DreamHost

Dreamhost tierless shared Web hosting plan (starting at $10.95 per month, or $9.95 per month with a one-year commitment) offers unlimited disk storage space, domains, email, and monthly data transfers. Dreamhost gives you your first .com, .net, .org, or .info domain for free, but you have to pay the registration fee for all others.

Most competitors, including HostGator£2.54 at HostGator UK (the Editors' Choice for shared Web hosting), offer unlimited domains only as part of their higher-tier plans, making Dreamhost particularly attractive. That said, HostGator is one of the few Web hosts that PCMag has reviewed that offers Windows-based shared Web hosting. That's a big deal, as there are many businesses that require Microsoft's operating system to run specific software. HostGator also offers unlimited month data transfers, storage, and email.

If you want a month-to-month Dreamhost hosting option, be prepared to dig for it a bit, as the information is buried in the bowels of Dreamhost's site. Or, just hop over to shared-hosting favorite HostGator, where it's extremely easy to find.

Virtual Private Server Packages

Dreamhost offers Linux-based VPS Web hosting (starting at $15 per month) for businesses that need more power or expect higher traffic volumes. Dreamhost's VPS plans offer unlimited email, storage, and monthly data transfers, which is a nice perk. However, the base memory is quite low; the $15 per month plan offers only 300MB of RAM. On the other hand, the highest configuration ($249 per month) maxes out at 16GB of RAM. Of the VPS Web hosts we've reviewed, only Media Temple$20.00 at Media Temple - Shared offers more RAM (64GB).

Still, Hostwinds$4.50 at Hostwinds - Shared, the PCMag Editors' Choice for VPS hosting, has wallet-friendly well-rounded VPS offerings that start at $7.50 per month for 1GB of RAM, 25GB of disk space, unlimited monthly data transfers, unlimited email, and half a CPU core and scale to $172 per month for 28.5GB of RAM, 600GB of disk space, unlimited monthly data transfers, unlimited email, and eight CPU cores.

Dedicated Web Hosting Packages

Dreamhost's dedicated server options (starting at $169 per month) aren't radically different from what many competing Web hosting services offer—you get 1TB of storage and can configure the servers with up to 16GB of RAM—but you get a highly desired feature: unlimited data transfers per month. That's a huge deal for people or companies with highly trafficked sites. Not even HostGator, the PCMag Editors' Choice for dedicated server Web hosting, can boast that.

Unfortunately, Dreamhost lacks Windows-based dedicated servers; it's Linux or bust. If you want a build a website using Microsoft's operating system as the foundation, we suggest checking our HostGator, which has Linux and Windows dedicated servers.

Dream Delayed

Signing up for Dreamhost was straightforward, but we were surprised that we couldn't get started right away. A banner message across the top of the account screen stated that Dreamhost would contact us when our account was ready. We were perplexed that we had to wait about five hours before receiving an email confirming that our account had been setup and we could get started. Considering that most services, including Arvixe, Network Solutions$2.99 at Network Solutions, and GoDaddy$3.99 at GoDaddy - Shared let you start immediately, five hours seems an excruciatingly long wait.