HostGator vs DreamHost: And The Winner Is…

After spending a few weeks comparing HostGator and DreamHost, I’ve learned a lot about each web hosts. I got myself an account with each of them so I could see what it’s like to host with them.

Here are a few key points from this comparison between DreamHost and HostGator.

HostGator vs DreamHost - Products & Services

HostGator offers the best range of products and services. From shared hosting, reseller hosting and dedicated servers, each plans are backed up by many extras such as a free Site Builder, over 4500 free website templates (including Flash templates), free site transfer, automated billing system (for resellers only) and lots more.

DreamHost on the other hand provides only a single shared hosting plan. VPS and dedicated hosting services are provided through a partnership with Hosting.com. They do not provide any reseller hosting packages at all and they lack many extra features that HostGator provides for free.

HostGator vs DreamHost - Shared Hosting Features & Pricing

This is a tight round here as both web hosts virtually offer the same shared hosting features for about the same price. With the exception of HostGator offering ASP support by Chilisoft, you basically get the same functionnalities.

Still I wouldn’t base my choice in the fact that they offer ASP because I’d go with a Windows hosting account if I really needed that.

HostGator vs DreamHost - Web Hosting Control Panel

DreamHost is unfortunately losing many points in this area my opinion. Their homemade control panel lacks intuitivity and looks messy. I also do not like the fact that some operations are not being accomplished in real time. For example, you have to wait a couple of minutes for your MySQL database to be created once you submitted the request.

As for HostGator, they are using cPanel which is very well known in the web hosting industry. cPanel is a very mature hosting control panel with endless features. It’s ease of use and fast response time made it the best control panel available. Once you get used to cPanel, it makes things a lot easier to move to another cPanel web host.

HostGator vs DreamHost - Customer Support

Is customer support important for you? For some people it’s more important than for others but in my opinion, customer support is very important.

HostGator provides technical support all around the clock, 7 days a week. You can contact them by phone (toll free number), email, live chat and support ticket system. I’ve contacted them a couple of times and the wait time was about 6 minutes. They were very kind and professional. You know they know what they are talking about.

As for Dreamhost, I didn’t have to contact them yet but as they state on their website: The absolute fastest way to get answers to most of your questions is to search through our extensive online documentation. Our wiki is maintained by both DreamHost staff and our most knowledgeable customers.

To me this sounds like the less you bug them, the better. I mean how can you tell your customers that the best support you can get is through a Wiki put up by the staff and other customers?

Other than that, you can only contact them through their support ticket system. Some hosting plans include a limited number of callback.

Dreamhost vs HostGator: The Conclusion

While Dreamhost isn’t that bad, they offer less features, less products and less support than HostGator. In my opinion, they should drop their homemade control so they’d probably save some money on development and customers would find themselves in a known environment.

The support given by Dreamhost is not up to par. If I had my online business hosted on Dreamhost servers, I’d sure want to talk to somebody on the phone in case I had major problems.

That said, I strongly recommend HostGator over Dreamhost.

External links

• HostGator website
• Dreamhost website

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