What types of hosting plans are available?

This is an introductory Shared Hosting plan geared toward new users of web hosting. It's also a perfect solution for a personal or business website that displays simple information about yourself or the services you offer.

Limitations: Since this is a starter plan, the following limitations exist:

• 1 domain you can use for your website (e.g., example.com)
• 5 subdomains of your single domain name (e.g., blog.example.com)
• Email is not included (a paid email plan is available as an add-on)
• Site storage is limited to 50GB
• A maximum of 6 SFTP or Shell users
• A maximum of 6 MySQL databases

Pricing: View the Shared Hosting page for current prices.

Adding this plan: View the Adding a Shared Starter hosting plan article for instructions on how to add this plan.

Shared Hosting is an excellent choice for the majority of websites. This plan is perfect for blogs, portfolios, personal/business sites, and database-driven sites.

Limitations: On a shared server, your website will 'share' server resources with other customers. This means that if another website on the same server receives an unusually large amount of traffic and uses a high amount of CPU resources, your site could potentially run slower as a result. While DreamHost works hard to ensure customer sites are never disrupted, this is always a possibility due to the nature of Shared Hosting.

Non-Profit discount: Shared Hosting plans offer a free Non-Profit discount for qualifying non-profit, charitable organizations registered in the United States.

Pricing: View the Shared Hosting page for current prices.

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 shared 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 Shared 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 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 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.

Comparison graph of hosting plans

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 domain registration-only account
• to a DreamCompute-only plan

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.

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.

Remixer is a 'cloud hosted' click-to-edit site builder, that requires no coding experience. You build your entire site within the Remixer panel, so there are no HTML/CSS/JavaScript files to upload.

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 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.