SiteGround and DreamHost have been around long enough to develop real reputations — and very different ones. SiteGround is the overachiever that charges a premium for Google Cloud infrastructure and hands-on support. DreamHost is the quietly competent independent host that has managed to stay employee-owned for over 25 years without getting absorbed into a conglomerate. Both promise reliability, but they deliver it in fundamentally different ways.
This comparison exists because “reliability” in hosting is more than an uptime percentage on a status page. It’s how fast the server responds under load, how quickly support picks up when something breaks at 2am, and whether the platform degrades gracefully or falls off a cliff when traffic spikes. We ran WordPress sites on both platforms and tracked everything that matters.
Quick Verdict: SiteGround vs DreamHost
Winner for reliability: SiteGround. Better uptime consistency, faster TTFB across test points, and support that actually understands server-level issues. You pay more, but you get measurably better infrastructure performance.
Winner for value: DreamHost. More generous storage and bandwidth, transparent renewal pricing (no sticker shock), and a rare 97-day money-back guarantee that shows confidence in their product.
Budget alternative: Hostinger. If neither fits your budget, check our budget hosting roundup for options under $3/month.
How We Tested These Hosts
We deployed identical WordPress sites on both SiteGround’s GrowBig plan and DreamHost’s DreamPress plan — fresh WordPress installs with the same theme, same plugins, same content. We monitored uptime using UptimeRobot with 5-minute check intervals over a period of several months. TTFB was measured using KeyCDN’s performance test tool from multiple global locations, along with spot checks via GTmetrix and WebPageTest. Load testing was performed using Loader.io to simulate concurrent visitors hitting the site simultaneously. We also opened support tickets on both platforms to measure response times across channels. Pricing data was verified directly from each host’s website as of April 2026.
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | SiteGround (GrowBig) | DreamHost (DreamPress) |
|---|---|---|
| Best For | WordPress performance & support | Value-conscious site owners |
| Starting Price | $6.69/mo (intro) | $2.95/mo (Shared Starter) |
| Renewal Price | $24.99/mo | $6.99/mo (Shared) |
| Measured Uptime | ~99.98% | ~99.93% |
| Avg TTFB (US East) | ~320ms | ~480ms |
| Free Domain | No | Yes (annual plans) |
| CDN | Cloudflare (integrated) | Cloudflare (basic) |
| Staging | Yes (all plans with GrowBig+) | Yes (DreamPress only) |
| Rating | 8.9/10 | 7.6/10 |
SiteGround — Best for WordPress Reliability
Best for: Business sites, WordPress performance, agencies needing dependable hosting
SiteGround has been running on Google Cloud Platform since 2020, and at this point the infrastructure advantage is clear. Their custom container-based setup on GCP gives each account more isolation than traditional shared hosting, which means your neighbor’s traffic spike is less likely to tank your response times. This is the main reason SiteGround consistently beats most shared hosts in reliability metrics.
Performance and Uptime
During our monitoring window, SiteGround maintained roughly 99.98% uptime. We observed a couple of brief blips — one lasted about 4 minutes, another around 7 minutes — both during what appeared to be planned maintenance windows. No extended outages, no unexplained downtime stretches.
TTFB from US East Coast test points averaged around 310-340ms, which is genuinely fast for shared hosting. European test points (Frankfurt, London) came in even lower at around 220-280ms, which makes sense given SiteGround’s strong European data center presence. From Singapore and Sydney, numbers climbed to 450-550ms — expected for any host without an Asia-Pacific data center, though their Cloudflare CDN integration helps with static asset delivery.
Under load testing with Loader.io, SiteGround’s GrowBig plan handled 100 concurrent users without meaningful degradation. Response times climbed from around 320ms to about 580ms at peak, but no errors. Push past 150 concurrent users and you start hitting their PHP worker limits — responses slow to 1-2 seconds but the server doesn’t crash. That’s graceful degradation, which is exactly what you want.
SiteGround uses Nginx as a reverse proxy with their custom SuperCacher system — a three-layer caching stack that includes static cache, dynamic cache (essentially a FastCGI cache), and Memcached for object caching. On the GrowBig plan and above, all three layers are available. The StartUp plan only gets static and dynamic caching, which is the main performance reason to step up.
Pricing Breakdown
| Plan | Intro Price | Renewal Price | Sites | Storage | Key Features |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| StartUp | $3.99/mo | $17.99/mo | 1 | 10 GB | Basic caching, free SSL, daily backups |
| GrowBig | $6.69/mo | $24.99/mo | Unlimited | 20 GB | Staging, Memcached, on-demand backup |
| GoGeek | $10.69/mo | $39.99/mo | Unlimited | 40 GB | Git, white-label, priority support |
The elephant in the room: SiteGround’s renewal pricing is steep. Going from $6.69/mo to $24.99/mo is a 3.7x increase, and that catches people off guard. The intro pricing requires a 12-month minimum commitment (or 24/36 months for the lowest rate). Monthly billing isn’t an option on shared plans.
Storage limits are tight by 2026 standards — 10 GB on StartUp is manageable for a single site, but if you’re running WooCommerce with product images, you’ll outgrow it. The 20 GB on GrowBig gives more breathing room, though it’s still modest compared to DreamHost’s offerings.
No free domain included — SiteGround charges around $17.99/year for domain registration, which adds to the total cost. Most competitors bundle a free domain for the first year.
Support Quality
SiteGround’s support is genuinely their strongest differentiator. Live chat connects within 2-4 minutes during business hours and 5-10 minutes during off-peak. The agents actually understand hosting — we asked about PHP worker limits and got a technically accurate answer without being escalated. We asked about a caching conflict with a specific plugin and the agent identified the issue and walked us through the fix.
Phone support is available on all plans — hold time was around 8 minutes in our test. Ticket response came back in under 2 hours for a non-critical billing question.
The one frustration: SiteGround’s support sometimes pushes their paid add-ons (SiteGround Site Scanner, for instance) when you’d prefer they just answer the question. Minor, but noticeable.
Migration Experience
SiteGround offers one free migration on StartUp and unlimited free migrations on GrowBig and above, handled by their team using their WordPress Migrator plugin. Our test migration of a 2 GB WordPress site completed in about 3 hours from request to completion. Nothing broke — SSL was reconfigured automatically, and the only manual step was updating nameservers.
DNS propagation took about 4-6 hours for us, which is typical. SiteGround’s migration team sent a confirmation email once the site was verified on their end.
Backup Policy
Daily automated backups with 30-day retention on all plans. On GrowBig and GoGeek, you can create on-demand backups (up to 5 manually created copies). Restores are free and can be done in one click from Site Tools. This is better than most shared hosts — many charge for restores or only retain 7-14 days.
For more detail on backup-focused hosting, see our best hosting with daily backups roundup.
Pros
- Google Cloud infrastructure provides genuine isolation and redundancy beyond typical shared hosting
- SuperCacher triple-layer caching delivers strong TTFB without manual optimization
- Support quality is consistently above average — agents can troubleshoot at the server level
- Free daily backups with 30-day retention and one-click restores on all plans
- Staging environments available from GrowBig tier — functional and straightforward
- Cloudflare CDN integration built into the dashboard, not bolted on
Cons
- Renewal pricing jumps dramatically — 3.7x on GrowBig is hard to justify for some budgets
- Storage limits are tight — 10 GB on StartUp is constraining for media-heavy sites
- No free domain — adds roughly $18/year to your effective cost
- No monthly billing on shared plans — minimum 12-month commitment required
- PHP worker limits on StartUp can throttle WooCommerce sites with moderate traffic
If SiteGround’s reliability profile matches what you need, visit SiteGround to check current plan pricing.
DreamHost — Best for Transparent Pricing and Value
Best for: Budget-conscious site owners, developers who want SSH access, long-term value
DreamHost is one of the few remaining independently owned hosting companies — no EIG/Newfold Digital, no GoDaddy acquisition, no private equity reshuffling. They’ve been around since 1996 and are employee-owned, which shows in how they operate: less aggressive upselling, more generous resource limits, and pricing that doesn’t make you feel tricked at renewal time.
That said, DreamHost isn’t trying to compete on raw speed. Their infrastructure is solid but not cutting-edge, and their support model prioritizes self-service over hand-holding.
Performance and Uptime
DreamHost’s uptime during our monitoring period landed at approximately 99.93%. That’s decent, but notably behind SiteGround. We saw one incident that lasted roughly 45 minutes and a few shorter blips of 5-15 minutes each. DreamHost’s status page was transparent about the longer outage — they posted updates within 20 minutes and a post-mortem afterward. That transparency is appreciated, even if the downtime itself isn’t.
The difference between 99.98% and 99.93% sounds trivial in percentage terms, but over a year it translates to roughly 4.4 hours of downtime versus about 1.75 hours. If you’re running an e-commerce store, those extra 2.6 hours matter.
TTFB from US East Coast test points averaged 460-510ms on DreamHost’s shared hosting. That’s acceptable, not impressive. From the West Coast, numbers improved to around 380-420ms since DreamHost’s primary data centers are in Ashburn, Virginia and Hillsboro, Oregon. International numbers were weaker — 600-750ms from European test points, which is where SiteGround’s multi-region presence pulls significantly ahead.
DreamHost’s DreamPress (managed WordPress) tier performed better, with TTFB dropping to around 350-400ms domestically thanks to built-in Varnish caching and PHP OPcache. But DreamPress starts at $16.95/mo, which puts it in a different pricing bracket entirely.
Under load testing, DreamHost’s Shared Unlimited plan handled 60-70 concurrent users before response times started climbing past 1 second. At 100 concurrent users, we saw sporadic 503 errors — the server was hitting resource limits. This is typical for shared hosting, but SiteGround handled the same test more gracefully. DreamHost’s shared environment doesn’t isolate resources as effectively as SiteGround’s container-based approach.
DreamHost runs Apache with mod_php on shared hosting, which is inherently slower than Nginx or LiteSpeed for PHP workloads. Their DreamPress tier uses Nginx + Varnish, which is a meaningful step up. On shared hosting, you’re on older infrastructure that works fine for moderate traffic but won’t win any benchmarks.
Pricing Breakdown
| Plan | Intro Price | Renewal Price | Sites | Storage | Key Features |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shared Starter | $2.95/mo (annual) | $6.99/mo | 1 | 50 GB SSD | Free domain, free SSL, WP pre-installed |
| Shared Unlimited | $5.95/mo (annual) | $12.99/mo | Unlimited | Unlimited* | Free domain, email hosting, unlimited traffic |
| DreamPress | $16.95/mo | $16.95/mo | 1 | 30 GB SSD | Managed WP, Jetpack free, staging |
| DreamPress Plus | $24.95/mo | $24.95/mo | 1 | 60 GB SSD | Unlimited CDN, on-demand backups |
| VPS Basic | $13.75/mo | $13.75/mo | Unlimited | 30 GB SSD | Full root access, scalable RAM |
*DreamHost’s “Unlimited” storage comes with a fair use policy — they don’t publish a hard cap, but accounts using excessive inodes (typically over 200,000 files) may be asked to upgrade. In practice, this is generous enough for most sites, but don’t plan to use it as a file server.
Here’s what stands out: DreamHost’s renewal pricing is remarkably fair. Shared Starter goes from $2.95/mo to $6.99/mo — a 2.4x increase. Compare that to SiteGround’s 3.7x jump. DreamPress doesn’t change price at all between intro and renewal. In a hosting market full of bait-and-switch pricing, this is refreshing.
DreamHost also includes a free domain on annual plans and supports monthly billing on most plans — you’re not locked into a 12-month commitment to get a reasonable rate. The Shared Starter plan at monthly billing is $4.95/mo, still competitive.
The 97-day money-back guarantee is the longest in the industry. Most hosts offer 30 days. SiteGround offers 30 days. DreamHost gives you over three months to decide. That’s confidence in their product.
Support Quality
This is where DreamHost’s philosophy diverges sharply from SiteGround’s. DreamHost leans heavily on self-service: their knowledge base is genuinely excellent, with well-written articles covering everything from DNS configuration to PHP version management. Their community forums are active and useful.
But live support is limited. Live chat is available, but wait times during our testing ranged from 15-25 minutes — significantly longer than SiteGround’s 2-4 minutes. The agents were competent but less technically deep; one question about PHP worker configuration was escalated to a senior tech, and the total resolution took about 45 minutes.
No phone support on shared plans. Phone callbacks are available only on DreamPress and higher tiers. Ticket support was responsive at around 4-6 hours for a technical issue — decent but not fast.
If you’re comfortable troubleshooting basic hosting issues yourself (DNS, SSL, caching), DreamHost’s support is fine. If you want someone to hold your hand through a caching plugin conflict at midnight, SiteGround is the better choice.
Migration Experience
DreamHost offers a free migration plugin (DreamHost Automated Migration) that handles WordPress transfers. It’s a self-service tool — you install the plugin, enter your DreamHost credentials, and it handles the transfer. Our 2 GB test site took about 2 hours to migrate.
The process worked, but the SSL certificate needed manual reactivation on DreamHost’s end — their free Let’s Encrypt cert didn’t auto-provision until we toggled it in the panel. Minor, but the kind of thing that trips up beginners. SiteGround’s team-assisted migration was smoother.
For more on migration-friendly hosts, see our best hosting with free migration guide.
Backup Policy
DreamHost provides daily automated backups on all shared plans, but here’s the catch: restores require contacting support or using their panel’s one-click restore, and the retention period is not clearly documented. In practice, it appears to be roughly 2 weeks on shared hosting. DreamPress includes on-demand backups and a more robust restore interface.
This is an area where SiteGround clearly wins with their 30-day retention and straightforward one-click restore on all plans.
Pros
- Transparent pricing — renewal rates are reasonable, DreamPress doesn’t increase at all
- Generous storage — 50 GB on the starter plan, unlimited on Shared Unlimited
- 97-day money-back guarantee — the longest in the industry by a wide margin
- Monthly billing available — no forced annual commitment
- Free domain included on annual plans, saving roughly 15-$18/year
- Independent ownership — no conglomerate, no brand consolidation risk, no Newfold Digital portfolio behavior
Cons
- Slower baseline performance — Apache on shared hosting produces higher TTFB than SiteGround’s Nginx/SuperCacher stack
- Support wait times are long — 15-25 minutes for live chat versus SiteGround’s 2-4 minutes
- No phone support on shared plans — callbacks only on DreamPress and above
- Lower concurrent user ceiling — shared hosting struggled past 70 concurrent visitors where SiteGround held to 100+
- Custom panel instead of cPanel — DreamHost’s panel works fine but has a learning curve if you’re used to cPanel, and some third-party tutorials won’t match
Visit DreamHost to explore their current plans and pricing.
Reliability Deep Dive: Head-to-Head
Uptime Consistency
| Metric | SiteGround | DreamHost |
|---|---|---|
| Measured Uptime | ~99.98% | ~99.93% |
| Longest Incident | ~7 min | ~45 min |
| Incidents (monitoring period) | 2 brief blips | 4 incidents |
| Annual Downtime (projected) | ~1.75 hrs | ~6.1 hrs |
| Status Page Transparency | Good | Excellent |
| SLA | 99.9% | 100% (credit-based) |
DreamHost actually advertises a 100% uptime guarantee with service credits — bold, and they do honor it with account credits for verified downtime. SiteGround’s SLA is 99.9%. In practice, SiteGround’s measured uptime was better, but DreamHost’s willingness to put their money where their mouth is deserves credit.
Server Technology
SiteGround runs on Google Cloud Platform with a custom Kubernetes-based container system. Each hosting account is isolated at the container level, which means resource contention from noisy neighbors is significantly reduced. They use Nginx as a reverse proxy, their SuperCacher stack for caching, and offer PHP 8.0-8.3 with the latest minor versions typically available within weeks of release.
DreamHost runs on their own data centers (Ashburn, VA and Hillsboro, OR). Shared hosting uses Apache with mod_php — functional but not performance-optimized. DreamPress uses Nginx + Varnish, which is a more modern stack. PHP versions available include 8.0-8.2 on shared hosting, with 8.3 available on DreamPress. The PHP version availability gap has narrowed but SiteGround is still faster to adopt new releases.
For developers, DreamHost offers SSH access on all plans, which SiteGround also provides. Both support Git, WP-CLI, and standard developer tools. DreamHost’s custom panel exposes more server-level controls (cron jobs, process management) than SiteGround’s Site Tools — a minor edge for technical users.
Geographic Coverage and CDN
SiteGround operates data centers in the US (Iowa, Virginia), Europe (Netherlands, UK, Germany), Asia (Singapore), and Australia (Sydney). This multi-region presence means you can choose a server location close to your target audience, which directly improves TTFB for those visitors.
DreamHost has two data centers, both in the US. If your audience is primarily North American, this is fine. If you’re serving European or Asian visitors, DreamHost’s infrastructure puts you at a geographic disadvantage that CDN caching only partially mitigates.
Both integrate with Cloudflare for CDN, but SiteGround’s integration is tighter — you can manage Cloudflare settings directly from Site Tools. DreamHost’s Cloudflare integration requires more manual configuration.
Email Hosting
DreamHost includes email hosting on all plans — unlimited addresses on Shared Unlimited, with SPF and DKIM records pre-configured. Deliverability has been reliable in our testing. Storage is 25 GB per mailbox.
SiteGround also includes email on all plans, but the experience is similar. Both use standard email setups with webmail access. Neither is going to replace a dedicated email service for business-critical communications, but for basic site-related email, both are adequate.
SSL and Security
Both hosts provide free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates — this is table stakes in 2026. SiteGround’s SSL auto-renews without intervention. DreamHost’s SSL sometimes requires a manual toggle during setup, as we experienced during migration.
SiteGround includes their SG Security plugin for WordPress (free) and offers SiteGround Site Scanner (paid add-on at $2.49/mo) for malware monitoring. DreamHost includes DreamShield malware scanning as a paid add-on at $3/mo on shared plans, free on DreamPress.
For broader security and SSL comparisons, our hosting with free SSL and CDN guide covers more options.
Who Should Choose Which
Choose SiteGround If You:
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Run a business website where every minute of downtime costs money — SiteGround’s infrastructure redundancy and faster incident resolution are worth the premium. If your site generates revenue, the price difference between SiteGround and DreamHost is negligible compared to the cost of a bad outage.
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Need global server locations — if your audience spans multiple continents, SiteGround’s six data center regions give you options DreamHost can’t match. See our best cloud hosting roundup for even more geographic flexibility.
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Want responsive support — SiteGround’s 2-4 minute live chat with technically competent agents is a legitimate differentiator. When something breaks on a Saturday night, response time matters.
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Prioritize WordPress performance — SiteGround’s SuperCacher + Google Cloud combination delivers noticeably better Core Web Vitals scores out of the box. Our best WordPress hosting comparison has the full benchmarks.
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Manage client sites — SiteGround’s collaboration tools and white-label options on GoGeek make it practical for freelancers and small agencies. For dedicated agency hosting, see our agency hosting guide.
Choose DreamHost If You:
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Care about total cost of ownership — DreamHost’s honest renewal pricing means your year-two costs are roughly half what SiteGround would charge. Over three years on a shared plan, the savings add up to over 200.
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Need generous storage — 50 GB on the starter plan and functionally unlimited on Shared Unlimited. If you’re running a photography portfolio, media-heavy blog, or podcast site with hosted episodes, DreamHost gives you room SiteGround doesn’t.
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Prefer month-to-month flexibility — DreamHost lets you pay monthly without a ridiculous markup. SiteGround requires annual commitments for reasonable pricing. If you’re testing an idea and might shut it down in three months, DreamHost’s 97-day guarantee plus monthly billing is ideal.
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Value independent hosting — DreamHost is employee-owned with no corporate parent. In an industry where Newfold Digital owns Bluehost, HostGator, and a dozen other brands (see our Bluehost review for how that plays out), DreamHost’s independence is meaningful for long-term stability.
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Want a solid all-rounder for lower traffic — for sites under 50,000 monthly visitors, DreamHost’s performance is perfectly adequate, and the value proposition is strong.
Pricing Comparison: Full Breakdown
Annual Cost Comparison (First Year vs Second Year)
| Plan Tier | SiteGround (Year 1) | SiteGround (Year 2) | DreamHost (Year 1) | DreamHost (Year 2) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Entry Shared | 47.88 | 215.88 | 35.40 | 83.88 |
| Mid Shared | 80.28 | 299.88 | 71.40 | 155.88 |
| Top Shared/Managed | 128.28 | 479.88 | 203.40 | 203.40 |
The year-two jump is where SiteGround’s pricing strategy becomes painful. SiteGround’s GrowBig renewal ($299.88/year) costs nearly the same as DreamHost’s DreamPress ($203.40/year), which includes managed WordPress features, Varnish caching, and Jetpack Professional — arguably a better deal at renewal time.
If you plan to stay on shared hosting long-term (2+ years), DreamHost’s math works out significantly better. If you’re willing to pay the premium and value SiteGround’s performance advantage, the cost is justifiable for revenue-generating sites.
For a broader comparison of hosting value, check our best small business hosting guide which factors in total cost over multiple years.
Staging Environments
Staging is where you test changes before pushing them live — essential for any site that can’t afford to show a broken page to visitors.
SiteGround offers one-click staging on GrowBig and GoGeek plans. The staging environment is a full copy of your site on a subdomain. You can push changes from staging to live with one click. It works well, and we’ve used it to test plugin updates and theme changes without issues. Our staging environment hosting guide covers this feature in detail.
DreamHost offers staging only on DreamPress plans ($16.95/mo+). Their shared hosting plans don’t include staging at all. The DreamPress staging tool works, but it’s slower to create a staging copy — our test took about 5 minutes versus SiteGround’s near-instant copy.
For developers and anyone running a business site, SiteGround’s staging availability at the $6.69/mo tier is a significant advantage over DreamHost’s $16.95/mo minimum for the same feature.
Server Hardware and Infrastructure
If you’re curious about the physical layer, there’s a meaningful difference here. SiteGround’s Google Cloud infrastructure means you’re running on Google’s custom Tensor Processing hardware with NVMe SSD storage, benefiting from Google’s global network backbone. While a battery backup for your home office is your concern, SiteGround’s infrastructure redundancy is Google’s concern — and they’re better at it than most hosting companies’ self-managed data centers.
DreamHost owns and operates their data centers, which gives them more control but less geographic reach. Their hardware is maintained in-house, which is respectable but doesn’t match the redundancy guarantees of a hyperscale cloud provider.
For hosting newcomers trying to understand these infrastructure differences, our shared hosting explainer breaks down how shared, VPS, and cloud hosting differ in practice.
The Verdict: SiteGround Wins on Reliability, DreamHost Wins on Value
For reliability specifically — the focus of this comparison — SiteGround is the clear winner. Better uptime consistency, faster server response times, more graceful handling of traffic spikes, and support that responds quickly enough to matter during incidents. If your site going down for 45 minutes instead of 7 minutes is a meaningful difference to your business, SiteGround justifies its premium.
DreamHost is the better value play for sites where perfect reliability isn’t mission-critical. A personal blog, portfolio site, or low-traffic business site will run just fine on DreamHost, and you’ll save hundreds of dollars over a multi-year period. Their transparent pricing, generous storage, and 97-day guarantee make them an honest host in a market full of pricing tricks.
Our recommendation: If you’re running a business that generates revenue through your website — e-commerce, lead generation, SaaS — go with SiteGround. The reliability difference is real and worth the cost. If you’re building a personal site, side project, or cost-conscious small business presence, DreamHost gives you everything you need without the renewal sticker shock.
For more managed WordPress options beyond these two, our managed WordPress hosting comparison covers premium providers including WP Engine and Kinsta. And if you’re deciding between SiteGround and another budget option, our SiteGround vs Hostinger comparison covers that matchup in detail.
If you want to learn more about web hosting before committing, Peter Pollock’s Web Hosting For Dummies is a solid primer for understanding what you’re actually buying.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is SiteGround more reliable than DreamHost?
Based on our monitoring, yes. SiteGround maintained higher uptime consistency with shorter incident durations. Their Google Cloud infrastructure provides better resource isolation and redundancy than DreamHost’s self-managed data centers. The gap is roughly 99.98% versus 99.93% measured uptime, which translates to a meaningful difference in annual downtime hours.
Is DreamHost good for WordPress?
DreamHost is an officially recommended WordPress host and has been for years. Their shared hosting runs WordPress adequately for moderate-traffic sites, and their DreamPress managed tier adds Varnish caching and Nginx for noticeably better performance. For high-traffic WordPress sites, SiteGround or a dedicated managed host like those in our managed WordPress guide would be a better fit.
Why is SiteGround’s renewal price so much higher?
SiteGround uses aggressive intro pricing to acquire customers, then recoups on renewals — a common hosting industry tactic. Their GrowBig plan jumps from $6.69/mo to $24.99/mo, a 3.7x increase. This pays for the Google Cloud infrastructure that gives them their performance edge. DreamHost’s more moderate renewal increases (roughly 2.4x) reflect their lower-cost self-managed infrastructure.
Does DreamHost offer phone support?
Not on shared hosting plans. Phone callback support is available on DreamPress and VPS plans only. Shared hosting customers have access to live chat (with 15-25 minute wait times in our experience) and ticket-based support (4-6 hour response). If responsive phone support is important to you, SiteGround offers it on all plans.
Can I migrate from DreamHost to SiteGround for free?
Yes. SiteGround offers free migration on all plans — one site on StartUp, unlimited sites on GrowBig and GoGeek. Their migration team handles the transfer using their WordPress Migrator plugin. In our test, the process took about 3 hours and completed without issues. DreamHost also offers a migration plugin for moving sites in the other direction.
Which host is better for e-commerce sites?
SiteGround is the stronger choice for e-commerce. WooCommerce sites need consistent uptime, fast server response under concurrent users, and reliable SSL — SiteGround delivers all three more convincingly. Their GrowBig plan’s staging environment lets you test WooCommerce plugin updates safely. DreamHost’s shared hosting may struggle with the concurrent database queries that WooCommerce generates during busy periods. For dedicated e-commerce hosting options, see our best WooCommerce hosting guide.
Is DreamHost’s 97-day money-back guarantee legitimate?
Yes, and it’s the most generous in the industry. The guarantee applies to shared hosting plans and covers your hosting fees (not domain registration). You can get a full refund within 97 days of signing up, no questions asked. We verified this by reading the terms — it’s straightforward. SiteGround and most competitors offer only 30 days.