Hosting provider
DreamHost
DreamHost's entry plan is listed at €2.89 a month for the first year, and €10.99 a month after that. The last column combines the two into the total for thirty-six months.
Our assessment
A steep jump after year one makes this significantly more expensive than most shared hosts, though the managed WordPress plan holds its value better.
What is good
- +Intro price guaranteed for a full year, not just the first billing term
- +Published visitor limits instead of vague fair-use language
- +Independent and employee-owned since 1996, no private equity ownership
- +Managed WordPress plan has only a €5 renewal increase, not the doubling seen on shared hosting
- +Annual transparency reports and public uptime status page
What to know first
- −Renewal price of €10.99/mo makes the three-year total €298.44, well above most budget hosts
- −Custom control panel means no cPanel familiarity or third-party tutorial ecosystem
- −No phone support, only tickets and chat
- −Shared hosting more expensive over three years than HostGator, Hostinger, and SherlockHost
What it costs
What these words mean — every technical term used below, explained in a sentence.
Web hosting
Shared plans, priced per month on a fixed term.
| Plan | Introductory | Renews at | Intro runs for | 3 years, total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Web Hosting Launch 25 websites, 40k monthly visits, 25GB NVMe SSD, unmetered bandwidth |
€2.89≈ $3.23 | €10.99 — higher than the introductory rate | 1 year | €298.44≈ $333.69 |
| DreamPress 1 1 website, 15GB NVMe SSD, 40k monthly visits, managed WordPress |
€14.99≈ $16.76 | €19.99 — higher than the introductory rate | 1 year | €659.64≈ $737.54 |
The ≈ figures are converted at the European Central Bank rate of Mon Oct 12 2026 00:00:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time). They bill in the currency shown first.
VPS
Virtual servers. The introductory term is often shorter here than on the shared plans, which changes the three-year total.
| Plan | Introductory | Renews at | Intro runs for | 3 years, total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| VPS Business Unlimited websites, 60GB NVMe SSD, 2 cores, 2GB RAM |
€13.75≈ $15.37 | €31.99 — higher than the introductory rate | 1 year | €932.76≈ $1,042.92 |
The ≈ figures are converted at the European Central Bank rate of Mon Oct 12 2026 00:00:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time). They bill in the currency shown first.
See DreamHost's current prices ↗Buy it for
Someone running multiple small sites who values an explicit visitor limit over guesswork, or a WordPress user willing to pay for managed hosting with a modest renewal increase.Do not buy it for
Anyone optimising purely for cost over three years, or anyone who needs phone support or wants cPanel's ecosystem of documentation and extensions.The full read
DreamHost's shared hosting starts at €2.89 a month but rises to €10.99 from month thirteen onward. That takes the three-year total to €298.44, which is twice what Hostinger charges and more than double HostGator's cost over the same period. The intro price runs for a full year rather than the single billing term common elsewhere, but the renewal is high enough that the advantage disappears.
The managed WordPress plan — DreamPress 1 — starts at €14.99 and renews at €19.99, a smaller increase. At €659.64 over three years it sits in the middle of managed WordPress pricing, and the gap between intro and renewal is narrow enough that the cost stays predictable. You get 15GB of storage, automated backups, and WordPress-specific caching, all on NVMe drives.
The shared plan allows twenty-five websites and lists a 40,000 visit-per-month cap, which is unusually explicit. Most providers either set no published limit or bury it in fair-use clauses. Unmetered bandwidth means the constraint is visits, not data transferred, which simplifies capacity planning for anyone running several small sites.
DreamHost has been independent since 1996 and remains majority employee-owned, which means no private equity rollups and no pattern of acquisition-driven price increases. The company publishes a transparency report annually, lists uptime figures on a public status page, and runs its own data centres rather than reselling another provider's infrastructure.
Support operates through tickets and live chat, with no phone line. Response times are published as targets rather than guarantees: under an hour for chat, under a day for email. The knowledge base is thorough, and the company has a visible presence in WordPress and hosting forums, which matters when you need an answer outside support hours.
The control panel is DreamHost's own, not cPanel. It is simpler and cleaner than cPanel, which makes it easier to navigate if you are new, but it also means fewer third-party tutorials and no transferable knowledge if you move elsewhere. One-click WordPress installs work as expected, and staging environments come standard on managed plans.
Written 2026-09-01 by payless.host. The section above is our own assessment. The prices below are copied from the provider's pricing page and are not affected by it.
Prices read from the provider's own pricing page on Sep 1, 2026.
https://www.dreamhost.com
Where the introductory term or the renewal rate is not published, the three-year column is left blank rather than estimated.
We earn a commission when someone buys through our links. It has no effect on the figures above, which are read from the provider's own page and published as they are.