 | |
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | |
| Founded | April 10, 1996; 28 years ago (1996-04-10)[1] Claremont,California,U.S. |
| Headquarters | Brea, California, U.S.[2] |
Area served | Worldwide |
Key people | Dallas Bethune, Josh Jones, Michael Rodriguez,Sage Weil, Brett Dunst[3] |
| Products | Web and cloud services |
| Parent | New Dream Network, LLC |
| ASN | 26347 |
| Website | www |
DreamHost is aLos Angeles-basedweb hosting provider anddomain name registrar. It is owned byNew Dream Network, LLC, founded in 1996 by Dallas Bethune, Josh Jones, Michael Rodriguez andSage Weil, undergraduate students atHarvey Mudd College inClaremont, California, and registered in 1997 by Michael Rodriguez.[4][5] DreamHost began hosting customers' sites in 1997.[6] In May 2012, DreamHost spun offInktank.[7] Inktank is a professional services and support company for the open sourceCeph file system.[8] In November 2014, DreamHost spun off Akanda, an open source network virtualization project.[9] As of February 2016, Dreamhost employs about 200 people and has close to 400,000 customers.[10]
DreamHost'sshared,VPS, anddedicated hosting network consists ofApache,nginx andlighttpd web servers running on theUbuntu operating system.[11] DreamHost also offers cloud storage and computing services for entrepreneurs and developers, launched in 2012.[12][13] The control panel for users to manage all services is a custom application designed in-house, and includes integrated billing and a support ticket system. DreamHost's staff contribute to an official blog and a customer support wiki.[14]
DreamHost does not offer call-in phone support, but customers can pay extra to request callbacks from support staff. Furthermore, a live chat option is available for all accounts when the level of support emails is low. This option is always available for customers that already pay the monthly fee for callbacks.[15] The company hosts in excess of one million domains.[16]
In 2006, the company began abeta versionfile hosting service they called "Files Forever".[17] The company stated that existing customers could store files "forever" after paying a one-time storage fee, and redistribute or sell them with DreamHost handling the transactions.[18] As of November 2012, this service was no longer offered to new customers.[19] In April 2013, DreamHost mentioned that the Files Forever service had been discontinued and that they would focus on building a better-supported storage technology.[20]
In 2009, the company began offering freeweb application hosting. With either their own domain or a free subdomain, customers were able to make use of a number ofopen source applications, such asWordPress andMediaWiki without charge.[21] The service is similar to, and can be integrated with, theGoogle App Engine.[21] Through a control panel, customers are able to manage their applications or upgrade to the standard, fully managed hosting service.
DreamHost's DreamCompute is a public cloud computing service that provides scalable compute resources for developers and entrepreneurs. DreamCompute users select the amount of compute resources and storage resources needed and define their own virtual networks. DreamCompute is powered byOpenStack andCeph and is designed for scalability, resiliency, and security.
The DreamCompute dashboard is built with OpenStack's Horizon project. The dashboard provides a user interface for interacting with DreamCompute's three main services: Compute, Networking, and Storage. Functions such as launching an instance, creating storage volumes, and configuring a virtual network, as well as creating and managing snapshots of both a running instance and storage volumes, are done in the dashboard.
DreamCompute leverages OpenStack APIs for system automation.
DreamHost's DreamObjects is acloud storage service powered byCeph. Ceph's distributed object storage system allows for storing DreamObjects’ data on multiple disks across multiple servers for high fault-tolerance. DreamObjects users store any kind of data (developer content, video, music, etc.) and make it accessible from anywhere in the cloud. Because data is redundantly stored across multiple locations, a fault in any part of the redundant system – such as the loss of a server – will go unnoticed by users, as a user's data remains available and accessible. Commonly used by developers needingobject storage to augment or replaceS3 orSwift functionally via API, DreamObjects will scale to let a user store any capacity of data. DreamObjects costs are usage based, with no costs upfront.
DreamPress is DreamHost's managed WordPress hosting offering that features WordPress-optimized servers and support for novice and advanced WordPress users. In May 2015, DreamHost released DreamPress 2, featuring the deployment of high-speed Solid State Drives.[22]
In December 2024,[23][24] DreamHost partnered with BunnyCDN and integrated their CDN into DreamPress, naming it "Essential CDN". This partnership aims to enhance site performance and reliability for DreamPress users, ensuring faster load times and improved user experiences.
DreamHost was involved throughout the evolution of OpenStack, contributing developers and engineers to the project beginning in early 2011.[25] DreamHost development team members have been leaders on a number of major OpenStack projects, and have over 1,200 code commits changing over 128,000 lines of OpenStack code.[26] DreamHost CEO Simon Anderson has been on OpenStack's Board of Directors since the OpenStack Foundation's inception. In January 2015, DreamHost was elected by Gold members of the OpenStack Foundation to represent for a third consecutive year.[27]
In May 2012, DreamHost spun offInktank.[7] Inktank is a professional services and support company for the open-sourceCeph storage system.[8] Inktank was acquired by Red Hat in April 2014 for $175 million.[28]
In November 2014, DreamHost spun off Akanda, an open source network virtualization project for OpenStack clouds, into a separate company.[9]
On July 12, 2017, theU.S. Department of Justice was granted afederal search warrant ordering DreamHost to hand overIP addresses and other personally identifiable data from visitors todisruptj20.org, a website that helped organizeanti-Trump protests on and aroundInauguration Day 2017.[29] TheElectronic Frontier Foundation said in a blog entry there was "no plausible explanation" for such a warrant and asserted it violates theFourth Amendment.[30] DreamHost went to court, seeking to narrow the scope of the warrant, and in October 2017, Chief Judge Robert E. Morin, of the District of Columbia Superior Court, did just that, ordering that the DOJ could execute its warrant, but that "it does not have the right to rummage through the information contained on DreamHost's website and discover the identity of, or access communications by, individuals not participating in alleged criminal activity, particularly those who were engaging in protectedFirst Amendment activities."[31]
