Julio Garcia

Looking to Move from DreamHost

After being a “customer” with DreamHost for almost two years, I have now started to look for another web hosting provider. Recently, DreamHost had been having a lot of technical issues with their servers, hardware, and network. Many people were upset with the constant problems and left to other hosting providers.

On their part DreamHost openly discussed their problems on their blog (part 1, part 2) which they were lauded for (Mike Davidson, Robert Scoble) because it, of all things, kept the dialogue open between them and customers.

Honestly, I appreciated the move at the time. Now I look at it and it seems like they are just trying to pass the buck off to Cisco. Not cool. I decided to give DreamHost a month or so to see if all their work corrected all the issues they had, then I would decide to stay or move to another web hosting provider like MediaTemple (which, by the way, was very polite and courteous to me when I was looking for a web host provider for work).

Sounds like a plan, right? Well, then Andy had a problem today with DreamHost. He explains his issue in great detail on his new blog, NightmareHost, but basically what happened is that DreamHost said “there were a large amount of copyrighted movies on that FTP server” and completely canceled his account and refuse to reactivate it. An account that hosted a large amount of websites, and a few with high traffic. The thing is this; Andy, on occasion, works for Ipecac Recordings, a record label, and has permission to host concert video from several bands. The other thing is that if someone uploads copyrighted material to his FTP server, and he does NOT have permission to host, he removes those files. Not only that, but he configured his server in a way that the files could not be downloaded until approved.

But let’s say Andy did knowingly host and distribute copyrighted material which he did not have permission to do. I would at least think DreamHost would either warn him and then reactivate his account, or ban him from DreamHost but at least let him have all of his, and clients, data back. Neither option was given by DreamHost. In an effort to clear things up, Andy contacted DreamHost customer support several times. The second and final response was “I’m sorry, but this account closure was is a decision we will not rescind under any circumstances. Thanks!” I don’t know about you, but doesn’t the “Thanks!” seem like a kick in the stomach while you’re already on the ground? They have yet to respond to his other emails simply wanting to know how to correct this problem. That’s DreamHost for you.

There a couple reasons why this ticks me off. The first is that I recommended DreamHost to Andy, I told him that aside from some email issues in September 2005, everything was great. I also recommended DreamHost to Jeremiah Owyang and now he’s not too found of DreamHost either (he’s even asked them to respond to Andy). So, basically, thanks to the DreamHost jerks, I’ve lost some credibility. The other reason is that DreamHost is always quick to ask for a second chance time and time again when things go wrong, yet they don’t even give a customer the respect of a full response or explanation, let alone a second chance. Nor do they even provide a phone number, just a voicemail which they pick the best messages off of to post on their blog to laugh at.

I blogged about this because I can no longer recommend DreamHost to others (well, maybe I can to people I dislike) and because I would just like them to, at least, explain to Andy what happened and give him the chance to explain his side or at least take his data elsewhere. And to see if anyone out there has a web host they are happy with, if so, feel free to let me know in the comments.

Further:

• Andy says DreamHost has resolved the situation, but he and I are now looking into sharing a dedicated server
• Brian’s post about this situation
• Robert Scoble chimes in