DreamHost Vs HostGator

I started this blog in March 2007 after I acquired this domain name at SnapNames. I hosted this blog on DreamHost until November 2010. I then moved to HostGator to get rid of problems I was experiencing there. It has been a year since I moved to HostGator, so decided to write a review of these top brands in ”˜shared hosting’ arena.

When I started learning web designing and hosting, I only had one domain, this blog. It was running smooth on DreamHost. Then, after a year, I bought couple of domains and started experimenting and developing to learn various Content Management Systems.

In 2009, I was hosting nearly 10 domains on it with two sites getting good traffic. Others were in development and were receiving few visitors. In the middle of 2009, my blog and another site were getting around 2-3k visitors per day along with 1k visits from all other domains. This is the time, DremHost started to put me in trouble. Sites started to load too slow or broke up in the middle of loading. 4k visitors a day is not at all a heavy traffic that a shared hosting cannot handle. These sites were running on WordPress, Drupal, and MyBB with catching mechanism in place.

When contacted the DreamHost, they started to tell all the nonsense things. They were pointing to one or another plugin saying that it will cause problem on shared hosting and consumes too much resources. Though I disabled the plugins they pointed to, sites were showing up “500 internal server errors.” My blog has started to show empty page few times a day. The reason for it was killing processes automatically on the server and they showed the reason as excessive usage of memory. Just google the words “dreamhost killing processes” and you will see ‘n’ number of complaints.

Then, I decided to move to another host and read a lot of good things about HostGator. I signed up with them and moved all my domains to them. My blog has started to receive more and more traffic along with few other domains, which were in development earlier. Now, these sites are getting around 7-8k visitors per day without any problem. It has been a year now and I am really happy with the HostGator.  I never experienced a single problem with their shared hosting.

DreamHost
Pros:

• Easy-to-use control panel.
• Free Domain

Cons:

• Only good for static sites.
• Can’t handle more than 2-3k visits.
• Downtime issues.
• No telephone support (chargeable call back service available).

HostGator
Pros:

• Can handle heavy-traffic sites.
• Cheaper than DreamHost ($95.52/year with 20% off coupon)
• Faster response to tickets.
• Chat support.

Cons:

• Nil (at least for me)

In conclusion, HostGator is the best in shared hosting industry. Never, signup with DreamHost, you will end up moving to another host when your site gets decent traffic and it will be a headache at that time.