First up on our list of the best plans for bloggers this year, is Dreamhost. They’re ranked first for very good reason—not only are their hosting plans the best combination of extremely affordable, fast and reliable—but this company is also one of the longest-running hosting providers on the Internet, having been founded in 1996.
Currently, Dreamhost is home to over 1.5 Million+ WordPress blogs and website owners. A true testament to the platform’s reliability and the reputation they’ve built over the past couple decades. To top it off, Dreamhost is also one of only three hosting companies that’s recommended by the makers of WordPress themselves—making their plans amongst a select few to come with the official stamp of approval.
So what exactly does Dreamhost offer inside their hosting? Let’s dig in.
Performance
One of the reasons Dreamhost has fast become one of the best web hosting services, is their exceptional performance. With impressive load times of around 0.719 seconds and strong server response times, your visitors will have a great experience on your blog. Plus, you can employ some of their (free) recommended performance WordPress plugins to speed up your load time even more.
Uptime
Dreamhost knows that every second your blog is offline can affect your traffic and revenue. That’s why they guarantee 100% uptime, something quite unique in the hosting world. And to back up that claim, they promise to compensate customers for any downtime your website experience. So if you’re looking for one of the best plans as far as uptime is concerned—then Dreamhost stands head and shoulders above the rest.
Customer Support
With an extremely efficient (and fast) customer support system, you can sleep easy with confidence that Dreamhost will never leave you in the lurch if you encounter any technical problems. Customer support comes in the form of 24/7 live chat for quick fixes from their team of WordPress pros and email support (for more complex troubleshooting), the latter of which promises a response time of no more than 24 hours.
Pricing for Dreamhost’s Hosting Plans
As with all other aspects, Dreamhost’s pricing for their plans is also in a class of its own—starting at just $2.59/mo (for an annually billed plan), especially their industry-leading 97-day money-back guarantee. Another unique feature of how their plans are priced, is that they are one of the very few reputable hosting companies to have a true month-to-month payment plan that starts as low as $4.95/mo.
Here’s what the pricing structure looks like for Dreamhost’s two main hosting plans:
Dreamhost’s starter hosting plans actually offer 2 different levels of shared hosting plan options—the Shared Starter (best starting point) and Shared Unlimited (as you begin to grow your blog and get more regular readers coming in).
Their best-bargain plan, Shared Starter, includes:
- 1 Website
- Free Domain included
- Unlimited Traffic
- WordPress Pre-Installed
- Fast SSD Storage
- Free SSL Certificate (to secure your blog)
- Free Domain Privacy (to protect your contact information)
- 3 Year, 1 Year & Monthly Options
- 97 Day Money-Back Guarantee
As your blog grows and you begin generating a meaningful amount of traffic (and income)—you’ll want to upgrade to one of their more robust plans that affords you faster load times, more storage, the ability to host more websites and more.
That’s when their VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosting plans come into play.
Dreamhost’s highest-tier VPS Hosting Plan adds features like:
- 8 GB Ram
- 240 GB SSD Storage
- Unlimited Websites
- Unlimited Traffic
- Free SSL Certificate(s)
- Unlimited Email @ Your Domain
- 97 Day Money-Back Guarantee
For many bloggers (myself included), Dreamhost is responsible for helping me to launch my blogging career—and they’ve lived up to their name by offering the best web hosting plans on the market when it comes to balancing reliability, speed and price.
Not only do they offer one of the cheapest plans in the industry, but their feature sets, reliability and level of customer service make them top-notch.
If you’re just getting started on your own blogging journey today—then Dreamhost is my #1 recommendation for the best web hosting plan to get you off and running.
You can learn more about Dreamhost and compare their plans right here.