What types of hosting plans are available?

Overview

This article describes the various types of hosting plans available at DreamHost.

Comparison graph of hosting plans

Below is a quick reference table to see which features are configured with each plan.

Feature	Shared Hosting	VPS	Dedicated	DreamPress
Isolated CPU resources	No	No	Yes	No
Isolated RAM resources	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
root/sudo access	No	No	Yes	No
MySQL server on same machine	No	No	Yes	Yes
Root access to MySQL server	No	No	Yes	No
Can run Apache	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Can run Nginx	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Free domain included	Yes	No	No	Yes
Unlimited storage	No	No	No	No
Unlimited domains	No	Yes	Yes	No

Hosting FAQs

What is a hosting plan?

A hosting plan is a product you must purchase in order for your website to display online. This hosting plan provides you with a server on which you can then upload your website. If the DNS records for your website are pointed to DreamHost, your site will then load online from your new DreamHost server.

What is different about these hosting plans?

The main difference is what resources the server provides and what customizations you require access to. Most sites function great on a Web Hosting plan, however, if your site is getting a large amount of traffic or if you need to make customizations not available to shared users, you may need to upgrade to a VPS, Dedicated, or DreamPress plan.

How is bandwidth usage measured?

Bandwidth usage at Dreamhost is unmetered on all hosting plans except for cloud services.

What if my domain is registered at another company?

You have two options:

Point your DNS to DreamHost at your current company
Transfer the registration to your DreamHost account

What is the refund policy?

View the Refunds and Account Credits article for details.

Shared Hosting plans

A Shared Hosting plan is an ideal starting point for most websites, including blogs, portfolios, and personal or business sites. It provides a strong foundation for websites to grow as traffic and functionality needs increase.

With Shared Hosting, your website runs on a server where resources such as RAM and CPU are 'shared' among multiple users. Since server resources are shared, your site may potentially run slower if another website on the same server experiences unusually high traffic and consumes a significant amount of CPU resources.

While DreamHost continually monitors server performance to minimize disruptions, this remains a possibility in a shared hosting environment.

Shared Starter hosting

The Shared Starter hosting plan is no longer available for purchase.

Previously purchased plans will remain active and fully supported.

For more information, see the Shared Starter hosting overview article.

Shared Unlimited

The Shared Unlimited hosting plan is no longer available for purchase.

Previously purchased plans will remain active and fully supported.

For more information, see the Shared Unlimited hosting overview article.

Web Hosting

'Web Hosting' plans are the current Shared Hosting plans DreamHost offers. There are three tiers for purchase (Launch, Growth, and Scale). Each offers a different level of features, such as:

Number of websites
Amount of storage
Number of databases

Limitations: Email is offered for free for the first three months of each tier. After this time period, a Paid Email plan is automatically added to the account.

Plans and pricing: View the Web Hosting overview article for further details.

High Performance Hosting plans

VPS hosting

A Virtual Private Server (VPS) is a premium hosting plan available as an add-on to an existing hosting plan or as a standalone service. A VPS is ideal for websites that require more resources than a Web Hosting server can provide yet do not need the full power of a Dedicated Server. It's ideal for businesses, eCommerce, designers, and developers.

Comparison to Web hosting: On a shared server, resources are shared by other users. On a VPS, a user's RAM resources are protected from other users on the same physical machine which improves performance and helps to maintain stability. You also have the ability to control how much RAM is available for your server to use.

Is root/sudo access available?: root access not available on VPS plans.

Pricing: View the VPS Hosting page for current plan options.

Adding this plan: View the Adding a VPS article for instructions on how to add this plan.

Dedicated

Dedicated Servers are Fully-managed business-class servers, perfect for resource-heavy apps and giant websites. They are completely dedicated to your data alone since no other DreamHost customers share any resources with your sites on that server.

Is root/sudo access available?: root access available via the sudo command.

MySQL databases: All databases are hosted on the same Dedicated Server, allowing faster access. This is unlike all other plans where your databases are on a separate database server.

Pricing: View the Dedicated Hosting page for current plan options.

Adding this plan: View the Add a Dedicated server article for instructions on how to add this plan.

DreamPress

DreamPress is a managed WordPress hosting plan. It's a scalable cloud-based service where both website files and the database are hosted on the same machine, offering the added benefits of server robustness, caching, and memory.

Limitations: DreamPress plans are configured for a single website. If you want multiple domains on DreamPress, they must each have their own separate DreamPress hosting plan activated.

Pricing: View the sign up for a DreamPress account article for current plan options.

Additional hosting plans

The following are some additional plans DreamHost offers.

Email hosting

A Paid email plan can be added as a standalone plan if you want to host your email at DreamHost but website at another company. It can also be purchased as an add-on plan to the following:

to a Shared Starter plan
to a Web Hosting plan
to a domain registration-only account
to a DreamCompute-only plan

All VPS, DreamPress, and Dedicated Hosting plans include email service by default.

MySQL VPS hosting

MySQL VPS plans can be added to Shared and VPS plans as an upgrade to the default shared database servers. This plan is similar to VPS plans mentioned above in that RAM resources are protected from other users on the same physical machine which improves performance and helps to maintain stability.

Can I choose which databases to move?

No. If you purchase this plan, all of your databases will be moved to the MySQL VPS. It's not possible to split databases between Shared and MySQL VPSs.

DreamCompute

DreamHost offers a cloud computing service called DreamCompute that provides scalable compute resources for developers and entrepreneurs. View the What is DreamCompute? article for further details.

Apache and Nginx

If you have upgraded to a VPS or Dedicated Server, you have the option to run Nginx as your web server. Shared and DreamPress hosting must use Apache. View the Web Server Performance Comparison or a detailed comparison.

Secure hosting

Secure hosting is not a hosting plan. It is when you add an SSL certificate to your website so it can be securely accessed. View the SSL certificates overview article for further details.