Balance to all the negativity

So with all the negative stuff going on here I thought I might as well write about my short history with DH.

I looked into webhosting for our company back in December 2007 and eventually settled on DH because of recommendations, the huge space/bandwidth/unlimited emails, the (back then) $97 discount and the 97 day money back guarantee.

The move went smoothly, thanks mostly to the wiki and help from these forums, and since then I've had not much problems until the recent Blingy issue.

Now I won't lie this was a huge issue - days when we weren't getting emails, websites not working etc. Luckily we were in a relatively quiet period at work but still it was affecting out work especially as our email is very important to our work. During that time I sent a few support tickets to support (mostly for email, or mysql) and even during that busy time I got a response back within a day - and that was on the middle or 2nd top urgency level.

However, fair play to DH, they worked hard at it and sorted out the issue (or at least I currently have no issues). On top of that they offered a month's credit - or so I thought.

Turned out that people got 3 months credit, but for some reason I initially only got one month credit back - until I asked about it on these forums and lo and behold within less than a few hours I had whole 3 months credit.

I just wanted to say that all those posts complaining about there being no support must have either gotten unlucky, or used their DH hosted email as their support contact email address, or did something wrong. I'm not looking to start arguments on here, and I'd like to point out that I am in no way working for DH or even affiliated to them.

I felt that as I'd been taken care of very well by DH (along with no doubt countless other people who do not frequent these forums) I should post on here to put some balance to all those posts from the disgruntled others, or those just on here to cause trouble.

I'll chime in and say that I got an account here a year ago because of a recommendation from a guy at work. One of the big reasons I stay here, though is the great advice I get from all the regulars here on the forums. I've definitely saved tens and hundreds of hours of my own time with just a couple of posts here (not to mention how much it would cost me to hire experts who would probably only have a fraction of the expertise and experience of the folks here).

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kenlucid's post goes to show what most of us experience. That DreamHost does its best to do right by the customer. More so than most other companies in the same business. They take risks, like anybody else. But at least when something fails, they own up to it and try to get their customers back on track.

I've only experience one bad incident, and I think that was that "Summer of 2006." Everything else has been really stable, and has improved in performance and features since I signed up. With over 300,000 domains here, there's probably been maybe 1,000 domains (.3%) who have really suffered. And they're a pretty vocal .3%, as is typically the case. The other 99.7% are pretty happy, but not as vocal, as there's not much need to scream when something's working the way it should. Working services are the norm around here.

Tech support here is like the complaints department. Nobody files a support ticket to thank them for a smooth operation. And when something breaks, the heat really turns on. They probably have pretty thick skin, considering some of the negative comments people make when something breaks.

-Scott

In reply to:
With over 300,000 domains here, there's probably been maybe 1,000 domains (.3%) who have really suffered.

Actually, DreamHost has continued to grow considerably since that number was published (now hosting over 680,000 domains). wink

http://www.webhosting.info/webhosts/reports/total_domains/DREAMHOST.COM

--rlparker

how come it shows 300,000 domains here?
http://www.webhosting.info/registrars/fastest-growing-registrars/global/?ob=tdomains&oo=desc&pi=3

probably 300,000 active domains and 680,000 registered domains. Is that so?

Hosting & registrations are separate and not everyone registers all of their domains here. The "hosted" figure is the one that matters if you're sizing them up as a host.

You could host a million domains even if you're not a registrar, or be a registrar that doesn't offer hosting.

Just a question in response to the negative/positive comments. I've been hosted on siteground for two years. I'm about ready to jump because of their new restrictions on getting help. Everything is in a knowledge base. I need to know a couple of things about service here:

1. Does the help desk extend to services such as resolving cron run command issues and other technical questions?
2. Will they help with installation of "outside" software? I see they offer "one-click" installation for WordPress. How much help can I expect when I wish to install Mambo and Moodle?
3. Much of the argument pro/con I read here also indicates the DreamHost users are all pretty "tech" oriented; what's the service like if you don't know all that much about mysql, php, etc.

I appreciate any feedback you can offer: positive or negative, that will help me make my decision.

regards

mark miller

1) If something's broken, Support will help. If you're stuck, they *may* help if they're feeling charitable. The help desk here is not a tutorial academy.

2) Moodle is a One-Click, but regardless of installation method, the forums are an excellent resource for getting stuff to work. However, if the One-Click is broken, Support will fix it.

3) Most of the *vocal* users are tech oriented. The quiet ones either continue on their merry way, or become tech oriented when they want to learn more about MySQL, PHP, etc.

It sounds like part of your concern is who will provide tech support for the complicated stuff you want to do. Not much in life is free, but the value of the peer-provided tech support here on the forums is amazing. People here who would be charging $50+ an hour for tech support offer help for free. That's part of what makes Open Source software special. However, don't expect them to do your work for you. If you want the heavy lifting, you'll have to grow into it with the help of the forums. Some new users jump in way over their heads, such as "I want to host something like YouTube, and I'm just learning DreamWeaver." That person has a long ways to go, but we'll try to help.

-Scott

One thing I didn't mention in my post was the fact that these forums (minus the vocal haters) provide some great help when you're in need of help.

Again it depends on what you're trying to do, and how you ask. In most cases the regular guys on here tend to be very helpful. I'm not that tech orientated when it comes to websites - I've only really done html stuff and only been doing it for a year. However when I have needed some assistance I've either been given an answer on here or been directed to suitable reading material.

In reply to:
1. Does the help desk extend to services such as resolving cron run command issues and other technical questions?
2. Will they help with installation of "outside" software? I see they offer "one-click" installation for WordPress. How much help can I expect when I wish to install Mambo and Moodle?
3. Much of the argument pro/con I read here also indicates the DreamHost users are all pretty "tech" oriented; what's the service like if you don't know all that much about mysql, php, etc.

If it's broke, tell Support. If you need help, ask here! wink

I've found there are enough regular techies here at this board to troubleshoot practically all general problems and queries that don't require full root access to a server. The guys here quite often walk people hand in hand through setting up their domain, sql, email, scripts, the works. I've even seen some take time out of their day to recode (and sometimes completely write) entire scripts right here on the forum.

The regulars here are Dreamhost's biggest asset imho.

Balance to all the negativity