The weakest point of the hosting experience with DreamHost has been the performance as major outages seems to happen a couple of days per year. Then again, some major web services (like Twitter for instance) go down more than that and seem to be growing nicely. Another consideration is the fact that I’ve never been with a host (and I’ve been with several over the last decade) who hasn’t had a few outages a year. Hence, my happiness with the DreamHost experience.

Another gripe I’ve had from time to time is the fact that my sites seem to load pretty slow at times even though there were no major issues with the DreamHost system. As the traffic on my sites grows I want a good experience for users and quick load times are a part of that equation. That said I know that there is a certain reality to understand when you’re on a shared hosting account. My sites are sitting on a server with hundreds of other sites using god knows what kind of resources. So there are always going to be performance limitations when you have a shared hosting account.

A few months back DreamHost began to offer what they call Dreamhost P.S. P.S. is short for private servers. According to the DreamHost P.S. website, “DreamHost PS uses Linux-VServer to give you your own “virtual machine”, thereby protecting your CPU and RAM from all other users on your physical machine.” It sounded like the ticket for me in wanting to improve the loading time on my sites. So a few weeks ago I got on the waiting list for my own virtual private server.

A few days ago I received a notice telling me that the service had been activated. I went to check out my sites first and noticed that the first one I went to was down. The email I received did mention that the site could be down if my level of memory and cpu on the private server was set too low. So I went to the private server control panel and adjusted the convenient slider to up the levels a little bit. Within a couple of minutes the changes took effect and I visited my sites. The performance increase was noticeable. There’s no doubt in my mind that the sites load faster now.

At the current setting level my hosting bill is going to increase by $30.00 per month. That’s a considerable bump up from $10 a month. But that increase is worth it if I continue to see improved performance. And it’s a lot cheaper and simpler than moving to a dedicated server. Another plus of the DreamHost P.S. service is the fact that the control panel includes a graph that shows resource usage over time. If usage is below the peak settings then I can use the slider to adjust my resources in real time and the billing will be adjusted accordingly.

If you’re happy with your current host then I don’t think that this service is a reason to defect to DreamHost. If you are on DreamHost and have high traffic sites that are currently on a shared plan then you might want to consider adding the private server option. Doing so will cost you more money. That money would be well spent if it means a better experience for your users.