Dreamhost is the lovely company that hosts this site. Greenkri.com has been hosted on at Dreamhost since July 7, 2004. With relatively little downtime, and advance notice when it does occur, I have been very happy with this host. I have never really had a problem with the many things I’ve wanted to do/install (Wordpress blog, GD capable script, PHPbb, etc). They offer managed web hosting, dedicated webhosting (for much more money), and domain registration.

1. Low price - With their managed/shared webhosting plans, you’ll pay anywhere from $7.95 a month to $63.95. Even the least expensive plan has quite a bit to offer, with a free domain registration, 20 GB disk space, and more mailboxes than you’ll ever need. This is not to mention all the myriad of little goodies that go along with most of the plans.
   
   There is one downside to these low prices, the $49.95 one time setup fee. If you’re planning to stay with your host for a long time, this isn’t so bad. If you’re unhappy with Dreamhost, however, they offer a 97 day money back gauruntee, which takes a little bit of the risk out of it.

2. Support - I’ve only ever had to contact Dreamhost support once, and their response was immediate. I believe it was a Saturday, and I received a reply e-mail within an hour or two. I exchanged a couple of e-mails that same day attempting to find a fix. All in all it wasn’t a success, only because the problem seemed to mysteriously go away.
   
   At those various other times I’ve had questions needing answered, I just used the KBase which has almost like a huge FAQ for most of the questions you may have. This is partly due to the fact that phone support is limited based upon the plan you’ve chosen, although there is unlimited e-mail support.

3. Sense of humor - Whoever they’ve got writing those monthly newsletters (which you can opt out of) is just short of crazy. It’s sometimes funny, and other times just plain goofy. It makes me feel a little more comfortable with a company that doesn’t seem to take itself too seriously.

4. High bandwith allowances - Several months ago, in one of the goofy newsletters that are sent out monthly, Dreamhost said they were going to triple everyone’s bandwith, forever. I wasn’t even close to reaching the bandwith I was already alotted, let alone the new tripled amount. In the off chance that you do overreach your bandwith limit it does cost money, but it’s a bit comforting to know that for a site my size, the chances of that are slim.

5. One click installs - If you sign up for a Dreamhost account, you’ll see a section in your web panel called “goodies”. You can add, counters, MySQL databases, streaming media, and best of all you can install Wordpress by filling out a few fields and clicking a button. Despite the fact that it’s already really easy to install Wordpress, Dreamhost makes it easier.

6. Suggestions - There is a section full of user submitted suggestions on which you can vote. You are given a certain number of points, and each suggestion costs a different number of points (more points means its harder for them to implement). Every once in a while one of these suggestions is implemented, but I’ve just filled mine out in the hopes that one day mine will be fulfilled. They range from the highly technical (I don’t understand them) to the very simple.
   
   Here are a few examples of some suggestions one might find…

   • Allow one-click installation of WebCalendar.
   • Compile PHP with the iconv extension.
   • Allow more fully-hosted domains on all plans.
   • Update the perl CGI module to the newest version.
   • Offer a disk space add-on plan.

The Downsides

There are really only a few downsides. Various features take anywhere from an hour to a couple of days to set up. New subdomains take about 24 hours until they’re active. New e-mail accounts, and various other little things take about an hour.

Honestly that’s all I can think of at the moment for downsides. I recommend you at least visit Dreamhost to see if it’s the right host for you.