DreamHost vs GoDaddy
Alright, so I’m in search of a hosting company to serve my web apps and these are the two that have grabbed my attention. I need a host because, unfortunately, my personal web server and broadband aren’t going to cut it for real world stuff. Therefore, my home server will become my development server and I’ll let the big dogs handle production and the insane amount of traffic my apps bring in ;). Does anyone have experience with either of these companies or with another company of preference?
I’m leaning towards DreamHost right now because they seem to offer much better access via FTP and SSH and higher bandwidth to boot. They also seem to have a superb reputation in many of the discussion forums I’ve read through. Having my own web server by my side and being accustomed to easy access, I might go into convulsions without SSH, so that’s a big one for me. GoDaddy offers less in terms of accessibility, disk space, and bandwidth. However, they also offer a lower price and no setup fee. Other than those items, they are pretty comparable. So, it breaks down like this, depending on which tier you look at:
DreamHost (Tier 1 of 4) = 200GB Disk Space + 2TB Bandwidth + SSH Access – $49.95 Setup Fee – $9.95/month
GoDaddy (Tier 2 of 3) = 100GB Disk Space + 1TB Bandwidth – $6.99/month
If I prepay for 1 year, the setup fee for DreamHost goes away and if I prepay for 2 years the monthly rate would drop to $7.95. They’re also offering the tier 3 plan (“Code Monster”) at half price. So I’m considering going that route as well.
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I have been with dreamhost for awhile now and I had nothing but good things to say until the last 6 months. I got pretty bad for a long, long time.
Check it out for yourself;
http://www.dreamhoststatus.com
Things seem to have stabilized now with my sites at least but it is just recently..
If you still want to go with dreamhost get someone to give you a discounted referral code, they will get you $97 off. I could generate you one but there are millions out there and I’m lazy.
Good luck over the next few days in completing you appetizer app on time! I will be checking in…
I’ve heard good things about Dreamhost and also Site5 for what it’s worth. I can’t recommend GoDaddy unfortunately – I have a few accounts with them and unless you nail their setup process the first time through you’ll wait 24-48 hours after each support call to have anything changed. I waited over a week (and at least an hour each night on the phone with them) to get a domain I registered with them pointed to a site hosted by them. I heard every excuse under the sun during the process.
There’s too many hosters out there to settle. Go for the one’s that give you the most disk, bandwidth, and (most importantly) freedom to control your production environment.
Good luck man.
Thanks for the info guys! A couple people also recommended Media Temple, so I took a look at what they have to offer. They look like a premium host but a bit rich for my blood right now. DreamHost beats them in bandwidth and disk space though 2-to-1. On the other hand, Media Temple offers “Grid Servers” and I believe DreamHost still uses Shared? I could be mistaken though.
If this is correct, Temple will have some performance advantages. Anycase, I think DreamHost is the way to go for me right now. I’ll probably start off with Level 1 Monthly and, as mld suggest, use one of these codes to save me on setup fee’s.
I am also confused right now; whether to go for godaddy or dreamhost.
I am inclined towards dreamhost; my site has been on godaddy economy hosting and its been a pain (but cant ask more for a 3$/month hosting)
i am confused whether to go for godaddy’s deluxe hosting (7$/month) or choose dreamhost.
Are you on dreamhost now ? If yes, how is the experience till now ?
Hello Venu,
I went with dreamhost because it offered better access then godaddy, and that’s important to me. I really couldn’t tell you much about their service though as I haven’t had a chance to fully test it out. I’ve been extremely busy with other things.
I can tell you that the speed seemed to be a bit on the slow side initially but I’m assuming it’s because I went with the low end plan ($9.95/mo). Although, my bandwidth is now at 2,368 GB and growing at 16 GB / week.
I definately love the amount of control they give you. I wouldn’t know what to do without shell access and there panel is quite extensive, although I have no basis for comparision as this is my first host.
All in all, I’m pleased with em and hopefully I’ll get a chance to return to my business plans soon and utilize their services more!
I have been with Dreamhost a very long time (several years) and have never had an issue. Good pricing and really friendly help.
A couple of negative things about godaddy. If you want to experiment with different kinds of web programming it’s a pain in the a$$. For instance if you want to write servlets or do JSP the process of having the right kind of account and knowing how they do it is more difficult than it should be. The container only restarts every 24 hours, on a virtual server you are sharing a server. If they used a true virtual like User Mode Linux that would not be the case. It would look just like your own server. Perhaps that’s an infeasible support headache or a security risk for them. Also as far as I have seen you can not make or compile anything on your so called virtual server so you have to either get binary distributions or cross compile stuff. I don’t know if that is available on the other one but as far as I know it’s not available on godaddy.
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October 27th, 2006 at 12:16 am
I use DreamHost primarily because they offer Subversion repositories and SSH.