DreamPress…is it living to the hype? Let’s find out. But first…
Have you noticed the scramble by major hosting companies for the WordPress pie recently? It seems every one of them is on a mission to grab as much of the market as they could.
You might be wondering why that is so. I’m going to tell you in a bit. WordPress as it turns out powers about 29 percent of the internet. Now to get an idea of what that means: According to internet stats, there are over one billion websites on the internet – and almost 30 percent of these, run on WordPress.
Do you now see why these companies are jostling to get their hands on this websites?
To do this – that is, obtain more market share these companies have rolled out services targeted primarily at WordPress users. The latest efforts being in the WordPress managed service sub-segment.
DreamHost – you are familiar with the company right, is not left out in this race. To get into the WordPress Hosting field, they released DreamPress. In fact, they have had to release an updated version of the service – DreamPress 2.
And in this article, I’ll be reviewing in details the service, but first, let’s take a look at the two different WordPress hosting packages available in the market.
Shared Hosting Vs. Managed WordPress Hosting
One of the decisions website owners or online business entrepreneurs face is deciding which hosting solution is suitable for their needs.
While researching the different services on offer, you are going to run into some of these services like, free website hosting, shared hosting, dedicated hosting, managed hosting, and VPS. Each of these offering caters for specific needs and their prices also differs.
So it’s imperative to understand what your needs are, then go for the right solution.
For WordPress site owners, there you can choose to either buy a shared plan or a managed WordPress hosting solution.
You might be wondering, what is the difference between Shared and Managed WP hosting. Honestly, there’s a world of difference between them. But first, let’s explain what each term means:
Shared WordPress hosting is a hosting solution in which your website shares hosting resources with other websites on a server. In other words – the server on which your site is running on – could be accommodating several hundred or thousands of sites.
This plan is suitable if you’re just starting out in your online business with little visits and hasn’t begun making enough money to move to a more premium plan.
But, problems usually start when your site begins receiving a lot more visits. You’d start noticing the load time dragging, out-of-bandwidth notifications, and several downtimes. At this point – it’s better to upgrade to a higher tier or to a managed service.
Managed WordPress hosting, on the other hand, is a hosting solution specifically designed and optimized for WordPress users – this means you’re getting a custom platform with loads of benefits to boot.
Benefits of Using a High-Performing Webhosting Solution
There are many advantages you get from having your WordPress site hosted on a Managed service.
It’s Incredibly Fast: Your managed servers are optimized to host WordPress meaning that every aspect of the host is tweaked to give you the best possible experience.
And it wouldn’t be long before you start reaping the benefits of fast loading site like ranking higher on search results, better experience for your site users, and increase earnings.
Improved Security: With managed hosting, you don’t have to worry about whether the other sites sharing the same server with you are compromising your safety. Also, you are getting a daily scan for malware, increased security protocols, a more robust ability to fend off hacks and cyber-attacks.
However, even if you get hacked, you have the support of highly skilled support team to get you out of the fix quick, and you’re able to bounce back faster.
Highly competent and dedicated support: the industry standard for managed hosting is that the supports are experts and individuals with loads of experience on WordPress. Hence you are sure of receiving expert advice and help when you run into a hitch and need help.
Automated Backups: You hear it all the time – you should backup your website. But, how many of us do that on a daily basis? With managed WordPress hosting the “platform” automatically does that for you. And it even goes a step further to provide a button you can click and restore your site back should you ever need to.
Automatic updates: With managed hosting, your WP is automatically updated with no inputs from you – this also includes automatically updating the OS on your server, the PHP and database codes on which the functionality of your site depends.
Hence you are assured of having your site running on the latest version, most secure and most stable versions of the programs critical to your website’s operation.
Better uptime: Since your site is the only one using the resources of your server or sharing with far fewer sites than a shared hosting plan, you’re sure of improved uptime.
Now, you’ve read about several benefits of moving to a managed WordPress hosting and excited about this hosting option, but the problem is you don’t have an idea which hosting provider to select.
… here enters DreamPress, the WordPress managed service offered by DreamHost.
DreamPress was first released in 2013, and with the initial hitches, DreamHost released an updated version DreamPress 2 with better offerings and more robust features.
The service offers to over 400,000 DreamHost customers an easy plan to migrate to the managed services with a just a click of the button.
There are several important and critical features which set DreamPress apart from other managed services, and they include:
Features of DreamPress Managed WordPress Hosting
- Two virtual private servers: The plan comes with a standard two VPS servers configured for your WP site. According to DreamHost, each handles the front end side of your site, while the other is dedicated to the back-end database handling.
- Solid state drives (SSD): Your data are stored in a fast storage with 30 GB memory space for quick and easy information retrieval.
- Dynamic memory scaling: This feature allows your site to handle a spike in traffic and still function optimally.
- Uses Varnish caching and Memcached: for fast caching and reduced server requests.
- Highly optimized PHP7 and OPcache: for improved WordPress function and also maintaining compatibility with 3rd-party WP plugins.
- Preconfigured and available HHVM
- HTTP/2, Let’s Encrypt TLS/SSL and NGINX to secure your website and get it all ready to integrate with your e-commerce store.
- SSH access available for both Git support and WP-CLI
- Ability to create unlimited emails: You’re able to set up and manage email accounts from your DreamPress plan unlike other managed WP hosting plans.
- No overage charges: So you’re sure of what you’ll be paying at the end of every month.
- $100 Google Adwords credit: Now you can start promoting your website right away without worrying about funding your marketing efforts.
- Up to 2.1 million monthly visits – which means you, have enough window to grow.
- Easy CloudFlare integration
- Automatic daily backup: The platform automatically backs your data up every day.
- 24/7 WordPress support: No matter what issues you might face, you’re always going to have highly skilled support round the clock who would walk you through the solutions or in most cases, remotely take over and resolve the problems.
- No bandwidth limitations
DreamPress Pricing
DreamPress is relatively inexpensive when compared with other WordPress managed hosting services out there.
You can either signup for the monthly payment plan starting at $16.95 or go for the yearly fee and get 15 percent off the regular price.
Here is what you get when you sign up for DreamPress in addition to the features listed above:
- Easy signup
- Jetpack premium for free: This costs $99/year if you are to buy it yourself.
Final thoughts
Managed WP hosting is a big thing and will continue to be so as long as WordPress continues to gain a large chunk of the internet. As your online business continues to grow and the visits to your site tripling – at time will come when you would have to consider a managed service.
At that point, DreamPress from DreamHost will be there to help you scale up to the stage. With several features that promise to keep your website functioning optimally and a relatively inexpensive price model – you’re sure getting a bang for your bucks. In other words, I recommend DreamPress WordPress Hosting for your WP sites.
