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Our Lovely History

We're a small company. We don't accept investment money. We're profitable.

How did this all happen, anyway?
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The Past

We at DreamHost have been happily hosting our clients' dreams (and websites) since April 1997 - close to a century ago in Internet years! That was when we (four Computer Science undergraduates at hmc.edu in Claremont, CA) launched this company with no capital apart from a single Pentium 100 web server (Destro was her name), using shared bandwidth on a T1 line that a friend gave us at no cost.

By necessity we had to be frugal, but even with our less than ample resources we always did our best to provide a quality service at a reasonable price. Those early days quickly taught us the technical expertise and market savvy necessary to survive in our industry, as well as teaching us to respect each and every customer's wishes, dealing with them as though they were our friends. Hey, most of them were!

It's hard to believe that we've already grown to over 300 servers (each with over 40 times the processing power of Destro), a state of the art data center, and a full time staff of 25. Even though we now average more new customers per day than signed up total in our first three months of business, we've always made it our number one priority to deal with every client as a human being and as a friend. We like to think that that, more than anything else, is the real reason for our current success.

Now hosting over 60,000 web sites, we've definitely come a long way since 1997. But we can see there's still a long road in front of us. We don't know exactly where it will lead; all we know is that the trip will be fun, and we wish you'd come with us!

The Present

As with all companies, there are some things we do the same as our competitors and there are some things we do differently. We try and imitate whenever we feel imitation is deserved, and we deviate whenever we feel deviation is a must. Most hosts offer a wide range of features bundled with various service plans, and we are of course no exception. Canned CGI scripts, full CGI access, PHP4, SSH and Telnet, raw log files plus analyzed access statistics, unlimited email forwarding, aliasing, auto-responding, vanity domain names, MySQL, e-commerce, plenty of disk space and transfer allowance are available on our numerous service plans (prices range from $9.95 to $79.95/month).

Most hosts offer a web-based control panel to manage your account and its features, and we do too. From there you can control all aspects of your account(s), including any billing-related and customer support concerns you may have. But wait. There is more...

Where you first start to notice the difference between DreamHost and all other webhosts is the community feel of our web panel. Besides the standard links for things like email and domain management, there are areas for customer suggestions, DreamHost newsletters, the DreamHost Site of the Month, DreamHost donations, the unofficial DreamHost directory, the DreamHost Rewards program, as well as a customer discussion area. All of these are a natural outcropping of our desire to stay in touch with our clients and to foster a free flow of ideas between them and us. What better way to learn how to keep our customers happy than to ask them, and then to act on what they say?

Another refreshing difference is how relaxed and customer-oriented our billing practices are. There is an unconditional 91 day money back guarantee on all accounts, we have no hidden costs, no minimum monthly contracts and a price freeze in effect guaranteeing that any price you sign up for on a recurring plan will never, ever, increase! We accept payment via Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, Diner's Club, and Carte Blanche, as well as by personal check or money order. We can even provide an online invoice if required by your Accounts Payable department. The differences keep coming!

Our choice to not provide Microsoft operating systems for any of our hosting products is one that is a common subject of inquiry. We feel strongly that the best products available for the job of serving Internet content are those based on UNIX TM, and that the efforts of the open source community specifically (Linux, Apache, MySQL and so on) are best of breed. To use any Windows or related products would be to us a vote of no confidence against the very technology that made it possible for us to compete in this industry in the first place! It turns out that once our customers give open source alternatives a chance they are overjoyed with the performance and feature set available to them. Of course, some will decide to go with someone else, and we respect their decision. Our only request is that if in the future the need ever does arise for a Unix-based solution they'll give us another shot!

But of course, the biggest difference, the one that keeps people singing our praises and referring their friends, is our customer service. Every message is responded to within 24 hours, with a friendly, helpful, and completely honest answer. Sometimes a server does go down, and we let our customers know when it happens. We'll also let them know if a cheaper plan better fits their needs, or what sort of software we personally use for whatever they're trying to implement. We constantly try to treat everyone as a friend in need (indeed!).

Maybe you're wondering just how stable we are? We've been a privately held company and since 1997 when we first started hosting our customers' dreams, so that should give you some indication that we're serious about what we do! We're currently connected to the Internet via redundant 100Mb connections with multiple carriers to ensure continued network connectivity in case any carrier goes down. Each connection is carried across a diversified fiber network and connects to different entrances to the Internet's backbone. This allows for total network redundancy. We also keep our bandwidth ~unsaturated~. We carry enough network capacity to double our load if we need to. We've been doing this hosting thing since 1997, and in that time we've learned what it takes to provide rock-solid service and connectivity.

The Future

At DreamHost we have historically focused our attention on the virtual server web hosting market. It was the only market we could afford to enter early on, and we felt it was best to focus entirely on one area before pursuing others. Those who had needs beyond the scope of shared servers unfortunately had to look elsewhere and miss out on our unique brand of hosting service.

Not anymore! Our dedicated server offerings continue to gain popularity. Besides having more physical resources for this endeavor, what has allowed for this growth is our home-made control panel. The DreamHost account control panel completely automates all aspects of hosting, through a simple, powerful, and robust web-based interface. Whether you just want to register a domain or are the head administrator for an entire cluster of servers, all your configuration duties will be easily handled through our web panel. It's also completely customizable for sub users and resellers of any of our services.

Our goal is to eventually create an environment where any sort of web hosting need can be fulfilled immediately at the best price possible within a helpful community of like-minded individuals. We believe that with our new software and open-minded approach that goal is not as far-fetched as it might sound!