116 Common Questions

1. How long has your company been open?
 * Since April 1997... learn more at our site and in the DreamHost Category.

2. What is the typical load average on your web servers?
 * We try to keep them under the 2-3 range... anything higher gets looked at.

3. What uptime SLA do you guarantee?
 * Why, 100% of course!

4. What are your server hardware specifications?
 * Throughout 2010, we have been moving all customers to new shared servers.. they are quad core Xeons with 16GB or 32GB of memory with a 8x raid10 SATA disk array.

5. Where are your servers located?
 * In one of a couple datacenters around Los Angeles, CA.

6. Where is your company located?
 * Los Angeles, CA and Brea, CA

7. Where are your staff located?
 * Los Angeles, CA and Brea, CA

8. '''Do you offer dedicated IP addresses? If so, how much?'''
 * Yes, $5.95/mo, or $59.95/yr.

9. How can I transfer my existing account(s) to your service?
 * Learn more through our wiki here.

10. Do you do transfers for me?
 * No, thats all up to you.

11. Do you offer rvskin?
 * No, what the heck is that? Oh, it's some kind of cPanel skin.. we have our own panel that rocks the socks off cPanel!

12. Do you have any testimonials I could view?
 * They can be found throughout the net with some searching, we've got over 1 million domains hosted. Or try http://discussion.dreamhost.com/

13. How many staff members do you have at your company?
 * As of November 2009, 90.

14. What kind of support options do you have?
 * Email and chat and call-back support (where you can schedule a time with for us to call you back) if you have added our premium support option.

15. Do you allow SSL support?
 * Yes

16. Can I purchase an SSL certificate from you?
 * Yes. When you initially set up a "secure hosting" option for a domain you have the opportunity to purchase one from us. The price is $15/year. But you also purchase one through another Certificate Authority if you like.

17. Can you install it?
 * Yes we can. But it's easy enough you could do it yourself through our control panel, you just paste the cert you get into a form for the domain, and it's all automatic.

18. Do you offer domain name registration services?
 * Yes (but only for .com, .net, .org & .info Top Level Domains).

19. How many websites can I host with a reseller account?
 * We don't really have a "reseller account", but our Happy Hosting allow unlimited domains. If you have unlimited disk space and bandwidth, however, we ask that you offer websites as part of a "Hosting Plus" service (you design the websites, perform maintenance, handle tech support, etc.). Making your account resources available (whether for free or pay) to the general public without any "Plus" is not allowed. Please see our Unlimited policy for more details.

20. Can I have my own custom nameservers?
 * It is possible, but not something we easily support.

21. What payment methods do you accept?
 * Credit Card (Amex, Visa, MC, Discover, Diner's Club, JCB), Debit Card (with Visa or MasterCard logo), Google Checkout, PayPal, Check, Money Order. However, during the sign-up process not all payment methods may be offered.

22. May I upgrade at a later time?
 * Sure! It's a seamless process from our web panel, you'll get a prorated refund of your existing pre-paid time that will be credited towards your newly upgraded plan.

23. What is your typical support response time?
 * Typically 50% of questions are answered within 1 hour and 98% within 24 hours.

24. What about other departments like abuse, billing, etc.?
 * The same as above. Our support team is one unified team handling all requests!

25. What is the typical resolution time?
 * That depends a lot on how clearly worded and complicated the support request is.

26. Do you have any emergency support services?
 * Yes, just set the support request to the highest setting "OMG! EXTRME CRITICAL EMERGENCY!! EVERYTHINGS BROKEN! People are Dying!"

27. Do you accept one year pre-payment?
 * Yes!

28. Do you allow overselling on reseller accounts?
 * Yikes, looks like you are used to CPanel and WHM setups. We don't offer reseller specific accounts (all accounts are reseller friendly) but whatever you market is up to you.

29. Are private IPs and nameservers included in your packages?
 * No

30. What languages do you offer cPanel in?
 * We do not run cPanel, instead we run our own DreamHost panel. It is available in English only.

31. How soon can my account be set up?
 * It can take anywhere from a couple of seconds a couple of days depending on how your signup ranks with our fraud prevention system.

32. Can we create our own resellers with our reseller account?
 * Again, we're not really set up for "reselling", but you can add as many users as you'd like under any of our plans, and even our web panel allows creating users with various permissions to various features on your plan. You are still ultimately responsible for all content under your account.

33. What is the cost of additional HD space and bandwidth?
 * It depends on your plan...the most cost effective thing to do is upgrade to another plan usually. And good luck using up all our stuff!

34. What PHP version do you have installed?
 * As of November 2009, new domains can only be set up in PHP5. As of May 2010, older domains that are still running PHP 4 are being upgraded to PHP 5 in order to work with MySQL 5.1. PHP 4 is no longer supported at all at Dreamhost.

35. What MySQL version do you have installed?
 * By default new DBs go on MySQL 5.1.

36. What cPanel version do you have installed?
 * Bah! CPanel is for the birds, we have our own custom control panel: DH Panel.

37. What Apache version do you have installed?
 * As of November 2009, 2.0.63

38. Do you offer a money back guarantee period?
 * 97 Days! But this applies to payments made by credit card and Google checkout ONLY! No other forms of payments are refundable.

39. Do you offer a free trial period?
 * Yes, 2 weeks!

40. How much do extra dedicated IPs cost?
 * $5.95/mo or $59.95/yr.

41. Are your servers secure/safe?
 * Yes! Protected by Ninjas: http://blog.dreamhost.com/images/kidgarbage.jpg

42. Do you have a demo account I can try out?
 * Unfortunately not at this time, but since you can signup for a two-week free trial AND can also cancel within 97 days for a money-back guarantee, you can try it out without risk.

43. Do you have a test IP I can ping?
 * 66.33.201.141

44. Will your company be around for a long time?
 * We've been in this business 12 years already and plan to be in it for the long haul.

45. Do you allow the installation of custom perl modules?
 * Yes, by support request.

46. Can I run an IRC/BNC/eggdrop on my account?
 * No!

47. Do you allow SSH access?
 * Yes, and you can turn it on yourself from the panel automatically.

48. '''Do you make daily or weekly backups? Are they guaranteed? How do I use them?'''
 * We offer backups on an hourly, daily and weekly basis. You can access then via FTP or Shell. There is no guarantee for them and they are not meant to be a replacement for your own local backup.

49. '''Do you allow mailing lists to be sent out from your servers? What is the email per hour limit?'''
 * You should use our mailing list software for any mailing lists you want to run with us. Websites that send email are limited to 100/hr via SMTP and 200/hr via SSH/SHELL. All mailings must be compliant with our anti-spam policy.

50. Can I have a custom reseller account setup?
 * No, we have no reseller accounts so we can't customize them for you.

51. Will all my customers have their own webmail login?
 * Yes! You can set this up our panel for each one.

52. Is Curl installed on your servers?
 * Yes.

53. Do you accept money order or wire transfer as a method of payment?
 * Money orders, YES. Wire transfers, no.

54. What about PayPal?
 * Yes, that too.

55. How do you offer your accounts for so cheap?
 * We've got mad hosting skills and a desire to compete in this industry for a long time! Also see http://blog.dreamhost.com/2006/05/18/the-truth-about-overselling/

56. '''Do you have a test website so I can see how fast it loads? A test file I can download?'''
 * You can check out some sites on our servers here: DHSOTM.

57. Do you offer unlimited HD space and bandwidth accounts?
 * Starting in late 2008, we offer unlimited disk space and bandwidth to new accounts (current customers can upgrade from their Billing > Manage Accounts panel), PLUS 50 GB of backup space, so we offer Unlimited + 50 GB!

58. Do you charge any setup fees?
 * Yes, if you sign up for a monthly plan. ($49.95)

59. Can I remotely access my MySQL databases with your service?
 * Yes, you'll just need to whitelist the IP you connect from via our web panel.

60. How is payment made, month by month, or a year contract?
 * It's up to you!

61. Am I billed automatically?
 * Yes! Your hosting account renews automatically for the same price and period.

62. What control panel software do you offer?
 * Our own customized one at https://panel.dreamhost.com/

63. Do you have a demo of your control panel available?
 * No, but you are more than welcome to try out our service for 2 weeks for free. You may create and account HERE.

64. Do you have any mini servers available?
 * No.

65. Is python supported via SSH?
 * Yes.

66. What credit cards do you accept?
 * Visa
 * MasterCard
 * American Express
 * Discover
 * Diner's Club
 * Carte Blanche

67. Do you support ASP and .NET services?
 * Nope, no Microsoft here. Debian Linux only.

68. How can I transfer my domain name to you guys?
 * You can initiate a transfer request via through our panel.

69. Do you allow the creation of cron jobs?
 * Yes via SSH and via our control panel.

70. Do you allow the uploading of legal mp3s?
 * Yes.

71. Will my information be resold or shared with any other company?
 * No, you can check our privacy policy here: http://www.dreamhost.com/privacy.html

72. Do you support MS FrontPage Extensions?
 * As of October 2008, no longer.

73. How do I see if the domain name I want is available?
 * Check the public whois database: http://www.dreamhost.com/domains.html

74. What are your Primary and Secondary DNS numbers?
 * ns1.dreamhost.com
 * ns2.dreamhost.com
 * ns3.dreamhost.com

75. Can I register a domain name without purchasing a Web hosting account?
 * Yes.

76. Do you offer 24/7 technical support?
 * Yes, via email.

77. What about over the phone?
 * No, but you can get live chat and callbacks if you add our premium support option.

78. What currency are your fees in?
 * USD.

79. What is your spam and bulk e-mail policy?
 * You can read that policy at http://www.dreamhost.com/spam.html

80. Do you host international domain names ( and IDN)?
 * Yes and yes.

81. Do you support Active Server Pages (ASP) or Cold Fusion?
 * No.

82. Do you support anonymous ftp?
 * Yes.

83. '''How do I transfer files to my site? '''
 * Please read Transfer your site to us.

84. How long does it take to get my domain working?
 * It depends on how quickly you get your content uploaded and the DNS propagates (can take as long as 72 hours).

85. What operating system do your servers run?
 * We use Debian Linux.

86. What are your guarantees backed by?
 * Your money back within 97 days.

87. What do you consider excessive amounts of resources?
 * The server crashing repeatedly due to your specific site.

88. How do I know Lunarpages will be around in the next few years?
 * Don't know, you should ask their CFO if they have the balances to stay alive. We do!

89. Will you place any ads on my site?
 * Nope! It's your web space, put your own ads on it!

90. Can I host multiple domain names?
 * Yes, unlimited on any hosting plan of ours.

91. Do you allow adult websites?
 * Yes, as long as it's legal in California.

92. Is tax included with my monthly or yearly plan?
 * As we provide services only there are NO taxes applied.

93. How long does it take to upgrade my account?
 * About one second.

94. '''How secure is my credit card information? Convince me that I'm safe to use it.'''
 * Again, Ninja protected, just like our servers: http://static.flickr.com/113/282546379_c3be453828.jpg

95. What is the maximum number of MySQL connections allowed in your shared hosting environment?
 * Default limit of 256

96. How many websites do you put on a server?
 * Depends, we used a clustered environment that is continually load balanced, some servers may only have a handful of sites, others may have thousands all based on server performance...

97. What % of resources do your average clients use?
 * The median client? 0%

98. Are there any limits on file size?
 * Nope, but Apache doesn't always play nice with files over 2GB, and PHP has a default limit of around 7 MB, which also applies to webmail.

99. '''How many files are shown in a directory by default? Can this be increased?'''
 * There is no limit on this.

100. How many clients do you have?
 * As of November 2009, over 200,000.

101. How many web sites do you host?
 * As of June 2010, 1,000,000 and counting.

102. Are you a member of the BBB?
 * Nope! We think they're something of a scam. That being said we do comply with any complaints that come through them.

103. How would I cancel my account if I were a customer?
 * You can automatically close your account via our web panel and even get your 97 day money-back guarantee money if due!

104. Any coupons I can use prior to signing up?
 * Who knows!

105. Do you oversell?
 * Of Course! Anyone offering the kind of plans we do for these kind of prices does. You can learn more about this through our blog here: http://blog.dreamhost.com/2006/05/18/the-truth-about-overselling/

106. Can I run TeamSpeak on a shared hosting account?
 * No. We've found TeamSpeak to be a frequent cause of crashing servers.

107. If I were to host my website with you, how do you protect my website from spamming, viruses and hijacking?
 * We keep our side of things secure, but it's up to you to control your own site and password security.

108. Do you offer custom packages?
 * No.

109. Do you offer any discounts, etc. for non-profits?
 * Yes we do for non-profits, learn more here: Non-profit_Discount

110. '''Do you use RAID? RAID5, RAID10? Software RAID, hardware RAID, dedicated file server with RAID?'''
 * Yes, all our customers' files are on hardware raided file servers in either RAID 10 or RAID 6.

111. Do you offer support for WordPress or phpBB?
 * Yes, we offer both as One-Click installs through our panel.

112. How many datacenters are your servers in?
 * As of November 2009, we've got two.

113. Do you own any of them?
 * We have a large ownership stake in our data centers, and we own all of our equipment.

114. Do you have SFTP?
 * Yes.

115. Are there ways to have secure webmail and control panel logins?
 * Yes, both are available at https by default.

116. '''This is a lot of questions. I'm sorry - just doing my research.'''
 * It helps if you look through our website first to narrow down to the few you can't find! http://dreamhost.com

117. Do you get this many questions often?
 * It's a first...