shared hosting plans. Thus making the unavailability of on-demand backups and one-click restore features even worse. These are valid reasons to choose an alternative hosting provider to DreamHost for your projects.
Unimpressive Performance Approach and Results
Performance metrics such as website loading speed, uptime, server response time, etc, are very important in hosting as they are powerful determinants of your online business success.
According to our DreamHost test results, the web host performs well but not as well as its alternatives in some important areas.
One very disappointing area we found DreamHost wanting was traffic surges. We used a DreamPress package during our test since it was supposed to be ‘almighty’ with its isolated cloud resources. However, the server failed during our load tests. We sent 1000 visitors to our test website within one minute to see how the server handles traffic during peak hours.
Sadly, we recorded an average response time of 7230 ms, which is terrible. This shows our ‘supposedly powerful server’ responding to the user’s browser after 7.2 s. A quarter of this lag is enough to make a visitor leave your site to patronize your competitor and make your SEO performance decline.
Also, not even all the visitors were able to access the site at all. This inability to handle high traffic can be linked to its use of Apache servers when there are better-performing ones like LiteSpeed and Nginx.
Furthermore, we monitored its servers for 12 months through Pingdom and recorded an uptime of 99.87%, which is way below its 100% uptime guarantee. This translates to a downtime of 11 h 24 mins in a year. The average response time of the servers during the checks was also terrible at as slow as 1926 ms. There are certainly better alternatives to DreamHost that give better uptime and server response times.
DreamHost also has limited data centers and does not allow you to choose your preferred location. Thus, you cannot choose the closest data center to your target location to allow your visitors to enjoy the best website loading speed due to low latency.
Not the Best Customer Support
Our experience with DreamHost customer support is not a model one. When we had a problem and contacted support, the agent we got immediately joined the live chat and listened to our problem.
However, after a lot of troubleshooting, the agent could not find a solution to the problem. This was very disappointing, to say the least since it was quite a simple issue we could solve ourselves. Thus, it shows the competency level was low. The worst part was that the agent offered an alternative solution that should have been considered only in the worst scenario or by a beginner.
Agents from alternative providers resolved this same problem the DreamHost agent found tasking to eliminate in less than 10 mins.
3 Best Alternatives to DreamHost in 2024
Now that we have seen all the important areas the web host is found wanting, it is important to know the best alternatives so that you can choose them instead for better services. Here are the top 3 DreamHost alternatives you can entrust with your business.
1. Hostinger
Hostinger is the number one company for any hosting service because it is an all-around provider. Its services are affordable and easily accessible. On top of that, it delivers very high performance too.
Hostinger uses the best performance technologies, such as the LiteSpeed servers, which are known to be perfect for high-performance projects. Thus, your websites that have high-resource demand will perform well with Hostinger.
Furthermore, it uses server-level caching to make your sites load very fast, so you don’t have to invest in web optimization plugins anymore. You will get a free LiteSpeed Cache for WordPress (LSCWP) plugin for better performance and speed. Other performance technologies you will enjoy include fast NVMe SSD storage and HTTP/3 protocol for better loading speed and SEO performance.
Hostinger has commercial-grade security on all its features. You will enjoy free SSL certificates, which automatically install and renew on the domains you add to your account. It provides firewalls, brute force and DDoS protections, automated malware scanning and removal, and automated backups. This makes Hostinger the best DreamHost alternative regarding security.
In addition, it has a custom control panel, hPanel. This control panel is better than cPanel in all areas. It has more functions that are more relevant to managing your hosting account and websites or applications.
Generally speaking, using the hPanel makes account and website management easier. This is because the hPanel is intuitive, with all the controls you need to manage your account easily accessible. It has a one-click app installer for many web applications you may want to use on your site(s). Managing your WP sites is also better and more fun with its feature-packed and more appealing interface.
Finally, Hostinger has a great customer support team available 24/7 through live chat, helpdesk tickets, and emails. The team is competent and responds swiftly to messages. It is competent in multiple languages. You can also learn a lot from its rich and well-illustrated Knowledge Base.
Features
Here is a more catchy representation of some of the features that make Hostinger one of the great DreamHost alternatives:
- Costs as low as $2 per month
- All types of web hosting (except dedicated servers)
- Free domain for the first year
- Unlimited bandwidth and databases
- Free site migration
- Managed WordPress features (automated updates)
- Free email hosting forever
- Top-notch performance and security features
- Intuitive proprietary control panel (hPanel)
- 24/7 fast & competent live chat support
Why Hostinger is a Great DreamHost Alternative
Here are some of the reasons why Hostinger is a better alternative to DreamHost:
Superior Security Features
Hostinger has better security features than DreamHost. These include DDoS and brute-force attack protection, automatic WP updates, firewalls, on-demand backups, and one-click restore.
You will also get a staging website to test your features no matter which hosting type you purchase. Even though you need the Business package for this tool, it is much cheaper than any of the overpriced DreamPress packages.
This web host is our highly recommended alternative to DreamHost for security because none of these features require a separate subscription for an add-on, unlike DreamShield Protection.
Discover Hostinger Hosting Plans
Better Customer Support
Hostinger’s support is better than DreamHost’s. Even though the latter has a good support system, the agents are not competent enough and do not make resolving your site issues smooth and easy.
With the same test we used on the DreamHost support team, our Hostinger agent aced it. It took the agent less than 10 mins to resolve the issue and bring our website back to normal. This shows that Hostinger invests more in customer support and satisfaction despite the absence of prioritization.
Also, remember we were on the DreamPress package that claims to have WordPress-specialized agents for us.
Greater Performance
Another reason Hostinger is a great DreamHost alternative is that it has better-performing servers. Its LiteSpeed web servers are superior to the Apache servers DreamHost uses because they require fewer resources to function well. They are also faster and can handle higher traffic.
This can be seen in the performance of the two web hosts’ servers when we subjected them to a traffic of 1000 visitors within one minute. While DreamHost servers struggled to have an average response time of 7230 ms, Hostinger servers excelled with only a 47 ms average response time.
Thus, it shows that you should host your website with Hostinger if you want the best performance, especially for a high-traffic project.
Another proof that Hostinger is a top alternative to DreamHost is that it has a better uptime. An uptime monitoring for the same period (12 months) as DreamHost gave us a 99.98% average uptime. This translates to a downtime of only 1 h 46 min compared to DreamHost’s 11 h 24 min downtime. Thus, to have your websites live for most of the year and not lose visitors to the competition due to unavailability, Hostinger is better.
Read our Hostinger analysis for detailed performance information.
2. SiteGround
SiteGround is also one of the best alternatives to DreamHost. It is a great web host that offers many top-notch services and delivers them better than the competition.
One of the main selling points of SiteGround is its support. It has a multilingual support team available 24/7 through live chat, tickets, and emails. They are competent and respond swiftly to customers.
It also has a custom setup for speed and performance optimizations. It has custom PHP and MySQL setups to increase the processing speeds of your server for faster-loading sites. SiteGround uses the latest caching technologies like OPCache and Memcached to save your server resources and provide better loading speeds that will improve your SEO performance.
Furthermore, it has custom security setups such as firewalls, an AI anti-bot system, brute force and DDoS attack protection, automated backups, and malware scanning & removal. It also has geo-distributed backups to save your files from data center disasters.
SiteGround has a very impressive control panel, Site Tools. Site Tools is a custom control panel that is intuitive and easy to navigate. It has all the important features you need to manage your websites and a one-click app installer for over 100 web applications. Its WordPress management dashboard is beginner-friendly and better than the traditional cPanel, in our opinion.
Features
Here are some of the features that make SiteGround a reliable alternative to DreamHost:
- Costs as low as $3 monthly
- Unlimited email hosting with a free migrator tool
- Managed WP features & Staging websites
- Free website transfer
- Custom control panel (Site Tools) with one-click app installer
- Great performance tech & commercial-grade security
- Multiple data centers and CDNs
- Fast & competent 24/7 multilingual customer support
- 30-day money-back guarantee
Why SiteGround is a better choice than DreamHost
Here are some of the reasons why we think SiteGround is one of the best alternatives to DreamHost in 2024.
Better Performance
SiteGround delivers overall better performance than this web host. Its servers can handle more traffic in a short period thanks to its Nginx servers and other custom configurations for better performance.
During our load and response tests, we recorded an average response time of 143 ms with as many as 1000 visitors in one minute. When compared with our results from DreamHost (7230 ms), we can see that it has better servers for high-traffic projects or sites.
Also, SiteGround servers have better uptime. A monitoring period of its servers using Pingdom for the same length (12 months) as the popular WP web host gave us 99.99% uptime. This indicates a downtime of only 53 mins in a whole year. Thus, it will keep your sites online longer than DreamHost.
In addition, it has server-level caching technologies and an effective web optimization plugin that you can use to improve the performance of your web pages.
If you want, you can check our SiteGround review for in-depth performance information.
More Competent Customer Support
SiteGround has superior customer support service. In fact, the success rate of resolving issues at the first contact is more than 98%.
It is easier to contact its support team, and there is hardly any waiting time. The attending agent astonished us when we contacted the SiteGround support team with the same issue DreamHost agents could not resolve.
With only a little information and fewer questions, the support agent was able to get our test website back in great shape very fast.
Superior Security Features
SiteGround is a good DreamHost alternative if you care about security for your applications and websites.
All the security features, such as custom firewalls, brute-force & DDoS attack protection, the AI anti-bot system, and automated backups, are free. And they even come with the cheapest package, Startup. This is unlike DreamHost, which sells an ordinary malware scanner at $3 monthly.
It also has a free custom plugin that you can use to improve your WordPress security. With it, you can customize your unauthorized login attempts security and harden some backdoors that hackers exploit most of the time.
With its geo-distributed backups and redundant network, all your files and data are safe even during disasters.
3. InMotion Hosting
InMotion Hosting is another great DreamHost alternative you should consider entrusting your website projects with instead. It is an extremely affordable hosting provider with great features and delivers great performance.
InMotion’s approach is more commendable than other web hosts with its degree of affordability. It has web application firewalls (WAF), anti-DDoS attack measures, SSL certificates, automated backups, and hack & malware protection. These features help to secure your websites and projects from security vulnerabilities that could affect your business adversely.
The web host also has great performance technologies to give your websites the best loading speeds on the internet. It uses a highly-optimized environment configuration called UltraStack. This configuration combines the power of Nginx servers with Redis caching and Nginx proxy caching to supercharge your websites. It can give your websites up to 40 times the speed of your competitors’ sites.
Additionally, it helps you to kickstart your advertising campaigns with a $150 ads credit which you can redeem from either Google or Bing. Thus, it is giving you free $150 for your first subscription year, which is more than the price of most of its packages.
Features
Here are some features you will find interesting on InMotion:
- Costs as low as $3 per month
- Free domain registration for the first year
- One-click installer, staging websites and free website builder
- Free website migrations with an automated plugin
- Unlimited bandwidth and databases
- Free SSL certificates and email hosting
- Top performance and security features
- 24/7 customer support
- Multiple data centers
- Up to 90-day money-back guarantee
Why InMotion is a Good Alternative to DreamHost
InMotion offers better performance compared to DreamHost. It uses Nginx, which is better than Apache in terms of speed, performance, strength, and uptime. Its UltraStack configuration also gives it an edge over DreamHost.
In addition, InMotion has an uptime of 99.985% for the same 12-month period as DreamHost. This means its servers were only partially or totally down for only 1 h 19 min in a calendar year. The uptime is much better, making InMotion Hosting the most reliable host.
Additionally, unlike DreamHost, you will have free access to all its security features.
Discover InMotion Hosting Plans
DreamHost Alternatives: At a Glance Comparison
| DreamHost | Hostinger | SiteGround | InMotion Hosting | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hosting Plans | Shared/managed WordPress/cloud/dedicated/VPS/ | Shared/WordPress/Cloud/VPS/CyberPanel/Minecraft | Shared/WordPress/Cloud/Woocommerce | Shared/WordPress/cPanel/VPS/dedicated/ |
| Pricing | Starts around $3 per month | Costs $3 per month | Initially costs around $3 monthly | Introductory price is $3 per month |
| Renewal | Renewal costs about $7 per month | Renews at around $6 per month | Renewal is almost $15 monthly | - |
| Website Migration | Free with an automated plugin | Free unlimited sites | Free unlimited sites with a WP automigrator plugin | Free migration |
| Data Centers | the USA | the USA, Europe, the Netherlands, Lithuania, the UK, Brazil, Singapore, India | the USA(4), Brazil, Spain, the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Singapore Australia | the West and East Coasts |
| Data Center Location Choice | N/A | Yes - on setup, and free relocation request monthly | On setup for free, and relocation request ($30) | Yes - on setup for free |
| Uptime (Pingdom) | 99.87% | 99.98% | 99.99% | 99.985% |
| Account Management/Dashboard | Custom control panel | Proprietary modern and easy-to-use hPanel | Modern, customized and beginner-friendly Site Tools | cPanel |
| Customer service Expertise and Response Time | Poor | Excellent | Great | Excellent |
| Freebies | A free SSL certificate and domain for one year, WP website builder | Unlimited SSL certificates forever, free domain for a year, email hosting, automated daily and weekly backups, website builder | SSL certificates forever, a free domain, email hosting, automated backups, migrator plugin, security plugin | Unlimited SSL certificates forever, a free domain, email hosting |
Final Thoughts
As you’ve probably noticed, Hostinger is the best alternative to DreamHost in 2024.
It is more affordable and offers better value for your money, especially for WordPress hosting. It uses greater performance technologies, is more secure, and uses a better and more competent support team.
SiteGround and InMotion are also better than DreamHost, but when the question boils down to the best alternative, Hostinger is the best choice you can make in our opinion.
