New Dream Resolutions
January 3, 2007 on 6:53 pm | In Business, Hardware, Insider View, New Features, Promotions, Rants by Josh Jones |
Happy New Year!
The snow’s not even dry on the rooftops of LA and we here at DreamHost already have a pile of resolutions for, as the cool sports video gamers call it, the 2K7.
In 2007 we do solemnly resolve to:
#1. Never get involved in a land war in Asia.
#2. Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line!
#3. Become once again renowned the Web-over as a stable, reliable, robust, high-performance webhost!
As those of you who’ve been playing the home game know, we had some troubles in 2006.
But actually, the root of those troubles began WAY back to June 2005, when the building our data center is in informed everybody they were unable to provide any new UPS and generator-backed power, period.
Moving data centers wasn’t really doable back then, and so for the next year or so we were forced into “low-power mode” .. scrapping our Dedicated Servers option and squeezing every last bit of power efficiency we could from our operations, even at a fair amount of expense.
Somehow, we kept going. And going. And going. And gahhhh, you get it.
And really, our service didn’t suffer for it.
But then, exactly one year ago today, something changed that seemed to affect our reputation for the worse ever since.
We started giving away a lot more disk and bandwidth. Like 8 times. As. Much.
That’s when things went downhill.
Well, not really.
In fact, we had exactly the same amount of problems (actually less, per customer!) we’d had the last eight years, but now finally people could put their finger on a REASON for them!
We were overselling!
Clearly, every problem we had stemmed from the simple fact that we gave away too much disk and bandwidth!
Well, I’ve already covered “overselling” plenty, and ALL the quota increases really did was increase the number of new customers we got!
But still, all through 2006 our rep seemed to slowly decline.
Every time we had a server crash; “Overselling.” A network fubar, “They’re overselling.” A panel bug: “Didn’t your mama ever teach you about overselling?” A power outage? “Oh yeah, sign up for DreamHost if you happen to like a fresh bunch of OVERSELLING!!!”
Of course, the power outages didn’t help. Nor did the weird problem between our two core routers that made our entire network suck eggs for six weeks this summer.
But in a way, those power outages were perhaps a blessing in disguise. A disguise that reminded me of a big mob of angry customers.
Those outages forced us, and our building, to really DO something about the power situation… which as you may recall is the real foundation for any stability problems we’ve had in the last 12 months.
After the power outages this summer, the building started literally BLEEDING data center tenants, figuratively.
This had two effects. Ichi, it forced them to start taking their UPS and generator problems seriously, and as of now they actually seem to have things in order. In fact, believe it or not, just TODAY the building experienced a power outage from DWP… and for the first time ever we were not affected at all!
Memo
DATE: January 3, 2007
TO: All Garland Tenants
FROM: Timothy J. Moore
RE: DWP Power Outage TodayThis is to advise you that at approximately 11:50am today, the Garland Building received a power outage from the Department of Water and Power. The outage lasted less than one minute and all systems worked according to design.
The Building’s loads were transferred to the Emergency Generator System. Upon stabilization of the DWP service, all ATS Switches transferred back to normal DWP power.
Should you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact the Office of the Building.
Sincerely,
The Happy Office of the Building Team
Oh BOY was I ticked OFF when I saw how they stole our signature signature!
Ni, by bleeding those tenants, a lot of power was freed up for us! And by us I mean you! LITERALLY.
Also, we were now of a size (thanks, ironically, to our generous bandwidth and disk allocations!) that expanding to more than one data center was finally feasible.
So, this fall we expanded to two more facilities, with dark fiber connections between all three.
With all this new power available, we were finally able to spend more on hardware! So we did, and have been, and are, and will be! We’ve put many many fewer users per web server, mysql server, and mail server, added load balancers, beefed up our network equipment, and have added new targets (that we now have the power to attain) for server stability.
In fact, we spent over ONE MILLLLION DOLLARS on hardware in November alone! That’s more than we normally spend in a whole quarter! And in fact, things are quantitatively more stable now across our whole system than they’ve ever been in the past.
But our reputation as an “overselling host” seems to linger!
How can we fix it? Aren’t people just going to notice things are a lot better? And start telling their friends?
Won’t they just believe this blog post?
Probably not. It’s a stumper!
Fortunately, I pulled deep into my master-of-public-relations pouch, and pulled out this gem of wisdom:
People aren’t going to consider us a “stable” host until we offer LESS DISK AND BANDWIDTH!
But…ARGH! More disk and bw => more sign ups => more money => more resources => better service!
What to do?
Fortunately, I have a master-of-marketing pouch too (double-major).. so here’s what we’re doing:
Every day, starting tomorrow, the amount of starting disk and bandwidth we offer new customers (this does not affect existing customers at all!) will drop. You can see the amounts here.
(Don’t worry, once you sign up, your disk and bandwidth allocations will grow weekly just like before!)
And we’ll keep dropping them daily until our precious rep is restored!
(Or it cuts into our sign-ups too much.)
(Whichever comes first.)
(Reputation be damned.)
January 3rd, 2007 at 7:52 pm
Hey, great to hear it. I’ve stuck with you, and have actually noticed that my site is a bit faster. Perhaps there’s a correlation, perhaps not, but cool!
January 3rd, 2007 at 8:14 pm
What the hell are you doing? I’m glad you guys are cleaning up, I always thought you would. But.. this is stupid. I think I.. hate you a little. Like you’ve been the best webhost I ever had, and you keep getting better, and you’ve been suffering these growing pains, and I’ve known that you don’t like them any more then I do. And while this wont affect me, it will effect my future clients and everybody I refer.
Please.. don’t do this. It’s childish. (Even if it’s almost trivial.) At least let people using referrer codes bypass this madness.
January 3rd, 2007 at 8:51 pm
Since the space & bandwidth start increasing weekly as soon as you sign up, Francis, it shouldn’t really affect your customers referrals all that much. How many sites do you launch that need 200 GB at their outset?
Personally, DreamHost, I don’t care what you do WRT your space & bandwidth offerings, but I’ll continue to have a hard time referring anyone to your plans page until you change out those absolutely freaking hideous animated Sign Up Now buttons.
January 3rd, 2007 at 8:59 pm
I don’t plan on doing it any time soon, but if I ever stopped hosting with you I’d still read this blog. You’re hilarious. IN fact, even if the only way to read this thing was to be a paying subscriber I’d keep my account JUST SO I COULD READ THIS BLOG!
Snoochie boochies.
January 3rd, 2007 at 9:21 pm
I was a very happy customer and decided to leave because I needed a dedicated server. (I left when DH was unable to provide dedicated servers as mentioned in the post).
Now my current web host provides the PostgreSQL database. I am absolutely in love with Postgres now and can’t live without it.
I would greatly like to move back to DreamHost on a dedicated server solely for the use of the great panel DH has. Though I won’t until Postgres is available.
I still read this blog b/c it’s fun and entertaining.
Wayne
January 3rd, 2007 at 9:25 pm
Josh, it looks like you were scooped by the unofficial dreamhost blog again.
;-)
January 3rd, 2007 at 9:31 pm
> We’ve put many many fewer users per web server, mysql server, and mail server, added load balancers, beefed up our network equipment, and have added new targets (that we now have the power to attain) for server stability.
Really? I hadn’t heard of current customers being moved to different servers to lighten the load. I understand that this applies to new customers, but what about a server with a bunch of old customers, none of whom want to quit any time soon? How do they get fewer other users on their server withought themselves having to move?
// also, I’m curious to see if italics, and bold tags work here. if only this comment box had a PREVIEW button…
January 3rd, 2007 at 9:31 pm
yep.. just not my typing… there.
Like I said, needs a preview button.
January 3rd, 2007 at 9:37 pm
I agree with Francis, this seems to me like a silly, gimmicky, high-pressure sales tactic that I think will turn prospective customers off and making planning new sites and comparing hosts more difficult for everyone.
Price stability has value too, you know. Just imagine if every host did this — it’d turn the hosting industry into a Confusopoly where you wouldn’t know who was offering what at any point in time. Please reconsider.
January 3rd, 2007 at 10:01 pm
Here’s a crazy suggestion that your service guys probably won’t like.
I’ve been wanting to use some of your great disk space offerings as remote backup for my personal computers. The problem is, my upload rate from home (via cable modem) is impractical if I want to upload, say, a couple gigabytes (e.g., if I wanted to backup photos of my daughter). What would be GREAT is if I could mail you guys a DVD and have it dumped into the directory of my choice.
I know, I know, it would be a huge hassle and would require lots of man-hours. I still would like it if there were a better way for me to get around my upload bandwidth restriction to be able to use just some of the disk space I have available through my DH plan.
January 3rd, 2007 at 10:23 pm
Hilarious. Well I have been extremely happy with Dreamhost from the start. You guys are great.
January 3rd, 2007 at 11:10 pm
Ive never had a problem with Dreamhost… almost 3 years running now… never, once.
January 4th, 2007 at 1:08 am
I agree with Francis and Nic, the gradual reduction in space/bandwidth is a silly idea and will do nothing to restore DreamHost’s reputation, assuming it actually needs restoring. DreamHost’s growth over the last 12 months would suggest that the reputation is doing fine.
I suspect the real reason behind the gradual decrease is to generate some free publicity (this move is sure to get mentioned a lot) and generate an influx of new customers.
Mark
January 4th, 2007 at 1:19 am
I agree with Francis and Nic, the gradual decrease of space/bandwidth is a silly idea and will do nothing to restore DreamHost’s reputation, assuming it actually needs restoring. The growth in customers over the last year would suggest the reputation is doing fine.
I suspect the real reason behind the move is to generate some free publicity (a move like this is sure to be mentioned a lot) and create an influx of new customers.
Mark
BTW: I had to enter this post twice, for some reason WordPress ate the first one. :(
January 4th, 2007 at 1:22 am
Wow, the first post made it after all. I guess it got sidetracked somewhere.
and yes, I did refresh the page numerous times waiting for it to show up. :)
Mark
January 4th, 2007 at 1:27 am
LOL, gotta close that i tag that Nathan opened and didn’ t close properly ;-)
You guys are completely insane! :-)
I’d really like to see some statistics if this insanity helps or not with your rep. (Probably not, but it’s funny and draws attention, heh)
January 4th, 2007 at 3:37 am
Funny and interesting as always.
But what I really really want to see is dreamhost datacenter in Europe or at least decent upload speed from Europe.
Currently it sucks (well, at least where I tested it from)
January 4th, 2007 at 4:59 am
I almost thought it was April 1st but sadly it’s not the case. In my opinion it’s sales suicide.
January 4th, 2007 at 5:27 am
Hmmmm.
As an existing customer, I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about the number of sign-ups you get, and here is why: I am not aware of any correlation between the number of customers and the reliability of service. The only thing I noticed is that during your fiercest period of growth, there was a slight increase in the amount of time it took to get a response from the support team. Besides that, and the well-publicized power outage, everything was hunky dory.
So that means that this new tactic makes absolutely no sense to me at all. DreamHost has a reputation for being a bit quirky, but this is just plain idiotic. Obviously, the perception that DreamHost is unreliable needs to be addressed, but surely an allocation freeze would accomplish this with less risk than actually cutting them back?
And what exactly do you mean by your “precious rep” anyway? You are hosting over 400,000 domains now. What fraction of that enormous customer base is claiming unreliability? And if the perception is that DreamHost is unreliable, why is the number of hosted domains still rising so dramatically? Je ne comprends pas, mes amis!
January 4th, 2007 at 6:05 am
(See if I can close that annoying italics).
I’ll throw in my agreement with others that lowering disk space and bandwidth incrementally is silly and annoying. First off, a brand new signup won’t get “200 Gigs” of space, which is an easy number to remember and say. There is a perceived loss of resources to someone who wants to sign up.
A better idea would be just to more strongly address people’s gripes that lead to claims of overselling. And then do a better job of promoting these improvements.
Symbolic changes mean nothing to your current customers who are the main source of complaints. Real actions mean everything.
January 4th, 2007 at 6:51 am
Of the 400,000 domains hosted at DreamHost, how many of those are top level domains (TLD)?
It’s one thing to have 400,000 TLD and another to have … say, 70,000 with a ton of subdomains (e.g. xxxxx.dreamhosters.com, webmail.example.com). Simply the fact that webmail is a subdomain would 2x the domain count for any customer.
January 4th, 2007 at 6:56 am
I have a crazy idea that might just improve your rep while avoiding a high-pressure sales situation. How about guaranteeing 100% up-time for various services and offering a discount for every hour of downtime. Select three services provided by three different companies to audit your uptime each month and offer the discounts based on the results of those audits. This way QOS is built into the price of hosting.
January 4th, 2007 at 9:05 am
To #7: users are regularly moved off of overly loaded servers (web and database) to rebalance the resource use and improve load times and stability. That’s done to any server regardless of how long the customers have been with us. Your opinion of ‘loaded’ may differ from ours, though! If you do think your server is overloaded, let our support team know so it can be investigated. It may have slipped under our radar.
To #21: The 400,000 is based on our DNS servers so it’s essentially all top level domains. ‘webmail.domain.com’, etc are not counted, and neither are any of our .dreamhost.com or .dreamhosters.com subdomains. It’s a very rough measurement all around.
January 4th, 2007 at 9:13 am
http://www.dreamhost.com/hosting.html
^^ Is down (well severely knackered) at the moment.
January 4th, 2007 at 9:26 am
This is really not the sort of thing I expect from you guys. Please don’t behave like a shady used-car dealer.
January 4th, 2007 at 9:42 am
everyone is complaining and saying it won’t do much, I don’t think new customers will notice or know what is going on anyways for the most part, so I don’t think it’s a bit deal and I do hope it works for ya :)
January 4th, 2007 at 9:56 am
[...] Dreamhost webhosting has posted an article about their new year resolutions. If your site was bugged with web hosting server issues last year, this year may be better. Some reflections from their post show a reason to smile for Dreamhost customers. “After the power outages this summer, the building started literally BLEEDING data center tenants, figuratively. This had two effects. Ichi, it forced them to start taking their UPS and generator problems seriously, and as of now they actually seem to have things in order. In fact, believe it or not, just TODAY the building experienced a power outage from DWP… and for the first time ever we were not affected at all!” [...]
January 4th, 2007 at 10:23 am
Wayne: What do you like/need about PostgreSQL?
January 4th, 2007 at 10:39 am
Hey Francis,
Hmm, maybe that’s a good idea.. okay, as of NOW, people who sign up with a promo code get the original disk and bw allotments (200GB/2TB through 500GB/5TB)!
Yet another way to convince your friends to sign up and to use your promo code, ehhhhhh?
January 4th, 2007 at 11:19 am
this is the corporate blog of the year 2007, already now. definitely. go write a book.
January 4th, 2007 at 11:20 am
Complete nonsense, Josh. I think you’re taking yourself a bit too seriously with the master-of-x self-impossed titles. This tactic reminds me of a car dealerships “deals.” Or worse still, reminds me of one of those rubbish infomertials…”if you call in the next 10 minutes we’ll add …” Your rep as quirky web hosts might dim, however, the rep as a high-pressure sales shark will surely add insult to the injury.
I beleive you’re worrying too much about “what other people think.” Your rep as a solid host will come with time and word-of-mouth not with silly sales tactics.
January 4th, 2007 at 11:27 am
This is dumb. If the problem is your declining reputation, due to the stability issues of the past year, then the solution is to provide better stability. You’re claiming that this will be the case, which is good; but it takes time to prove that you really are more stable now. Gimmicks, especially STUPID gimmicks that actually TAKE AWAY good stuff, are not a solution.
January 4th, 2007 at 11:59 am
What a hoot! In spite of all the comments of those that categorize the “decreasing resources” tactic as a “sleazy marketing ploy”, I think it’s hilarious.
In most cases, the real impact on the usability of a hosting plan by reducing the *ridiculous* quotas currently in place is negligible; Dreamhost will *still* be a *great value*.
Now you just have to worry about “overselling” charges that folks will fling your way when the sheep panic, yelling, “OMG NOW I ONLY GET 175GB FOR $7.95 A MONTH! I BETTER SIGN UP RIGHT NOW!”, and rush to sign up. Ha!
Rock On!
January 4th, 2007 at 12:26 pm
@Jon H
>> Wayne: What do you like/need about PostgreSQL?
I host a commercial web application. I use such features as foreign keys, stored procedures and views in my application. As you can imagine, data integrity is of the utmost importance to me since I host other peoples information (database with ACID compliance is a must).
If I wanted to use MySQL with such features I would have to use the InnoDB engine. However, InnoDB in a commercial setting costs a good amount of money.
Postgres provides all of the features an enterprise database offers (ACID compliance, foreign keys, stored procedures etc.) , and is arguably outperforms MySQL while remaining 100% *free*.
I only ask DreamHost to include Postgres (version 8.2 preferably) because I truly believe DH provides great service and I absolutely love the tools they provide (e.g. the panel).
So I can only hope that someday DH will offer Postrgres, so that I can move my business back to DH.
Wayne
P.S. For what it’s worth, I’m paying more at my current web host and receiving less services than I did at DreamHost … though they provide Postgres.
January 4th, 2007 at 1:08 pm
I simply love this idea!
DreamHost provides such a massive amount of disk space that this shouldn’t matter for new customers. If people cannot see the fun in this, then I think it is their loss :-)
January 4th, 2007 at 1:12 pm
This method trying to restore your reputation is totally bass ackwards! Do you expect to have a _better_ reputation by offering _less_ disk and BW? Sure, existing customers wouldn’t mind, they already have their space and it won’t be touched. But new people will say: Hey! They have less space than so-and-so (hopefully not /GoDaddy/ *shudder*), so I’ll just go with those other guys! In fact, I don’t really need Perl, Python, or Rails, so it’ll be fine that I use the other guy! Yippie!
Dreamhost, are you _/that/_ dumb?
January 4th, 2007 at 1:13 pm
I think it’s a funny strategy. Many people will write about this, so you will get some advertising :)
But in terms of changing the opinions of anyone… hum… I’m not sure…
January 4th, 2007 at 2:01 pm
[...] Today they announced on their company blog that they would begin lowering the amount of available disk space and bandwidth for new customers!? This is absurd and never heard of before… they claim to be doing this to regain the reputation they lost during 2006 where people started saying that they were overselling their services. [...]
January 4th, 2007 at 5:25 pm
Well after reading all the comments… I had time to think about… and maybe it work… yes sounds crazy, but for starters the best competition product I know offers 50GB HD, ~250GB transfer monthly… I think that far from these numbers the new regs will begin, and this will stop.
Anyway… I love this blog… and the addresing of the ‘hot’ topic got me laught. Keep the good work!
January 4th, 2007 at 5:42 pm
I had faith it was a transitive problem. I stuck by you guys, kept pushing your services. And here I’m vindicated. I deserve a cookie. I WANT MY COOKIE. ;)
January 4th, 2007 at 6:26 pm
Seriously, now, the cutting of specs a little day by day is just plain rude. It’s an icky, rude way to try to conjure up sign-ups sooner rather than later. Did I mention rude?
Either cut it all at once for new accounts or don’t tinker at all.
January 4th, 2007 at 6:59 pm
Hey, congratulations Josh! You really made what you set out to do, and this is to create a buzz around Dreamhost!!! :-)
(Even though I agree with most of the comments that says that fiddling with the disk/bandwidth allowances isn’t that good for affiliates, you at Dreamhost will however get more business in the end due to the “little earthquake” you just created!)
Have a good 2007 everyone!!!
January 5th, 2007 at 2:28 am
Will Brett be creating some new link graphics that we can add to our web pages showing the decreasing webspace and bandwidth? Should be fun to see how he does that :)
Has anyone forcast when the amounts go negative and new users have to start giving DH webspace and bandwidth? Is that called underselling?
2007 could be the year of the question?
January 5th, 2007 at 5:14 am
@Norm
ROFL Gold!
January 5th, 2007 at 10:40 am
Wayne, I think (check with DH support though) that on your dedicated server you can install Postgres (or have a dh admin install it for you); in this setting the database server will be installed on the same server as the web server (MySQL is shared even for those on dedicated servers).
January 5th, 2007 at 11:08 am
Hi,
The rep issues are easy to understand: Hummans remember things that happen, they don’t remember things that don’t happen. This theory has been proven by many tests. See “Stumbling on Happiness” by Gilbert, pg 96 and many other sources.
For DH, this means:
1) People remember the outages, the slowdowns, etc.
2) People don’t remember when “nothing” happened–the (usual) times when everything is working properly.
Solutions:
There are some studies that people will start to realize that things are good when the good times have lasted 3-5 times longer than the bad times.
Other than waiting a long time for the ‘rep’ to improve, the idea of providing an uptime guarentee (as suggested by another poster) sounds smart to me.
DH could certainly put some creativity into an uptime guarentee that would be meangingful, yet limit the max costs to DH.
It’d certainly be a better use of their resources than decreasing the products being offered. (Decreasing the disk space.) That’s a dumb idea and the justification provided (even though tongue-in-cheek) was laughable.
Regards,
Larry
January 5th, 2007 at 3:48 pm
I’d like to add my support for Postgres, if possible.
It does two things.
Firstly it provides much more robust ACID compliance.
Secondly, by providing a set of features (sequences etc) that are not just essential but similar to Oracle, it provides a clear upgrade path.
So you can promise clients that if they shit hits the fan and they become mega-successful, we can just do a quick port to Oracle and then they can just throw money at Oracle till their database scaling problems go away.
So, wherever database usage is non-trivial (i.e. more than one or two tables) we always use Postgres.
It’s about the only thing stopping me recommending to clients to host with you guys.
(Note: MySQL 5 is getting better, but STILL doesn’t have sequence support, grrr)
January 5th, 2007 at 4:00 pm
Does your rep really matter that much? I think it’s a dumb move to lower your massive offerings. It won’t fix your rep, it’ll just drive potential customers away.
I’ve had people instantly interested the minute I mentioned how much space and band you guys offer.
Maybe people just can’t understand that you’re a better host for overselling? Just because you offer more than you could provide to each customer doesn’t mean it’s even remotely possible for everyone to take up that space.
Trust me, I’ve been trying to eat up the most space and band possible for the last month and have only just got to 1%. Using everything that you guys offer is really difficult!
January 5th, 2007 at 4:05 pm
Been here for a while now (more than 1 year … less than 2 … I think), and I am glad to stick around. There are a lot worse things a host can do (be unresponsive, nothing, close shop), and I find the constant badgering, I mean, informative ways of Dreamhost much preferable to the other options. Here’s hoping your idea works!
January 5th, 2007 at 4:23 pm
What’s with the popup on the main dreamhost.com page?
It’s kind of annoying when I got there to log in, since I already have an account.
Small beans since the popup blocker in FireFox catches it and all I get is the yellow notice that it’s been blocked, I know, but it still seems a bit overkill.
January 5th, 2007 at 4:24 pm
How come y’all still offer QT/Darwin Streaming Server and not RealServer? That is the ONE feature I gave up moving to DH, and I miss it. Does ANYONE actually _use_ your crappy-ass QT streaming? I mean, anyone that doesn’t blow kisses to a glossy 8″x10″ of Guy Kawasaki before their mummy tucks them in for the night.
January 5th, 2007 at 5:49 pm
AJ:>”What’s with the popup on the main dreamhost.com page?”
That would be the ‘one-day-only!’ anniversary sale, which seems to occur every 2nd or 3rd day lately. :P
Mark
January 5th, 2007 at 5:50 pm
As much as I hate to admit it, the “Every day, starting tomorrow, the amount of starting disk and bandwidth we offer new customers (this does not affect existing customers at all!) will drop.” part made me giggle.
Though, I don’t think that’s too good of an advertising campaign… after all, with google doing the “we’ll increase it daily” thing on gmail, it looks odd for you guys to go the reverse direction. I wonder what effects will this bring… Please keep us posted on how sales go as new year progresses.
January 5th, 2007 at 6:31 pm
Deanna -
> Maybe people just can’t understand that you’re a better host
> for overselling? Just because you offer more than you could
> provide to each customer doesn’t mean it’s even remotely
> possible for everyone to take up that space.
We’ve tried to explain that - even posted a couple of weblog entries about it - but it’s impossible to fight perception. A lot of people aren’t really familiar with the economics of web hosting and assume that we’re going to go out of business by offering tons of disk space, etc.
As a company, we have precious little time to explain these things. We have a chance with our _current_ customer base, but not so with random people who stumble across us.
Bryk -
> How come y’all still offer QT/Darwin Streaming Server and
> not RealServer?
People still use that?! :)
> I mean, anyone that doesn’t blow kisses to a glossy 8″x10″ > of Guy Kawasaki before their mummy tucks them in for the
> night.
I’m confused. Is that not considered normal?
Chiisana -
> Though, I don’t think that’s too good of an advertising
> campaign… after all, with google doing the “we’ll increase
> it daily” thing on gmail, it looks odd for you guys to go
> the reverse direction.
We do the daily increase automatically thing, too, once a customer signs up. There’s still incentive to stick with DreamHost once you’re already here. This decrease is just for the “starting point.”
…
Anyhow, I too am curious as to how this will work out. Rest assured, if it’s a complete disaster we’ll give it a re-think (as this doesn’t impact existing customers so we’re not worried about any catastrophes - worst case scenario we notice a dip and decide to change course).
- Jeff C. @ DreamHost
January 5th, 2007 at 6:40 pm
Yeah that’s nice, but when can I get a Dreamhost tshirt?
January 5th, 2007 at 7:08 pm
wow, what a humorless group you commenters are.
January 5th, 2007 at 7:44 pm
I’ve got to agree with Vladekk. I loved DH in the states and generally love that it wasn’t blocked in Mainland China (as my previous host was), but the speeds in Asia are awful — especially since the Taiwanese earthquake! (Couldn’t access for about a week.)
January 5th, 2007 at 8:09 pm
Can I just say that I ♥ DreamHost? Thanks! I don’t refer many people, I’ve only been here about a year, but your blog is teh awesomest (the newsletter rocks too!) and I have been very pleased with your service. I haven’t been with a great many web hosts, mostly because of the hassle of moving, but I’m so thrilled to have found the best one of the few I’ve had. I thought about signing up for DH a long time ago but didn’t, and I wish I had back then. DreamHost is teh r0xorz!
January 5th, 2007 at 8:11 pm
Oh, also, your storage and bandwidth offerings are the BEST. A couple of times with my old host, I stopped getting mail or being able to create things because my account was maxed out (I was up to a gig by the time I left). I wasn’t even storing mail there, it was just a forwarder, but even that didn’t work. I never, ever have to worry about that happening again. Thank you DreamHost!
January 5th, 2007 at 8:19 pm
Honestly I really respect what Dreamhost are doing. I’m kinda known to very publicly bash other hosts who oversell and basically undervalue and mess up our industry standards.
On a side note: At this rate most of the web hosts out there are driving their businesses into the ground which makes my job a lot easier ;)
Without saying the “W” word .. we have too many Web Hosting +*%^#@ [rhymes with oars] devaluing an industry I’m personally proud and passionate about .. which basically breeds doubt, the perception of shady used car salesmen types and screws with our bottom line and the quality of services we can offer.
The way I see it Dreamhost have 2 choices. Continue at this rate and ruin their company and further damage their rep, or take their business and their obligation to their customers seriously and start making some necessary changes .. *before* they drive themselves and you all off a cliff into offline land. [Ok yes that was a lame attempt at humor but it is Friday and it just ‘aint happenin’ for me right now ;)]
As an existing customer I would feel reassured that your web host is stepping up as we have, setting an example and not caving by selling shared hosting promoted as “Dedicated Hosting” resources. My hope is this move will further influence expected web hosting industry standards and start a new trend.
Seriously.. other hosts are bleeding right now. We’ve been doing this for years and we know what it takes to be profitable and still provide solid web hosting as do DreamHost.
I applaud this ballsy move and look forward to the DreamyTeam joining us at an elite level where we are both stars in our cyber galaxy *sigh
i.e. Lunarpages and Dreamyhost shine and prosper as all good web hosts should.
It’s about reliable hosting and good customer service. Simple.
Good luck to you :)
Amy Armitage
Lunarpages.com
^^We support Postgres.. thass right .. lol
***Josh, Jeff, Brett .. are you guys attending Affiliate Summit in Vegas this month?
January 5th, 2007 at 8:25 pm
So glad things should be more stable! The downtime was hitting some of my sites pretty hard but I did notice that things had improved of late, so held off.
Love the bandwidth and space offerings, looking forward to seeing how the decrease goes.
January 5th, 2007 at 8:29 pm
How about for Sunday, your one-week-post-new-years resolution, you get gallery 2 to load faster than 12-15seconds after submitting the url? :)
Honestly, that’s my only complaint. Sure, site has been down two or three times, for a very short period, IN OVER A YEAR…with the prices you set, I’m overly happy.
I still stick with the original gallery though…once the Gallery 2 starts loading within 5 seconds of submitting the URL, I’ll convert.
January 5th, 2007 at 8:31 pm
I have noticed that your services are faster from 6 months ago. You rock DREAMHOST. HAVE A GOOD YEAR.(FOr those who sais you are overselling - i have nou 20 GB stored into my hosting account - and… growing with 200-300MB a day… and i have’nt encounter any problems)
P.S: Sorry about my english. This blog is quite nice.
January 5th, 2007 at 8:59 pm
Some of your postings is interesting, but your blog page is too long.
http://www.utesturm.info
January 5th, 2007 at 9:00 pm
I like the enthusiasm, the cheap tricks and I have a feeling you guys are winners. Keep up the good service and especially the unacceptable-to-conservatives attitude.
You got a good thing and your having fun. Ride the wave.
JR
January 5th, 2007 at 9:34 pm
go dreamhost, go .
January 5th, 2007 at 9:39 pm
Oh no! The fat boy sleeping on the couch is losing weight!
January 5th, 2007 at 10:04 pm
Are you serious? This doesn’t make any sense, it’s like seeing a bag of chips in a store saying “NOW 10% LESS CHIPS FOR THE SAME PRICE!”.
I’m glad I got in when I did last month before this crazy drop in services. I’m using over 2 terabytes of bandwidth a month and growing every day, I need every ounce of bandwidth I can get.
January 5th, 2007 at 10:09 pm
Guys, I’ve been with DH for a decade this year. Yes, a DECADE.
There’s a reason I stuck around this long, and this sense of humor/buzzmarketing tango is part of it. (And the service and the customer support and so forth.)
2006 was a little rocky, but I can remember maybe five outages total over the entire ten years, so really — I’d say this customer opinion thing is just a blip on the radar.
Much love to all y’all. Even Dall-ASS. :)
January 5th, 2007 at 10:09 pm
I suggest a complete redesign of the web site. The current design is, well, outdated to say the least.
January 5th, 2007 at 10:27 pm
I’ve got your rewards/125×31-a.gif button on my site and use it as a link to dreamhost to signup.
The graphic says 200gb.
Will you be updating this image each day to say 199,198,197 etc?
Or will I be misleading my readers, thus probably turning them away?
January 5th, 2007 at 10:30 pm
[...] DreamHost Blog » New Dream Resolutions [...]
January 5th, 2007 at 10:39 pm
Overselling? thats the biggest bunch of hog wash I have heard yet!
The real problem? Poor network and infrastructure management!
Leave the bandwidght and disk quotas alone and learn how to run a data center!
January 5th, 2007 at 10:55 pm
Don’t know if you all read the newsletter but you can use the suggestions feature in the panel to help push a modern clean web design.
P.S. I Agree.
January 5th, 2007 at 10:55 pm
Hi, New Customer here, just signed up a few days ago, I think the 1st. I have to say that so far I am totally digging DreamHost. I was with my previous host (made2own) for something like 4 years. I had a few issues with them, but nothing major, well except for some annoying ongoing SMTP issues and a hacked server that wiped out all our sites (yeah those are always nice) and especially in comparison to some of the other 15 or so BAD hosts I had before them. So switching to DH was huge for me and my soon to follow few dozen clients.
The price, storage space, bandwidth and features are absolutely what made me switch to DH. Although I had somewhat more flexibility with M2O, not enough of an advantage to not get the Bandwidth and Webspace I really needed.
As for the lowering of space and bandwidth to keep customers and grow your rep?? Sorry but that sounds extremely backwards to me. If I had read this before I signed up, I might have thought twice about the company, as it sounds really bad from a new customer perspective…
Well, no worries now, but I am looking forward to many years of smooth service and quality hosting. I think, and hope, that this is THE host for me and my clients for the future.
Best,
PaulG
January 5th, 2007 at 11:00 pm
I’ve stuck with you guys for several years now. Working in an enterprise environment is hard enough without people throwing you to the fire every day.
IMHO you’ve always given too much disk space and bandwidth to starting accounts. I don’t know anyone who needs more than a few GB to face a good site these days. Of course, that need does grow over time… However, if you need more than that, you should pay for more than that. Keep the small quotas cheap for the rest of us.
I agree with a lot of the previous comments that reducing 1GB per week is going to lead to sales issues. My recommendation would be to cut it in one or two motions - say, down to 150GB then to 100GB, and keep falling as required. The threat of “sign up now or miss out on 1GB” is not going to help your sales as much as it will harm them.
That aside, keep up the great work. You are a comedic genius.
January 5th, 2007 at 11:04 pm
I’m happy with your service, I got downtime on disaster days, but I’m OK with it. At least you got your lesson and correcting things to the way that they should be.
Keep the motivation high and keep up the good work.
Sinan
January 5th, 2007 at 11:15 pm
“people are telling us we are sh1t, and we are telling you that they are right, even though their justifications for telling us we are sh1t are wrong!”
January 5th, 2007 at 11:20 pm
I like the hosting, I like the blog.
I think that if you want to increase your reputation then you hire more support people. Your support is very fast when I had questions about a server, but when it comes down to fixing problems they are much slower. Just my opinion. Take it or leave it I will still host with you until there is better.
January 5th, 2007 at 11:47 pm
I think this is a bit of suicidal marketing, but I noticed improvements and less hickups on the websites hosted here.
I think such a move is very hard to implement, but in the same time Dreamhost made it quite well as they now offer an incentive for new signups and reassurance for old members.
Well done! If only the December newsletter would have been less insane…
January 5th, 2007 at 11:47 pm
What else do you expect them to do ?
January 5th, 2007 at 11:48 pm
I have appreciated Dreamhost’s candor and humor, a very rare and human combination in a technology services field. I recommend you use these to your continued benefit:
- Candor. How about publishing all the metrics which I suppose no web host publishes? Bandwidth and storage headroom, power usage versus ceiling, software processes per cpu per minute at peak and low water marks, or whatever along those sort of lines really drives/avoids problems. Show your users, and prospective customers, a (near?) real time panel of gauges that show how you guys are doing - whatever those measurable factors are that really matter. This could instill customer confidence from your customer base, throw a gauntlet to other web hosts, and having it publicly visible will keep you guys focused on it to be and remain number one in reliability.
- Humor. Yes. Order more from Cisco, Juniper or whomever. Get the pink ones. With the clown noses.
As far as allocations… there is probably a moving (increasing) sweet spot in terms of customer perceptions (new accounts) but generally higher allocations makes you look more reliable because apparently you are either shady or have tons of bandwidth and storage to spare.
When your network is really hosed, that’s when you need to give away more bandwidth to make you _look_ more reliable.
So… now that you are giving away less, I KNOW that you have reached true stability.
But if you had real bandwidth headroom, you could deliver a pizza to my router. I am waiting (and hungry)
EP
January 5th, 2007 at 11:57 pm
It’s just a joke I believe as the starting decreases are tiny.
Am I missing something or are many of you guys lacking a sense of humor
January 6th, 2007 at 12:20 am
I agree with Jessica. Drop it sharply once or twice. If you keep dropping daily, it gives a sense of “hey, you better rush”, even though it won’t make any difference to them, even if they waited a month probably.
I also agree with Sam about more support people. I don’t know if this is logical, depends how many of your clients are actual webmasters, and how many are just run-of-the-mill people with only a slight inkling of what they’re doing (like me). For these, on-hand help with actually creating a website would be really swell. I know there’s the wiki, but not every problem is covered in there, and not all are catered to the same level.
This is something that, imho, you could do cheaply and reasonably massively by outsourcing, say to India (with an indian accent), and if necessary provide as an extra service. As long as it’s not too expensive, I would pay for it.
Sorry if any Indians found that offensive, and sorry if Americans find “outsourcing” offensive, dunno…I’m reading the book “The World is Flat”, which gives a pretty good perspective on it, imho.
January 6th, 2007 at 12:27 am
Decreasing BW is a bad idea. If anything, it makes things harder to refer friends : “go there, they’re cool, you’ll get 1.5 TB, errr I mean 1.4, or maybe 1.3, whatever, go there”
And anyhow, the thing is :
DREAMHOST NEEDS TO BE BADMOUTHED FROM TIME TO TIME
Why ? I have the feeling that all your newsletters, blog posts and communication would be a lot less funny without all those sarcasm (and great transparency underneath) :)
January 6th, 2007 at 12:37 am
Entertaining stuff as always, Josh! I always copy and paste passages of the e-newsletter to all my friends regardless of whether or not they know anything about hosting, it’s just that damn amusing!
Oh also I guess your hosting services are pretty okay (re: I love them tenderly ever since I signed up 2 years ago).
Also also: Extra brownie points for quoting Princess Bride!
January 6th, 2007 at 12:39 am
Know what? If people are going to judge you irrationally for your high allocations, feel free to exploit that irrationality to manipulate their opinion in the opposite direction. The only people it will affect are the people who deserve it. The ones who know you for your quality irrespective of allocation will sign up anyway.
January 6th, 2007 at 12:40 am
I think one of the problems with dreamhost’s perceived lack of reliability, apart from power outages, is that some things actually aren’t that reliable.
I use my domains almost exclusively for e-mail. Webmail is frequently either down for an extended period, or it’s down 5 seconds at a time (keep hitting F5!) or it’s just dog slow. My friends that have e-mail addresses on my site complain about pop3 not working.
Of course, all these problems happen pretty much at random, so by the time the techies get to check it out, the problems, coincidentally, don’t appear any more.
Perhaps one of the things dreamhost should focus on is getting (and keeping) the basics right first, and only THEN add features. Maybe monitor things better, or eat your own dogfood..
January 6th, 2007 at 1:05 am
Nobody believes me when I say the starting package is 2TB. I am a member of an adult related forum and they (members) straight away bad mouth Dreamhost if I mention 2TB they say it is not possible and something will have to go pop which will probably be server down time. There are two types of adult webmasters, the ones making tons of money and membership areas and the ones like myself who just want a small extra income.
The first bracket would not dream of shared hosting, they have dedicated and pay $1000,s a month on hosting, they cannot afford any downtime.
The second bracket are like myself, we are unsure of how much space (bandwidth) we require, we submit free sites and galleries to link lists and TGP’s these in return send massive amounts of traffic for one week maybe two maximum then they drop off to a few hundred a month if your lucky. Now if we join a host that has a 200gb limit with overcharges we panic, we do not want to find ourselves with a $100 bill at the end of the month so we pull the plug so to speak if it gets to this amount.
I would not keep lowering the amount, I would drop it straight to around 500GB which is more believable and offer NO over usage charge for the first 3 months and maybe even email the customer their usgage figures for the first three months outlininbg how near they got to reaching the limit or how far over they were.
You could then take it a step further, based on the users stats, you could offer them a continued reduced? rate at a maximum of 500GB but inform them that an Overusage charge will now be in place or offer them an increasing weekly amount at your usual rates.
I am not joking, I could have got you double figure sign-ups during December on the webmaster forum but they took the amount of bandwidth as a joke that could not be sustained. You could take such a massive slice of the secondary level adult webmasters hosting. Add to this that ‘many’ adult webmasters are going blog based and you have wordpress one click….. When you have some time, read aaround a few adult forums, for those that think adult webmasters are scum bags we are not, we are trying to provide adult entertainment to those LOOKING for it. Things have changed from 10 years ago, read the forums and see for yourself.
January 6th, 2007 at 1:47 am
[...] # 恩，希望网线风波过去后，使用 dh 空间的朋友都能顺利登陆后台 - -链接 | 来源 Tech Industry News [...]
January 6th, 2007 at 2:36 am
DreamHost is the best!!!!! thx and happy new years!!
te people is very good
January 6th, 2007 at 2:47 am
Nice move :D
This should pump up the value of promo codes, so why do you people even care? It profits you :)
And don’t worry - DH knows what they’re doing. If they didn’t, we wouldn’t be all here, smiling :)
January 6th, 2007 at 2:59 am
all i can really say is… balls
January 6th, 2007 at 3:16 am
All the best for 2007, you have a LOT of work to do if you really want to “Become once again renowned the Web-over as a stable, reliable, robust, high-performance webhost!”
January 6th, 2007 at 3:23 am
I am fortunate to have a great job that takes care of my familys needs and most of our wants, I really feel lucky every day / However I have to say every time I read your blog or newsletter I wish I could work for Dreamhost, maybe it’s just good marketing I don’t know but it sounds like you have fun. I have only been a customer for a year but I have been very pleased and look forward to being a customer for a very long time. Happy New Year Dreamhost!
January 6th, 2007 at 3:24 am
And here I thought Dreamhost 2007 resolutions would include a new web statistics tool that wasn’t made in the stone age. A bad stats tool is one way to keep customers away and lower bandwidth usage!
January 6th, 2007 at 3:26 am
Excellent sincere post, I appreciate it. I am a customer of yours.
January 6th, 2007 at 3:28 am
Nao da para entender essas pessoas… se tem pouca banda e/ou espaço, reclamam, se tem muito nao dão credibilidade ao serviço!
Eu estou completamente satisfeito ate hoje.
January 6th, 2007 at 3:43 am
[...] As a matter of interest, read Dreamhost’s New Years Resolution too. Controversial, entertaining, and hopefully promising as well. [...]
January 6th, 2007 at 3:52 am
I’m from across the pond so my sense of humour may be different but this is clearly tongue in cheek,no?
This is just the kind of stuff we Brits love - sarcasm :)
You blame overselling? OK we’ll undersell, smartypants! He, He. Great stuff.
Josh says he’ll reduce the limits until people start to respect Dreamhost again. This is like Kubrick withdrawing Clockwork Orange from the UK because it was being blamed for an increase in street violence. Nice viral marketing though. Expect some sort of ‘clarification’ soon. Watch this space!
January 6th, 2007 at 4:03 am
so they stole your sig… the BASTARDS!
*didnt pay too much attention to the rest of it*
i myself can add only this: after i’ve signed up for DH and started reading all reports on the problems you have experienced past year… it didnt make me dislike you in any way, in fact, i think it helped me to become a better human being. simply because i now understand that everything in this world is about trust and trust can never be gained without honesty.
i’m a forum-admin and i’ve been trying as well to notify my members more about all the problems that a small forum can actually experience. ever since, i feel more supported by the regulars and i no longer feel like i’m expected to do all the work by myself.
so thank you for this wise insight and my appologies for copying your way of doing things.
(now if i could only have some humour myself… )
January 6th, 2007 at 4:15 am
I agree the lowering of HDD and bandwidth is a bad idea. I say this mainly as Dreamhost has been kind of been the leader for upping size and bandwidth like gmail was at first forcing others to raise as well. So thus if they start lowering size they would loose out to others that are doing the same. I just worry this may have the opposite effect now and actually drop dreamhost into getting less new customers as I know I will have a hard time continuing to pimp them out to people.
January 6th, 2007 at 4:52 am
i’m using less than 10% of my DH allocated bandwidth and disk space and feel i’m not getting my money’s worth
if only i’d waited ’till 2007 before signing up…
January 6th, 2007 at 5:02 am
Guys, I love your company! Great controlpanel, great service, great support and of course, great prices! :]
January 6th, 2007 at 5:44 am
Hi guys!
Great to hear that there will be less problems this Year! I just joined you two months ago but it really seems that my website is going to be the next Web sensation… HOPE YOU CAN COPE WITH MY AMBITION!! Get ready, this is my Year!
Let’s grow together, shall we?
Keep up the good job! Cheers
January 6th, 2007 at 6:31 am
Well, Josh - there you have it. An endorsement by Raven Riley.
Clearly, your new marketing and pricing approach is starting to pay off.
In the competitive world of high technology services, nothing trumps a stamp of approval from a web services connoisseur whose home page features many high-resolution photos of themselves with a penis in their mouth.
January 6th, 2007 at 6:36 am
Thank you for confirming why I left Dreamhost last summer. I didn’t leave because you were OVERSELLING. I left because in all the money you spent on hardware upgrades, you didn’t think of improving your support structure. A blog doesn’t cut it. A message board that you don’t monitor doesn’t cut it. An email ticket system that you don’t answer until after the problem is resolved doesn’t cut it.
“When all else fails, you can contact our technical support team. We strive to answer all emails within 24 hours, and most are answered in subtantially less time.”
When all else fails you still expect your customers to sit with no service and no response for up to a day while you “strive” to get to it?
Phone support. All the cool kids are doing it.
January 6th, 2007 at 6:46 am
I have no idea how much this costs, but…
It would be cool if webhosts voluntarily had their systems audited by a reputable company (like PriceWatherhouse Coopers), and make the figures public. Then we can see who is really overselling.
It would probably boost your reputation if you were the first ones to start this.
Is this at all feasable? Will the figures give too much info away to the competition? Am I crazy?
January 6th, 2007 at 7:09 am
I love how candid you guys are in your blogs. I am really thinking of moving my sites here. Keep up the good work! :)
January 6th, 2007 at 7:27 am
This is quite possibly the most ingenuous method of selling hosting space I’ve ever seen.
January 6th, 2007 at 7:35 am
I agree that the quotas were “too good to be believed” and snipping them down to size is a good idea. As long as you don’t touch my existing quotas, of course. Not that I’ve ever managed to use more than 1%
January 6th, 2007 at 7:41 am
I agree with Josh,
if I would be looking for a web hoster and I’d see what Dreamhost has to offer, I’d say it’s too good to be true!!!
I’d keep lowering the entry Disk/Bandwidth but maybe increase the rate at which they increase until the new customer get to the point they would have been by past with the entry Disk/Bandwidth and give them the same growing rate as the old-timer customers when they’ve reached that level.
Keep up the good work, I’m behind you at 100% best host I ever got!
January 6th, 2007 at 7:50 am
I really wish you wouldn’t decrease your amounts, since that’s what initially drew me to your company. However, you will offer much, much more than any other company, so I suppose you have to do what you have to do.
January 6th, 2007 at 8:30 am
@Shawn
That would indeed increase dreamhost’s credibility (independent audits). However, I don’t think they would be willing to open their “books” just like that. But if they do open their “books” for independent scrutiny and rating then my trust on Dreamhost as a serious, reliable, stable host would definitely increase and thus would make recommend DreamHost as a viable solution to serious customers who usually stay away from garage-teen hosting (which is the image DreamHost currently projects).
January 6th, 2007 at 8:50 am
[...] New Dream Resolutions | Dreamhost Weblog [...]
January 6th, 2007 at 8:55 am
I’ve been on Dreamhost for almost 6 years. It is still my default hosting solution for clients, despite all of the issues.
I did have a major client move to Rackspace in 2006 and start to fork out a ridiculous amount of money per month for a dedicated server, purely to escape the stability problems. They had stuck with DreamHost for 4 years before having to throw in the towel.
I say all of this only to illustrate that I support the idea of #22 above: Focus on reliability, with tangible metrics, to restore the DH reputation with existing customers. Continue to offer whatever incentives you need to get the new customers you need to grow, so long as they do not affect reliability.
Put into place a system that checks to make sure that every site is up, and refund a portion of the DH monthly fee for any section of time where the site is down, for any reason.
Over time, you will find that people will pay you more, perhaps a lot more, than they are paying now for the same service, so long as they know that your service is reliable and their reputation will be intact after recommending you.
I can talk someone into shelling out a lot more money for web hosting if I can (objectively) show that a prospective host has 99.99% uptime and will automatically credit your account for downtime.
Even if DH is already reliable, this shows prospective clients that you have an incentive to keep the lights on, not just to convince them to use your service.
January 6th, 2007 at 9:40 am
I’d like to see Postgres supported as well, MySQL just doesn’t cut it for some applications.
January 6th, 2007 at 9:50 am
With all the improvements currently rolling out I am thinking that I might become a customer of yours sometime in February/March of this year.
I look forward to doing business with you. Oh yeah!
January 6th, 2007 at 10:23 am
Been with your for less than a year. I was there through those troublesome times earlier in the year with minimal downtime (as far as I am concerned), and I have already suggested you to many people who may sign up.
The only problem I have is ping. I just wish you guys had an east-cost datacenter that would give us east-coasters a better response time. I have noticed the ping drop lately, but not anywhere near some other hosts.
Don’t worry, I still like this “increase in disk and bandwidth weekly” too much to leave you. :)
January 6th, 2007 at 10:28 am
This is really irritating. I am an existing customer, so I almost feel “important” in the sense that I am going to have higher disc space than anybody signing up new. BUT it still puts a pretty bad taste in my mouth regarding dreamhost.
Please stop this BS and put it back to 200gb (etc etc)
January 6th, 2007 at 10:52 am
You guys rule.
Just keep up the good work.
And yes, I’ve signed in november, i.e. after all the terrible situations that DH went thru. And YES, I knew about them beforehand, and still decided to go with DH - that is, after my DH-recommending friend showed me this blog and “anatomy of disaster” post”.
Jim, I’m from Poland (Mid-Eastern Europe) and here we have ~300ms ping to “my” DH machine (fresca). It’s good enough for websites :)
January 6th, 2007 at 11:30 am
Not that I am any kind of expert on this sort of thing, but dreamhost has been the best web host ever. I have never had any problems at all in the years that I have been here.
I’d say, even with the drop in bandwidth and disk, you’re still one of the best. I don’t understand the whole overselling thing.. I mean.. if it’s working, why change it?
January 6th, 2007 at 11:32 am
As a current DH custimer I guess it doesn’t affect me much, but I really can’t see — beyond a flash of publicity that might occur — how this helps DreamHost. First of all, it’s all but admitting that you WERE overselling (humorous blog entry notwithstanding). Second, it’s a super-high pressure sales technique (buy today or you get less tomorrow!). Third, it’s not going to do anything about the things I personally care about. What are the things I care about?
- I signed up just at the start of the six weeks of hell this summer and I hope it never happens again.
- I have issue with the email policies (that you can’t use SpamAssassin when you have a catch-all, that you can’t directly access your spam folder via IMAP)
- I am NOT a fan of the DH control panel. I’m much more comfy with cPanel. cPanel is a lot faster and cleaner. Plus if they used cPanel, it would make it easier for them to snatch customers away from other cPanel hosts!
I like DreamHost *because* of the massive transfer and storage allocations, and because of the funny blog.
January 6th, 2007 at 11:48 am
This is great! I managed to buy at the top of the bubble! This sort of makes me, and everyone else in the room, appear wise.
Plus, I like the message from DH, that they have indeed maxx’d out, and signaling its only going to get better from here. (No more ‘continuous market share/growth, but instead more concern for active clients’)
-337, (w/ shell to a Debian server in LA and 215Gb of disk, and some other freaky large number of bandwidth, that’s still growing… he he)
…but oh Please DH, fix spam for us all. I’ll brag about it if you do.
January 6th, 2007 at 12:54 pm
I have been hosting with you guys for a few years now. I love DH.. I love the newsletterly’s I get every month, they are so funny and amazing and I HATE NEWSLETTERS! but I don’t disagree with your tactic. I do think that have that much bandwidth and storage at sign up hurts your cred. mainly because people don’t believe a serious host can provide that level of BW/Storage. 2006 was a wild year as well.
January 6th, 2007 at 1:16 pm
I have been using dreamhost for a while and have loved it. Not once has there been a real problem. And even if there was I would stick since I know that dh will solve it as soon as possible and be very nice about it.
Once my login id got mixed up with someone else’s (my password and user logged into someone else’s account. It got cleared up quickly and efficiently. Great work!
January 6th, 2007 at 2:23 pm
I think you’re making a mistake, not necessarily because the idea is flawed, but because it is probably going to be incomprehensible to 99% of your prospective customers. I must say if I saw it, I’d think “What the f*** is that all about?”
Well, time will tell. Since I’ve been with you since 1998 and we’re kinda old friends, I suppose I should wish you a happy new year.
Rod
January 6th, 2007 at 3:11 pm
[...] My Web hosting company, Dreamhost started a new marketing concept: Reduce the resource offered to new customer in order to better serve old customer and to increase reputation. This decision is anounce on their blog: Every day, starting tomorrow, the amount of starting disk and bandwidth we offer new customers (this does not affect existing customers at all!) will drop. You can see the amounts here. [...]
January 6th, 2007 at 4:50 pm
[...] read more | digg story Related Posts: [...]
January 6th, 2007 at 5:03 pm
I just have to say that I have never been uphappy with your service.
I have loved you guys since the day I found out about you and I am currently using 0.00001% of my bandwidth and disk space. I’m glad to know it’s there though in case my site flukes out and suddenly becomes hugely popular.
January 6th, 2007 at 6:19 pm
Alas, I only use my site for personal purposes, and few people other than I ever actually look at it, so I cannot care one way or the other about site performance.
My site is always there when I need it.
Alas, I use dreamhost for *email*, and on that front, everyone’s favorite happy hosting company stinks.
January 6th, 2007 at 7:18 pm
You can blame the electric situation if you want, but you guys have/had hardware failures all the time without adequate backups, you have software issues that take too long to resolve, etc. It is NOT just some electric situation…
January 7th, 2007 at 12:44 am
I believed by decreasing the amount of b/w and space, will even drop your reputation as one of the biggest offered host on the planet with an affordable price right now. Think about it. Because, day by day, there will be more, more and more newcomer host that mybe will beat you a later day.
January 7th, 2007 at 5:13 am
[...] DreamHost to LOWER disk and bandwidth quotas in 2007 [...]
January 7th, 2007 at 5:29 am
I’m a new web site(in fact my very first web site) and I can tell yall the points that sold me on dreamhost. Firstly, the friendliness of the page helped. Knowing it was employee owned didnt hurt. The honesty and info in the package section (most hosts didnt even tell me if I would be the domain owner) But the main concideration was bandwidth and disk space. I shopped them all and found some good, most not so good offers but dreamhost brew them all away. Even the 4 days I waited for activation cant disuade me from loving it here and anticipating many years of happy service. sniff, sniff… I love you guys(a single tear rolls down my cheak)
January 7th, 2007 at 6:14 am
There are some people talking about this.
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=574861
Have fun. :)
January 7th, 2007 at 6:23 am
PS.
To increase the actual true real solid valid reputation, DreamHost can look into a case like this:
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=574593
And avoiding totally crazy BUG like this one may help.
I first thought this guy was joking … or DreamHost was joking …
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=561397
January 7th, 2007 at 8:22 am
I must cast my vote in with the group that says the gradual inclusion plan. As a fairly new customer to dreamhost I must say that I would have run away in fear of that pricing/bandwidth growth chart. I wanted some thing simple with a low price advertised clearly and a lot of bandwidth (even if I don’t need it) I think sheerly from a marketing standpoint the idea makes no sense. Anyway the reason I came to dreamhost was that people said you have a great rep!
January 7th, 2007 at 8:23 am
I love the new policy.
Starting with 500 MB initially and a 1 GB increase weekly would still be a great value. (Compare with the Gmail increase which is something like 0.3 MB per week.)
January 7th, 2007 at 8:36 am
okay as I think about it slightly I am realizing that in a way tharketing might not be bad for getting the name out there…however I do think the chart should be less confusing for simple minded folks like myself
January 7th, 2007 at 10:09 am
I think this idea is stupid…for so many reasons, but mostly because it makes things too confusing. Regardless of my opinion, the lovely “livin’ it up” images on the front page still say 200GB/2TB. You might want to fix that.
January 7th, 2007 at 2:09 pm
B r i l l i a n t !
I think it’ll be a great 2007. Thanks for the great hosting.
January 7th, 2007 at 6:59 pm
I’m with you guys for 1 year and a half now, and I’m still a very happy customer. Altough the speeds are not great (I live in europe, Belgium to be exact), the service and the features are. The problems you guys have had in the past year don’t compare to the problems I had with the future hosting companies I had.
Keep up the good work guys!
January 8th, 2007 at 2:21 am
I’ve been a customer just 2 months. I read about your network problems from the summer before I signed, but so appreciated that you took the time to communicate you customers and explain how you would improve, that I decided that you were the host for me.
I’ve used about 5 hosts in the past and so far you guys look to be the best. We’ll see how you handle things now that our DB load is getting heavy.
Two areas need improvement lately: response times (maybe it was just b/c of the holidays) and, as someone above pointed out, your stats package.
I once thoroughly researched Web Analytics packages and was very interested by NetTracker, so that might be worth looking into. It’s pricing, easy of use, and features bested many competitors. However, I never got to fully implement it, so I can’t say for sure.
Regarding the present issue, I think there are much better ways. One thing that REALLY almost stopped me from signing up was when I read that your Better Business Bureau rating is (or then was) an “F”. I believe I confirmed that on the BOB’s site. That should be addressed. If it can’t be resolved, then perhaps you might want to explain it. That way when people like me search for “dreamhost better business bureau rating” your explanation could also be found and read.
If your rep is tarnished, why not just write a blog entry inviting people to write about experiences good or bad (which we do anyway). Better yet, run a survey (but be sure to explain it’s purpose). You might encourage clients to specify their disk and bandwidth and connuary levels. You can then hold up the results and impress prospective customers.
Good luck
January 8th, 2007 at 2:54 am
that is excellent news. I signed up with you guys last summer as a birthday present to me, since you had an awesome promo going on and I had a friend who swore up and down that you would not be mean to me. Since I prepaid for a year with my previous host like… 6 months before… I got a new domain. Everything was all good, until my new site kept going down. Argh. It hasn’t done that lately at all and I was feeling pretty happy with you… I’m glad to hear that this is a state of affairs that might continue. (Especially considering that I signed up for like two years.) I even recommended you to a friend, who also switched from the same exact unfortunate previous host! (Their customer service was sort of nonexistent, which is the main reason I switched.)
Keep on rockin’ in the free world.
January 8th, 2007 at 4:13 am
I was going to sign with you , but now I am a bit confused.
I don’t think that your reputation gets better just because you drop down your offer. If you think you give a good service , you should stick to that no matter what a bunch of people say.
Now , if you give 1.9xxx space and bandwidth instead than 2, but than it will increase weekly, what’s the difference for the server stability ? Either it is stable anyway (so why to drop down the offer) or it is not (so you should not increase it weekly).
I was lucky to find this blog , other way I would have just passed by and go to sign with Hostmonster or Bluehost .
I am sure many people will do that.
Please , reconsider it . I am afraid this decision will not bring you any good.
As far as I am concerned, I will wait for a while and sign only if the offer will be the same as before.
I hope I will not wait for nothing.
Happy new year to everybody !
January 8th, 2007 at 4:57 am
I’m a new customer (4 days ago) and let me boring you about it. I’ve seen better deals, like 5 dedicated IP’s, 5 “free” domains, 24/7 live chat support, SSL…I didn’t sign up (x2) because of the huge disk/bw or whatever nice, but for one thing only: because of the spirit that lives here. That spirit will run me and I will run my websites. Now flame me.
So what a newbie can say here:
What first get my attention was the blabbering on drupal.org how DH is/not awesome for Drupal. I’m using Drupal for my primary portal which is not yet on production side, but right now he’s working WAY faster here than on my previous host(s). And I’m happy with that and I will, long term speaking, IF AND ONLY IF they keep servers up and running. Period.
IMHO, Dreamhost will gain more customers with their servers stability, better support, which is primary, also with better versions (latest don’t means better) of the toys you can play around. This lowering is yet another weird way to do something to attract new customers. (It’s all about New you see…) Like me. I’m not sure why you all whining about your expensively payed shared resources. Seriously, how many of you are really using full 200GB disk or full 2TB bandwidth? Or even 50GB…Simply, if you want to be the next YouTube you won’t be here, right?
Thumbs up DH, just keep it running. I wish you many ($$$) dream hosting years.
Now where I can buy a DH t-shirt?
January 8th, 2007 at 5:17 am
I LOVE YOUR POLICY GUYS!
You are giving my website the chance to exploit its full potential! If things go as it looks like they are going, we may retire together before the 30s mate! That’s why internet is great: you just need a good idea, a dream. When this dream catches the people, it’s done.
Thanks for hosting my dream. Have a nice day!
January 8th, 2007 at 6:56 am
Hey DH,
I read your posts but what you are talking and what is happening are two different things. Of course your rep is going down with all the sites that are down daily. On one instance I was checking if my monitoring service might be loosing connection to internet and not reporting things right.
Anyway, hope things will improve. You made me take one more hosting account with someone else though, so I have my back covered.
Best wishes in New Year.
Sincerely,
Zeljko Dakic
January 8th, 2007 at 9:34 am
[...] Oczywiście, nie dla istniejących klientów. W notce o postanowieniach noworocznych, załoga DreamHost poinformowała, że w trosce o dobre imię hostingu, będą codziennie obniżać dostępne miejsce i pasmo dla nowych kont. [...]
January 8th, 2007 at 10:27 am
Overselling? I’m a relatively new customer– started at the end of November. What’s hurting DreamHost’s rep? SITE RESPONSE TIMES. There were many days in December where I had to try repeatedly to access the control panel, sometimes postponing tasks for days because it just wouldn’t respond at all. Sure, plenty of space and bandwidth offered, but not enough available to run a Flash video at 64Kbps without significant pauses. No problems with my AT&T web hosting account running an 800Kbps Flash video, so why is there here?
Call it overselling. Call it whatever you want. But there was a problem in December. Haven’t tested the videos in January yet, so I don’t know if the problem persists. Reducing what you offer to new customers isn’t going to fix the problem with bandwidth you had last month.
January 8th, 2007 at 12:45 pm
[...] DreamHost Blog » New Dream Resolutions (tags: Hosting DreamHost) [...]
January 8th, 2007 at 10:59 pm
Ahem,
Have to smile at this one. “We are going to kick ass and we have spend 4 trazilion dollars on stuff…”
and a quiet crumple today, no announcement, no warning, no control panel and no webftp. (can’t get ftp through the bloody proxy at my Tuesday site)
Did you spend that money on beer, women or beer flavored women?
Och, you are still better than the last lot I suppose and you have another 9 months to convince me to stay. Get better like you promise and you have a customer for life but like the last post says a little faster response time would be nice.
January 9th, 2007 at 6:38 am
Good to know the problems are behind us and the future looks bright(er).
In fact, the unoffical blog, which does not seem to like comments (so what’s the point?), claims
“This also means that DreamHost are now finally in the top 20 of the biggest hosts in the world - currently as number 19!”
But the list they show does not even mention Big Daddy, so isn’t that just a little suspect?
Where does Dreamhost REALLY come, compared with the Big Boys?
January 9th, 2007 at 6:39 am
I think you guys are doing great. I’ve never been happier with my hosting service, and I’m constantly telling people about the great deals. I don’t forsee myself moving anywhere else anytime soon :D Keep it up!
January 9th, 2007 at 8:56 am
I don’t understand this dropping of the entry disk space and bandwidth idea. If you’re going to do this, at least offer periodic promos with the 200 gigs/2TB we’ve all become use too. One of the key reasons for me choosing to go with DreamHost was the nice high disk space and bandwidth, as I primarily want to have space to back up files off site from me. It’s easy to recommend you to others when I can say they offer this much storage and transfer at signup. Now what do I tell perspective new customers, that you use to offer 200 gigs of storage and 2 TB of bandwidth, but now I’m not sure what’s being offered because yesterday 198GB was being offered, and if you wait too long, pretty soon you’ll only get 2GB of storage and 50GB of bandwidth? It makes no sense to me. I’m glad I got in when I did as I could start on an easy to remember number of 200/2000. As I said though if you’re gonna continue this strange way of doing this, at least offer pomotions every now and then giving the original values, maybe like you did with that one day only 9999 deal which I’m glad I took advantage of!
January 9th, 2007 at 11:31 am
WHAT ABOUT THE UNIVERSE???
http://www.changingthepresent.org/causes
January 10th, 2007 at 3:09 am
Im also a new customer. I have an idea. Dont sitck with the numbers. Freedom always makes people happy.
Why dont you let the new customers to choose how much space they wants? You know your limits