I setup my first account with DH in 1997. I’ve had my current account with them since 1998. To put that in perspective, when I signed up the plan was for 10MB of space, and I got an additional 20MB if I paid annually.
I’ve referred 100+ people to Dreamhost, and who knows how many people they’ve referred. Dreamhost has easily made tens of thousands of dollars off of me.
Now I feel like they’re treating me like crap.
Dreamhost has had its ups and downs. There was network problems that plagued them a few years ago, but still I stuck with them. Over time they’ve been implementing restrictions while increasing things like storage and bandwidth.
They cut my outgoing message size from over 100MB to under 40MB. They cut message box sizes down. The had CPU limiting for a while. They started limiting the software you can run (WPMU.) They have apparently cut AFP (I can no longer connect at least.)
But all of that, as irritating as some of it may be, I can understand. How many people actually connect via AFP? Probably not many. Do I normally send 100MB+ emails? No, in fact there’s only one recipient that I have to do this with (certification process which requires files be emailed and they are always big files.) And I do think it’s more dumb they require the files be sent by email than DH having a <40MB limit (though I do think it could be a bit higher.)
Years ago they implemented a system where you’d get automatic weekly increases in disk storage and bandwidth. This was at least 5 years ago and they did a bunch of it retroactively. So I was given a hefty portion of each to start. I had the ~$40/mo plan at the time.
I don’t recall the exact numbers, but fast forward to this year and I easily had 300GB+ of storage on my dreamhost account. Earlier in the year I was given the option of switching to the new “unlimited” plan and I looked at the terms and saw it wasn’t for me. I declined and my account wasn’t changed.
Then a couple months back I was looking at my account and saw bandwidth and storage were marked “unlimited”. What? I never consented to this, I was never notified of this, and not only that but I had specifically been given the option and said no. So I contacted support and reminded them I said no to this.
I was informed that there was no way to move me back from the unlimited plan. I was told “The fact is that times, and hosting plans, change and this is what has happened here.”
I understand that but all this was done without my consent. Not only that, but this is a HUGE issue. I host a TON of sites with Dreamhost and a bunch of them didn’t meet the DH policy. I know for $10/mo, I shouldn’t demand a ton (I used to pay for the higher end plans.) So I asked if I paid for the private servers option if I could keep those sites on DH and I was told no. So I moved the sites.
I hosted a ton of client sites with Dreamhost, but now reselling accounts is not allowed. There was a time when Dreamhost promoted reselling as an option. DH being relatively cheap, I would charge ~$5/mo for hosting and make a small profit. Having to put them on their own DH account would result in a net loss. So I moved them to another host that doesn’t have these restrictions.
And now I see in the newsletters that we’re now limited to 50GB for backups. This can’t be true. I’ve been backing stuff up here for MANY years. It’ll take me months and months to move them somewhere else.
I wish I could go back to my previously limited plan which had fewer limitations than the “unlimited” plan.
Another issue that’s been recently brought to my attention is Dreamhost deleting email. According to the web panel, when you turn filtering on any emails that get filtered out end up in the quarantine. But I noticed that some messages weren’t coming through. After contacting support, I was informed that DH does delete emails before they even hit that filter. They never notified me of this, I never consented to this, they don’t notify me when it happens…
This is a big issue for me. In this case, it was a message from a client who was rather upset I hadn’t responded to it. I need to make sure my email comes through. I know there can be other issues with email, but DH intentionally deleting emails without telling me is a big issue for me.
I asked for the conditions under which this happens and was told for security reasons they can’t tell me. For security reasons I can’t be told why Dreamhost is deleting my emails? Really? What are they worried about, that I’ll be able to let someone send me an email that might harm my computer?
This is ridiculous. They should at least tell us when we can expect this to happen, and notify us when it does.
If anyone has any solutions on how to deal with the above issues, I’d appreciate it. Thanks.