DreamHost

Every plan card shows the renewal price under the intro price. Web Hosting Launch is $2.89/mo for the first year and renews at $10.99/mo. The page says the full term plus taxes is charged at checkout. A 4-year term lowers Launch to $1.99/mo, renewing at $7.99/mo, and monthly billing keeps the intro rate for three months only. Other pages show other terms for the same plans: the homepage lists Managed VPS Business at $13.75/mo for one year, while the Managed VPS page shows $10/mo on a 3-year term.

The footer and legal pages name DreamHost, LLC. The About page says DreamHost is independent and employee-owned, has run since 1997, and names its CEO. It lists a correspondence address in Brea, California (a PMB mailbox), and the terms are governed by California law. We didn't see a company registration number or a registered office address on the pages we read.

A public status page, linked from the support page, tracks 20 parts of the service in four groups, from web hosting and DreamPress to billing and live chat. All were operational when we looked. It links to a history page, but we couldn't load it, so we couldn't check past incidents. The terms promise 100% uptime, with one day of hosting credit per hour of downtime, capped at 10% of the next prepaid renewal. Downtime counts from when you open a ticket, and announced maintenance is excluded.

In-house support is available 24/7 by live chat and email from the control panel. The support page says chat starts in under 60 seconds and promises a reply in less than an hour, without saying which channel that applies to; the help article says chat starts within a few minutes. The panel opens an AI assistant first, and you click "Talk to an Agent" to reach a person. There is no call-in number. Callbacks cost $9.95 each or $14.95/mo for three, and some DreamPress and Dedicated plans include them.

Shared hosting, DreamPress and Managed VPS get a full refund if you cancel within 30 days. Self-managed VPS, DreamCompute, email, domains and SSL certificates are excluded, and the guarantee only covers card and PayPal payments. Plans renew automatically at the then-current non-promotional rate, and you cancel in the panel before the renewal date. After 30 days the terms say unused time isn't refunded. The help article adds that a yearly plan cancelled within 30 days of renewal gets an account credit, and that cash refunds only happen when you close the account.

Web Hosting and Managed VPS plans list daily automated backups. For shared sites, the help article says DreamHost "generally" keeps two weeks of backups, and you can restore files yourself in the panel. DreamPress keeps daily backups for 14 days (30 days from DP5 up), plus 3 to 5 on-demand backups you can download. Self-managed VPS plans don't include backups. We didn't see whether a restore costs extra.

Hosting plans list unlimited free SSL certificates, and DreamPress installs a Let's Encrypt certificate automatically. Panel login supports two-factor login with an authenticator app or a YubiKey. Malware scanning is DreamShield, which scans daily. It is a paid add-on from $3/mo per site, and the help center says DreamPress Pro plans include it.

The help center names four data centres: Ashburn, Hillsboro, Amsterdam and Singapore. You can see where your services are in the panel and ask support to move them. We didn't see whether you can pick a location at sign-up, or which products run in which data centre. A GDPR data processing addendum is part of the terms, with EU standard contractual clauses and a UK addendum. It says data may be processed anywhere in the world.

Shared and DreamPress plans list storage, websites and monthly visits. Launch has 25 GB NVMe storage, 25 websites and about 40,000 visits, which the page calls estimates, not hard caps. We didn't see CPU or memory for shared or DreamPress plans. VPS plans do list them: Stack 4 has 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM and 75 GB NVMe. Bandwidth is "unmetered", and the Resource Allocation Policy says it may be limited during unusual spikes and caps shared databases at 3 GB.

From the panel you can back up the whole account: users, databases and mailboxes. The backup comes as standard .tar.gz and .sql.gz files you can download for 14 days. To move a domain, you turn off the transfer lock and reveal the auth code in the panel, with the usual 60-day wait after registration or transfer. We didn't see a fee for moving a domain away.