Why My Site Loaded So Slow & The Problems With DreamHost
March 9th, 2007
Written By: Adam Sussman
I’ve received a few emails over the past few days and a handful of instant messages informing me that my site takes forever to load. I have also been sarcastically thanked by a few friends for recommending them to DreamHost as their web hosting solution.
Now I have been a customer of DreamHost’s for a very long time and I will be the first to say their service over the past few months has not been good. There have been more outages then I can count and their servers are overloaded with users.
Additionally, I’ve been really pissed with them since I wrote my last post on hacking my neighbors LinkSys router. Completely unexpectedly this post made it to Diggs home page and lasted their for a while. It was on page two for nearly a week.
Subsequently it brought me so many visitors DreamHost had to shut down my site. For nearly two days my site was up and down, up and down as DreamHost throttled the traffic as it was affecting other users on my shared server.
I was pissed because this was more traffic I had ever received and this was the type of explosion of visitor a blogger dreams of. I just would have loved for those new readers to see my Blog.
Since then, with that big outage and these recent outages and slowness I’ve been asked by a few of my hardcore Internet buddies if I plan on switching from them.
I believe what is – is.
The fact of the matter is I pay practically nothing to host all my websites with them. I get unlimited web hosting, unlimited email, unlimited mysql and tons of other stuff such as using their easy to use web interface for less then a
The fact is if I cared so much about outages then I should pay to have my sites hosted on a dedicated server, as one should if the sites are mission critical and 100% dependent on its operation.
The fact is, if I measured the issues DreamHost’s has been having these past few months against their uptime since the beginning of this decade it would be hardly a blip on the graph.
DreamHost has always been extremely fast in returning support emails to me and addressing many of my concerns. And trust me when I say I send them many support emails each month.
So to answer the question most people seem to be asking me these days, I do not have plans to jump ship from them. I believe they are fully aware of their issues and are addressing them. I believe their service, support and pricing they have offered us customers over the years deserve some loyalty.
I plan to give them some time to figure things out. I am sure they are well aware that they are not the only web host on the internet.
March 9th, 2007 20:59
Dreamhost was doing ok for a few months. But at the end of last summer, I was reading many posts very similar to this. Also, very early spring last year.
And that is only since I have started hosting with them. I am sure there have been more yet.
However, you are right - they are cheap, and that is why we like them. However, they seem to be getting worse. I had three seperate outages today, totalling about 2 hours of down time.
I am preparing to look elsewhere. It is now getting to the point where the downtime is just too costly for me.
I would, (and do) recommend them to friends who have less intensive needs, casual bloggers etc. - Dreamhost is still perfect for them.
March 10th, 2007 14:13
Sounds like you got the point, they are ok for shared hosting and not for stuff you want dugg or up all the time. They are cheap for a reason
That being said, I recommend moving to a VPS or cheap dedicated. Or maybe a host that charges more for shared hosting and will do more.
here are some suggestions
asmallorange.com
liquidweb.com has nice vps setups and deds
fastservers.net is a great ded host
shoot me an email if you need some help,
thanks, Ben
http://www.webhostingunleashed.com
March 10th, 2007 22:02
Do you have WP-Cache running? I know DreamHost could be picky about the consistent MySQL queries your site was probably using on their servers when you got Dugg.
BTW, I understand you are used to status quo, but DreamHost’s proprietary control panel is not at all that easy to use compared to Plesk, cPanel, or DirectAdmin. And DreamHost knows that they are not the only web host on the Internet, but you’re not their only customer either, and they don’t consider you any more important than their hundreds of thousands of customers. You, to them, are overusing resources, and you, to them, are making them work harder. Companies that oversell know that you are not profiting them at all and they’d rather do without you than work with you. Having worked in this business before, I can tell you that they “value” your business but not as much as you’re putting faith in them for.
March 10th, 2007 22:53
Hi Tamar, thanks for your comment.
I took a look at caching and hope to get some time to set it up for shandyking.com. Its just a matter of finding the time.
I should point out that a few days ago I asked them to put shandyking.com on a new server as I thought the current speed was to slow. In less then an hour I was put on a new server with out any issues what so ever.
Again, for the price I have no complaints about their service. So far I am thrilled with the speed of this new server. I may be 1 of a thousand customers to them, but they treat me well when I need help.
BTW - thanks for reading this blog!
March 11th, 2007 00:05
Adam, I’ve been a reader for quite awhile.
I’m glad they addressed your concerns too. I happen to love my VPS after having switched from several hosts, including DreamHost. They weren’t bad — in fact, I probably was pretty harsh (though overselling webhosts generally don’t want the users who are more resource-intensive for obvious reasons; they want to profit as much as they can). I had a pleasant experience with DreamHost but I had to move on to bigger and better, and I can’t say I regret that decision. As long as it works out for you, that’s great. I hope that you don’t have uptime problems, and WP-Cache should definitely help if you get Dugg up again!
March 16th, 2007 19:18
I also had experiences with Dream Host. They major downsite of this company is the uptime. My overall uptime was 99.35% . It may seem to you okay. But not for me. I moved to Host gator, and they are superb. Almost 100% uptime. and very good customer support. Thumbs up for them.
March 21st, 2007 18:55
I was having problems w/ dream host a few months ago. They were aware of the problems, and worked on them. It’s seemed ok lately. Up for renewal at the end of the month.. decisions decisions