Having a Bad Dream(host)
March 29, 2007, 9:02 PM | 12 Comments
For the past 16 months I’ve been using Dreamhost to host this site. For the most part, I’ve been pleased with their service and support, but lately things just haven’t been the same.
I originally switched over to Dreamhost at the recommendation – either personally or through what they’d written about Dreamhost on their sites – of quite a few “high-profile” designers (Mike Davidson, Jason Santa Maria, Dave Shea, Dan Cederholm, etc.). At the time I sent a few emails back and forth with Jason just about his personal thoughts towards Dreamhost, their reliability, support, bang for buck and a few other things. All in all I came away with a fairly solid opinion and recommendation of Dreamhost, and eventually I made the switch.
Things were great for the first few months. I didn’t really have to worry about anything, and any request I had was usually looked after in no more than 15 minutes. Unfortunately, that didn’t last. Over the past 9-10 months, Dreamhost has been experiencing a lot of problems. What was once one of the most well respected hosts in the budget hosting sector has experienced so many problems over the past 9 months that it has quite a few people scratching their heads, not the least of which was Mike Davidson.
If you’ve been a regular reader of Mike’s site for a while now, you’ll know that he’s always been an avid supporter of Dreamhost and their services, but even he was prepared to walk away from Dreamhost back in August at a personal cost to him of about $30,000 a year in referral bonuses. While those issues that caused the big meltdown that Mike referred to back in August have been sorted out, Dreamhost’s level of service has continued to diminish. By their own admission, their increase in popularity over the past couple of years has directly lead to their service levels deteriorating.
Is it time to wake up?
So for the past 3 or 4 months I’ve been thinking about waking up from my Dream(host) and moving to another provider, even if it means losing some money on the contract fees I’ve already payed (my current term doesn’t run out until November). Up until now though, most of this has just been me questioning whether or not I feel like it’s worth it to stick it out. Last night may have been the last straw though when Dreamhost had a major problem that effectively took down half of their servers.
As Mike mentioned in his post, this isn’t the end of the world and there are no people dying and as far as I know, I’m not losing any money because my precious website is unreachable. What it comes down to though is the fact that I pay for a service, and I’m becoming more and more dissatisfied with that service. Please don’t get me wrong, even though the downtime last night may be the “last straw” I’m certainly not going to react right away because of this outage nor am I going to sight this latest problem as my reason to leave. I’ve just noticed a lot of slowdowns lately and more frequent outages, so this is really the result of a culmination of all of those things and apparently, I’m not alone in my frustration.
Like I said above, this is something I’ve been thinking about for a while. I honestly don’t want to leave Dreamhost because for the most part I’m a big fan of what they’re doing. They’ve always been open, honest and up-front about everything and their support is still very good. I don’t know if I’ll leave yet, but I’m starting to think about it more and more lately, and that’s not a good sign.
So what’s my point?
Well, I’d really like to get some other opinions on this matter. Am I being too sensitive? If other Dreamhosters read this site, what have your recent experiences been like? If you’re on another host, would you recommend them? Who do you recommend for hosting? These are all things that I’d like to consider before making any type of switch. If on the off chance that someone high up at Dreamhost reads this, please post your comments on the matter because I’d love to hear from more than just the friendly support staff.
For the past few months I’ve been considering switching to (mt) Media Temple because I’ve been hearing a lot of great things about them. Secretly, I was hoping that Media Temple (one of the main sponsors) would include some coupons for discounted hosting plans in the bag of freebies we got at Web Directions North. Their Grid Server technology is really intriguing and in theory will end a lot of the problems you frequently have to endure with shared hosting. Anyways, back when I worked for Outside Studios we used Media Temple for a couple of client sites and I was pretty impressed by what I saw, but didn’t want to pay the price for their service when I started this site. Media Temple has always been more expensive than their main competitors, but maybe that’s not such a bad thing? Perhaps it’s a “grass is always greener” situation, but I’ve never heard much complaining from (mt) customers and I’ve never noticed downtime or bad slowdowns on their sites.
So the floor’s open, please post your comments and/or suggestions and help me figure out what my best course of action is. Current (mt) customers: your testimonials would be greatly appreciated as well because if I had to make the switch today, my preferred choice would be Media Temple right now.
Posted in: Reinspire
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Comments
1. Geof Harries - March 29, 2007, 10:52 PM
I was on Media Temple’s old SS server for about a year and when the GS came out, I switched the first day it was available. The following months were a service nightmare - MySQL connection errors, mail outages and a whole host of other problems.
I eventually switched to Planet Argon, who it turns out had problems of their own (slow speed, FTP issues), so last week I moved to a DV server again at Media Temple and it’s been smooth sailing ever since.
The GS has gone through some major growing pains but now it looks like it’s performing up to snuff, as originally promised. If you can afford the DV plans, then those are also really solid solutions.
One thing the GS has going for it - the most gorgeous, usable admin panel I’ve ever seen.
2. Jonathan Eckmier - March 30, 2007, 5:02 PM
Thanks for the comment Geof. The experiences I’ve had with Media Temple were all with their (SS) servers and I’ve also heard about a lot of the problems they’ve been having since implementing “the grid.”
One thing that I’ve noticed about (mt) though is that they REALLY care about their reputation. I’m not saying that Dreamhost doesn’t, because they do as well, but (mt) seems like they’re usually faster to take action when it comes to saving their rep. Again, I could be wrong and this could all be part of the “grass is always greener on the other side” mentality that I alluded to above.
At this point, I think a (dv) server may be a little out of my budget range, but I would definitely consider it in the future if I had need of it.
3. Geof Harries - March 30, 2007, 5:50 PM
I totally agree. I was with Dreamhost several years ago and it was not very professional. Dreamhost’s sarcasm is great, but when I’ve got problems to be fixed, I need to know that my host is reputable and trustworthy. MT has that in spades.
4. Adam Walker Cleaveland - March 31, 2007, 9:50 AM
I’ve gone back and forth with (mt). Their admin panel is one of the sexiest - the interface is really great. Since I signed up in December, the customer service (except for one phone call) has been great. I always call and get to actually speak with someone within, say, 10 minutes at the very longest.
However, after I signed up, they started having problems with their MySQL containers, which they have documented well on their site. It was a pain, seriously. I complained, a lot of people got a free month’s service…so my site was really slow for awhile, service would go down every now and then. But then, things picked back up.
They say all those problems should be gone when they get their new containers, or fix their MySQL problems (I don’t get all the techno-mumbo jumbo).
The biggest selling point was seeing all my favorite designers’ blogs have the little (mt) logo so I figured they must all love Media Temple, but didn’t think that they are making big bucks and so they are all on a DV server, which is really the way to go if you can afford it.
I’m still on the Grid Server and hopefully they will all their problems taken care of soon….things have been good recently though.
5. Jonathan Eckmier - March 31, 2007, 10:14 AM
@Geof: I understand completely! Sometimes I love Dreamhost’s sarcasm and laid back attitude, but there have been other times when I’ve been wishing that they were a little more professional.
@Adam: Thanks so much for your honest comment. I’ve been sort of keeping up to speed on what’s going on with the MySQL issues (the bottom line is just that MySQL doesn’t scale very well for multiple database users) and they seem to be doing better lately. April is supposedly going to bring the release of their new MySQL containers, so hopefully that will solve a lot of the issues they’ve been having.
One other thing I’m curious about is the GPU system they have in place to monitor usage. How are you doing in terms of your GPU usage? I’m wondering how much it would actually take to max out the 1,000 GPUs you’re given each month.
6. web - April 2, 2007, 11:58 AM
“Am I being too sensitive?”
Heck no, you pay to have your website hosted 100% of the time and to not think about it. It’s like having a good DVD player. You just don’t think about it, it just works. Don’t feel bad for dream host, I’m sure the CEO isn’t starving. If they wanted to produce a quality product they would, if they wanted to rake in the dough while sacrificing quality, they will.
RE: Media Temple
I had a buddy of mine who needed to host his business website, I ended up telling him to go to MediaTemple.
The signup was cake, the server was fast and there has been no interruption in service that I can tell.
There are lots of places you can host “on the cheap” http://www.hostsearch.com I have used several times before and usually been pleased with the results.
7. jess - April 15, 2007, 2:54 AM
Count me among the unfortunate souls in Mediatemple Hell. I switched from their (ss) offering to their (gs) gridserver offering in February, and it’s been the worst thing to ever happen to my website. Most of the problems have been around MySQL, but after repeated demands, I finally got them to switch me to an “optimized” MySQL server.
Now, however, the GPUs for the most recent month have tripled compared to the first two months on the gridserver, with no explanation. Traffic is flat, the forum software (phpbb) hasn’t changed, and they refuse to provide any kind of explanation.
I used a bit over 500 GPUs my first two months, and am now looking at a projected GPU total of 1500 or maybe 1600 for this month. Outrageous.
Their customer service is pretty unresponsive, too – I’ve repeatedly filed tickets, and they take their time getting back to me. I call them on the phone, and they brush me off and tell me it’s a scripting problem. I’m pretty frustrated, and I would say that, whatever you do, avoid the Mediatemple gridserver.
8. ChadL - April 16, 2007, 2:10 AM
I’ve yet to experience (or should I say ‘notice’) the poor Dreamhost experience since moving to them around 14 months ago. It’s completely possible I have been lucky and the recent outages have passed me by. Or it could be I was ‘napping’ during the outage.
What I can say with my experience with several web hosts over the years is that it appears inevitable that you will eventually have some issue with service or support. While it may be unacceptable, it’s usually a reality of the low-cost hosting service. I suppose it comes down to how sensitive you are to it.
Ultimately, I appreciate the open and honest feedback from Dreamhost. I have not seen that elsewhere. I accept that the service I pay for includes a pile of features, nearly unlimited disk space and reliability equal to other similar providers.
Now, if reliability is your #1 issue, then maybe you should take a peek at EC2. My guess is Amazon will trump reliability of any hosting service like MediaTemple and Dreamhost. However, you would be on the hook for your service administration.
9. Jonathan Eckmier - April 17, 2007, 11:53 AM
web: You’ve more or less echoed my thoughts about the service. I pay for reliable service and if I’m not getting it, time to move on. You’re bang on about not having to worry about hosting, I don’t want to add ‘checking up on my hosting provider’ to my daily list of things to do.
jess: I’m sorry you’ve had such a rough go of it over at Media Temple. From my perspective though, you may be one of the few (relatively speaking) exceptions. I’ve read about a lot of the problems they’ve been having and it seems like they’ve more or less got it all worked out now. I’d be interested in what your most recent experiences have been either way though.
ChadL: This is something I’ve really noticed with DreamHost. Often times when my site has been down I’ve checked a few other sites that I know are hosted with DreamHost and they’ve been responding fine. My issue is that I’m just tired of complaining to DH all the time and it’s getting really annoying. I do understand that there are certain drawbacks with so-called “budget-hosting,” but when the drawbacks are constant, that’s a major problem.
10. Nick - June 9, 2007, 11:28 AM
I’m sure you other Dreamhost users are aware that everything seems to be on the fritz today – the control panel is down; sites are loading inconsistently; even dreamhost.com isn’t responding.
I’ve been with dreamhost for about 2 years now, and was initially really happy with them. But recently it has definitely gotten worse, and I’m in the same boat as you, trying to find another option.
The worst thing I can imagine, though, is going through the trouble and expense of switching, only to be equally frustrated at (mt).
If I were (mt), I would provide incentives for switching from dreamhost – make it easy for me to transfer all my sites, settings, domains, and registrations – and waive some of the usual fees for doing these tasks.
I also wonder, is there a third option? How much would it cost for a service that was truly reliable? It seems ridiculous that this many people should be struggling this much just to get basic, reliable service.
Ugh.
11. Justin Bradshaw - March 28, 2008, 8:15 PM
It’s been 364 days since this original post, but it came up on the first page of my Google search for “dreamhost reliability”.
I read it all with much interest because I’m currently in Dreamhost hell. I love their “employee owned” attitude and the great features and lovely control panel… but I’ve set up clients with them and this week has been hell for all 4 of them! Their IMAP email cluster has gone down and filled my life with angry clients I can’t help. It is so frustrating that I’m about to move them all somewhere else… but where?
Media Temple seems great, but I switched one of my clients to Dreamhost from (mt) because their IMAP service was really screwy… so i’m not sure if I want to go there
Bluehost.com seems great, so does Hostgator and Aplus.net. My top priority for these clients is reliability now so I would love to hear Jonathan’s experiences since this post was written…. (it looks like you’re on (mt) now… how is the IMAP?
12. Jonathan Eckmier - March 31, 2008, 5:21 PM
Hey Justin,
I’ve never had any problems with (mt)’s IMAP service. I’m actually a huge fan of IMAP email.