VPS performance

VPS performance is the speed of the virtual private server that Dreamhost offers. Dreamhost advertises, "Unlike Shared hosting, VPS instances do not compete against each other for these resources. Therefore, a spike in resource demand among other VPS instances, will not lead to a performance decline in your website or database." One critique is "just a small amount of traffic and you are forcing people up to VPS, yet VPS default configuration is made to suck the user of money unless they know exactly how to fully optimize the server." Specifically, RAM costs $.05 per megabyte.

Many users have found that switching to VPS required VPS troubleshooting to cut RAM usage: "Fine tuning your VPS to work right for you isn't simple. The reason shared hosting works so well is we've put in the time to make it right for who we're hosting. On a VPS, you get a much more standard, default sort of server setup, and then you have to adjust it to meet your needs. That's why you get root access"

It's been noted, "you can't just install a few one-click apps and get 250k requests / month. It isn't going to happen. To do that, you'll need to install your own custom apps, or highly optimised versions of existing apps, and spend a significant amount of time endlessly tweaking and benchmarking as noted here. For most people, it's easier, faster, and perhaps more economical to just pay more for more resources."