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It's easy to sign up for service with DreamHost!
Just visit DreamHost.com and choose a hosting plan to begin the secure online sign-up process!
You can also go directly to https://panel.dreamhost.com/signup/ and pick your plan from there!
Sign up any time, day or night, and get instant access to our web panel! Your account will be automatically provisioned upon payment approval!
Contents |
Parent Article
Step 1: Pick a plan..
We make it easy -- we only have one plan!
Step 2: Pick a domain..
You can't have a website or receive email without a domain name!
You have three choices for your domain name:- Register a new .com, .net, .org, .info domain with us.
- Transfer over any existing domain name to us (hosting only or hosting and registration).
- Use a free dreamhosters.com sub-domain (whatever.dreamhosters.com).
- They are cAsE InSeNsItIvE.
- You don't need to add the "www." in front. By default, all domains hosted with us will work at both http://www.domain.com/ and http://domain.com/.
- Domains can't be longer than 67 characters (including the .com) and can't have spaces or underscores in them.
Register a new domain with us.
If you choose to register a new domain with us, you should just enter it in the input field, select the "register" option, and click the submit button. If the domain is already taken, you'll be given an error message and allowed to try another domain. If YOU own the domain already, just select the "transfer" option to continue on.Transfer a domain hosting to us.
We can host any valid Internet domain on our servers, no matter what country code or top-level domain they are from! No matter what domain type it is, you need to change your nameservers with your registrar to be the following if you want to host your domain with DreamHost:- ns1.dreamhost.com 66.33.206.206
- ns2.dreamhost.com 208.96.10.221
- ns3.dreamhost.com 66.33.216.216
Free dreamhosters.com sub-domain.
If you don't have a domain to transfer to us, and don't want to register a new domain, we also allow you to set up a sub-domain of dreamhosters.com for no cost. You can change this later for free if you'd like... as you can any type of domain hosted with us! A dreamhosters.com sub-domain looks something like http://www.mynewdomain.dreamhosters.com/ on the web. Email addresses will look like me@mynewdomain.dreamhosters.com.Step 3: Get a server username..
In order to upload your site to our webservers as well as send and receive email, you need to have a user account on our servers.
Most of our plans allow multiple users, but we only need one to get you started.. you can add more from our web panel after you're done signing up.
Usually your username is 6 charcters long and consists of the first three letters of your first name and the first three letters of your last name. If someone already exists in the system with that username, you might get johdoe2 instead (for example). It is NOT case-sensitive, and will be converted to lowercase.
Your password for this first user will be randomly generated by us and emailed to you when your username is provisioned on our servers!
Step 4: Create your Web ID
We have another user account, completely separate from your server username, that you need to set up before you can finish the sign up process. It is called your Web ID and it uniquely identifies a real person across all our systems.
If you've signed up for DreamHost, DreamBook, or any of our other sites before, you've already got a Web ID and should use it to log in here. If you're already logged in, our system will recognize this and skip this step completely!
If you don't have a Web ID yet, you should pick one you'd like (they can be up to 32 characters long) and fill in the necessary contact information on the form you see. When you're done logging in or creating a new Web ID you can continue the sign up process!
Step 5: Confirm your account information..
On this page you'll be given a summary of everything you've entered so far in the sign up process. If anything is incorrect, you can change it by clicking the corresponding link for that data.
If you logged in as the wrong Web ID you should log out at this point! Otherwise, the new plan you are signing up for will go to that Web ID!
On this page you can also enter any promotional code you may have. Just type it in the input form you see and click the "update" button. Your total will be re-calculated immediately based on the code.
When everything looks okay, click the "make secure payment" button near the bottom to securely enter your payment information!
Step 6: Make payment and submit your order!
The last step is to enter your payment information through our secure form!
The form should be rather straight-forward. You can pay immediately online via any major credit card, paypal.com (unless using certain promo codes), or with a DreamHost gift certificate. You can also pay partial amounts with various payment methods if you want to break up the charge.
From this form you can also tell us that you will be paying by check. This will allow you to complete the online account setup online immediately, however your account will not be set up nor your domain registered until we receive your check and payment clears.
As soon as you submit your payment your account will be set up and you'll be emailed welcome information!
You're done! Welcome to DreamHost!
When will my account be activated?
After signing up, even before your account is approved, you'll immediately have access to our web panel and be able to begin configuring aspects of your accounts such as mailboxes, email aliases, sub-domains, etc...
Once your account is approved, it only takes about an hour or two for your user to be created so that you can begin to upload your site to our servers. If you're registering a domain with us, it will take from one to two days before your new domain begins to work online as the dns information propogates.
Account approval will usually happen automatically, but in some cases we will require a faxed approval form before your account is approved. If you are sent an email asking to send in a fax your account will often be approved within 24 non-holiday business hours of you sending the fax!
