What types of hosting plans are available?


DreamHost offers several different types of hosting plans running on the Ubuntu operating system. Most sites work well on the basic Shared hosting plan, however if your site is getting a large amount of traffic or if you need to make customizations not available to shared users, you may need to upgrade to a VPS, Dedicated, or DreamPress plan.

You can find further details at DreamHost Hosting which describes the various options available to you as a DreamHost customer.

What if my domain is registered at another company?

You can still host your site at DreamHost if your registration was purchased at another company. You just need to point your DNS to DreamHost. The other option would be to transfer the registration to your DreamHost account. View the following articles for further details:

Starter Shared hosting

Starter Shared is DreamHost's introductory Shared hosting plan that's geared for users who are new to web hosting. It's also a perfect solution for a personal or business website that displays simple information about yourself or services that you offer.

What's included?

Since this is a starter plan, there are a few limitations that don't exist with a regular Shared plan. For example, a Starter Shared plan offers the following:

  • 1 domain you can use for your website (e.g., example.com)
  • 5 subdomains of your single domain name (e.g., blog.example.com)
  • Email is not included — an email plan is available for an extra charge
  • Site storage is limited to 50GB
  • A maximum of 6 FTP/SFTP/Shell users
  • A maximum of 6 MySQL databases

Refund policy

Refunds on Starter Shared follow the same policy as a regular Shared hosting plan.


Current prices are available on the following page:

Adding a Starter Shared plan

View the following article for instructions on how to add this plan:

Shared hosting (a.k.a. Happy Hosting)

On a shared server, you 'share' server space with other customers. Though no other customer has access to your files, you and the other customers share the resources of the server. This means that if another website on the same server is receiving a large amount of traffic and using a lot of CPU resources, it's possible that your site may run slower as a result.


What can I host on shared hosting?

Shared hosting is perfect for blogs, portfolios, personal/business sites, and database-driven sites. Visit the following page for further information:

Non-Profit discount

Shared hosting plans offer a free Non-Profit plan for qualifying non-profit, charitable organizations registered in the United States. View the following article for further information:


View the Shared Hosting page for current plan options.

VPS hosting

The DreamHost Virtual Private Server (VPS) is a premium hosting solution that runs on Solid State Drives (SSDs.) It is available as an add-on to an existing DreamHost plan or a standalone service.

DreamHost VPSs use Linux-VServer to create a "virtual machine" that protects a user's CPU and RAM resources from other users on the same physical machine. This is accomplished by kernel level isolation which allows the server to run multiple virtual units at once. Those units are sufficiently isolated to guarantee the required security, but utilize available resources efficiently, as they run on the same kernel.

Comparison of Shared and VPS hosting


You also have the ability to control how much RAM your server uses. On a shared plan, this is limited to a specific amount; but on a VPS, you get to select how much RAM your server can use.

What can I host on a private server?

A VPS is ideal for websites that require more resources than a shared server can provide, yet do not need the full power of a Dedicated server. It's ideal for businesses, ecommerce, designers, and developers.


View the VPS Hosting page for current plan options.


A Dedicated server is a server that only contains your websites and data on it. No other customers share any resources or have any access to it, as it's "dedicated" to you and your data.

You have full root access to customize it anyway you wish, but please note that DreamHost support cannot assist if any errors occur as a result of a customization.

Another feature is that your MySQL server is on the same Dedicated server allowing faster access, unlike with all other hosting plans where your MySQL databases are on a separate database server.

View the following page for further details on Dedicated plans:

What can I host on a Dedicated server?

Dedicated servers are Fully-managed business-class servers. They are perfect for resource-heavy apps and giant websites.


View the Dedicated Hosting page for current plan options.



One DreamPress plan is configured for a single domain. If you want multiple domains on DreamPress, they must each have their own separate DreamPress hosting plan activated.

DreamPress uses both a VPS for the webserver and a private database server for your database. This is different from a standard VPS service where your databases are still on a shared database server.

View the following page for further details:

DreamPress Non-Profit discount

DreamPress plans offer a free Non-Profit discount for qualifying non-profit, charitable organizations registered in the United States. View the following article for further information:


View the WordPress hosting page for current plan options.

Apache and Nginx

If you have upgraded to a VPS or Dedicated server, you have the option to run Nginx as your web server. Shared and DreamPress hosting must use Apache. View the following article for a detailed comparison:

Comparison graph of hosting plans

Feature Shared VPS Dedicated DreamPress
Isolated CPU resources No No Yes No
Isolated RAM resources No Yes Yes Yes
root/sudo access No No Yes No
MySQL server on same machine No No Yes No
Root access to MySQL server No No Yes No
Can run Apache Yes Yes Yes Yes
Can run Nginx No Yes Yes Yes
Free domain included Yes No No Yes
Unlimited storage Yes No No No
Unlimited domains Yes Yes Yes No


DreamHost also offers a cloud computing service called DreamCompute. View the following article for further details.

Secure hosting

Secure hosting is not a specific plan, it's a service you can add on to any plan. View the following links for details:

Email hosting

You can purchase an email-only plan or add email service to any Starter Shared or domain registration-only account. For more information, please see the following article:

All Shared, VPS, DreamPress, and Dedicated hosting plans include email service. DreamCompute-only plans do not include email hosting.

MySQL hosting

With any Shared or VPS hosting plan, you also have free access to a shared MySQL server. This Shared MySQL server can store all of your databases for all of your websites. Since it's a shared server, resources are 'shared' with other customer in the same way as a shared web server mentioned above.

If you need more database resources than the Shared MySQL server can offer, you can purchase a private MySQL server.

If you choose to purchase this plan, all of your databases will be moved to the private MySQL server. It's not possible to split databases across Shared and private MySQL servers.

See also

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Article last updated PST.