$350k/year really isn’t that big - it was myself and my wife running a retail business. When you’re in a market where the average net profit margin is 20% - 30%, every penny counts. That being said, we didn’t expect it to take off that quickly And again, we never had a problem for the first two years. DH *was* that good, and I found them by reading tons of reviews on the net at the time that reflected that.

DH got as “big as they are” by changing their business model to mirror Walmart. Offer a wide range of substandard products and services for cheap and there’s a larger market segment that can now afford you. There’s also going to be a second segment that honestly thinks you can get something for nothing that you’ll catch as well.

Unfortunately that wasn’t what I was looking for in a web host, and really am not now - I still have a $10 account here for personal stuff and little projects, but lately they’ve really hit a new low and it’s questionable whether they’re even worth $10/mo.

- Roach

I can’t figure out why a few people sit around complaining that Dreamhost should be some other host, rather than just switch hosts. It’s not hard.

Dreamhost gives the majority what they want. They didn’t get this big by listening to a small handful of people telling them to do the exact opposite of what they’re doing. The complainers don’t seem to get that most people here completely disagree with everything they say.

I’d also say that a $350K/year business should’ve been on its own server anyway, even back then.

Everyone likes to say you shouldn’t host a business here, but a business shouldn’t rely on a single cheap shared hosting account anywhere.

What you are both describing is the reason DH has gone down the tubes.

In the last 3 - 4 years there’s been a “Race to the bottom” among the shared hosting companies. DH used to be great … now, not so much. The problem with charging almost nothing and making it up on volume is that you can’t afford the infrastructure and staffing required to make it reliable.

When they were charging me $40/mo for “code monster” years ago, the reliability was very, very good. I was amazed then that they could provide such problem-free service for so little money (compared to a dedicated server or co-lo,). I ran my eCommerce business on DH and never had a problem (small - med. operation, about $350k in gross sales a year). Until they started to go downhill …

Now … DH is crap. If you’re running a business here, you’re asking to go out of business. The best thing I ever did was move to a dedicated host at softlayer. $150/mo unmanaged and no outages in 2 years.

The problem is … not everyone can justify $150/mo for a web site. So where do they go if they want reliability and shared hosting?

I’m almost tempted to try and start a small reselling business on softlayer. Charge $40/mo and offer reliability and performance over wiz-bang control panels.

- Roach

Anywho, it is and it isn’t peeps like you that have DH in an utter flux at this point. Very untechie folks who clog the support ques, as well as, the spammers/FSW (file share whores) who hoover the available bandwiths are both to blame for the apparent demise of DH. So in some ways, you, indeed are part of the problem.

I never said I wasn’t a tech, just that I’m not at this point using it for anything that I’d call demanding. Unless you count the need for a MySQL database as demanding, so I’m left scratching my head at this comment.

I am aware of the challenges that you face with the online world, however, I would not demean you by answering in any less of spirit than i would anybody else.

I face no real challenges to the online world, per say. Unless you count the challenge of finding time to do anything save put up a personal website. But, for the moment, that’s all I’m after and given the type of website I currently have, blogger/livejournal/typepad/wordpress.com just don’t do it for me. I don’t find your responses demeaning in any way, shape or form. Slightly off the mark, perhaps, but that’s about it.

I guess, in a way, I am a host-elitist. I would prefer DH dumb-up several of the services offered to it’s clients, as well as, make it more expensive.

On this at least, we can partially agree. We don’t *need* 40 gazillion terabytes of bandwidth or diskspace, for the most part. Nor are most users running projects large enough or with enough development staff that something like SVN is actually warranted. So why a $9/month plan like CDI has access to it, I have no idea. I don’t use it, just like I don’t use the 500 GB disk space we’re now being offered.

I just don’t think that is the answer. The answer to me is charge more, hire more staff, add more hardware and keep the clients happy - other than throwing more bandwith/storage our way.

The answer is simpler than that, even. Don’t charge us for what we’re not going to use. If people *want* the increased bandwidth/storage, they’ll pay for it. Just like if they want a VPS with enough room to grow that it can mirror one of DH’s shared servers in performance/scaleability, they’ll pay for it. Even now, I haven’t even touched the 20 GB my plan originally had as a limit, and I’ve been here since January of 2006. I don’t use SVN, or CVS. I think I *might* have thought about compiling one program for use in the shell, and then changed my mind because I found a web equivalent. The pricing structure isn’t the problem. The problem is you and I are pretty much on equal footing so far as plans go, in spite of the fact I’m sure you’re paying more per month than I am, and using your service plan for more than I am. And yet, if I decided within the next 10 minutes to put a development project underway, it wouldn’t cost me any more to do so. The way I see it, if you know you aren’t going to be doing any sort of heavy lifting where the server’s concerned, why would you bother shelling out heavy lifting cash? That makes about as little sense as charging $9/month for virtually limitless resources.

While I respect your concerns - the mere fact that you are a hockey fan and not a baseball fan has me at odds with you :p

Anywho, it is and it isn’t peeps like you that have DH in an utter flux at this point. Very untechie folks who clog the support ques, as well as, the spammers/FSW (file share whores) who hoover the available bandwiths are both to blame for the apparent demise of DH. So in some ways, you, indeed are part of the problem. I am aware of the challenges that you face with the online world, however, I would not demean you by answering in any less of spirit than i would anybody else. I guess, in a way, I am a host-elitist. I would prefer DH dumb-up several of the services offered to it’s clients, as well as, make it more expensive. However, I understand that with the monster (google) getting ever closer to offering hosting capabilities, I know that it is very difficult to not follow the pack and lower prices to the point of freeweb competitiveness. I just don’t think that is the answer. The answer to me is charge more, hire more staff, add more hardware and keep the clients happy - other than throwing more bandwith/storage our way.

NH could do better by simply making their customers pay at least $20/month

Here’s the catch. See, I’m neither a bandwidth whore nor a spammer. I’ve created and advertised all of 1 promo code in my time here, and that was primarily out of boredom–my thought process was, “Ooh, nifty. This aughta kill 5 minutes.”. It’s still in my forum signature because, to be perfectly honest, I never bothered to remove it. For all the time I spend on the forums nowadays and for all the people who’ve used it in the past (I think maybe 3?), it doesn’t really make a whole lot of difference. That being said, if DH increases their prices, I’m outa here. I know my website’s not worth $20/month–certain individuals would argue whether or not it’s worth $10, but it’s not their website. That’s why I picked DH, though. Because I needed space and I knew I wasn’t going to be doing anything overly ground breaking with it–primarily, it’s an excuse for me to not use my ISP provided email account without bothering to subject myself to a spam bucket (Yahoo, Hotmail) or a group of data mining experts (Google). Well, actually, even that isn’t true–I originally just needed somewhere to register a domain name and they were the cheapest. But they discontinued their domain parking service and gave me a year free of their CDI plan and I haven’t closed it yet. But the point is, I’m doing things I need at least some of the shared resources for, and I was not about to pay what the shared prices were at the time. I think I ended up here by accident and only stayed here because the plan they had me on, which I knew I’d never come close to maxing out (this was before they started increasing disk and bandwidth limits), was reasonably priced by about the time they told me they were gonna start charging me. So, pretty much, I ended up here by accident and am comfortable. If DH starts rocking the boat by increasing prices, prices are dropping on other hosts and I can still do the same things over there, just maybe not with the convenience of one-click installs. but I only ever use them to toy around with some new piece of software anyway. Anything I’m serious about using is already installed manually.

Parker, do you really need to ask - cmon, dig deep - you know who i am; i am at my wits end over this whole ordeal

I don’t hate NH, I simply want the old DH back - I want them to STOP making their service more pleasurable to every tom dick and harry spammer out there - stop the $5/month plans - stop the TB bandwith - you don’t have to be everybodys answer for a webhost to make money. The reason why I will not recommend NH at this time is because with every promotion that they run (currently the bday thingie), it is GUARANTEED that their service will be shotty during the growth cycle - and that simply does not need to happen. It is a slippery slope, with every 3 $5/month peeps they sign up, they lose a code monster client - this cycle of attrition will only continue to downgrade their overall service levels. I cannot even tell you how much more bandwith and server space that they have added to the plans since I joined up - and while many of you are happy about this, i am not. All higher BW and storage gets you is the peeps who get the most use out of those two areas: spammers and BW whores.

[Oh and, BYW, I recommend DreamHost when I feel their services are appropriate for someone even without benefiting from any affiliate whore bonuses … why do you find that kind of behavior so hard to understand? Have you *never* given a recommendation to someone because you are happy with your experience and want to share?]

I give personal recommendations all the time, however, those recommendations are not tainted by promo codes - see, I don’t want the $5/month customer to join DH - i don’t want them PERIOD - all they do is clutter the servers and create more problems. NH could do better by simply making their customers pay at least $20/month and just making the overall service better - as I said, NH does not have to be EVERYBODYS HOST - they obviously do not have the hardware/staffing required to do so.

On a separate personal note, I will be quite happy when the ‘livin it up’ sales campaign is finally quashed - seriously, how smug is that?