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If you are planning to buy DreamHost shared hosting, and you want to know the performance of DreamHost shared hosting, then you are in the right place. In this blog post, We will test the speed and performance of DreamHost shared hosting with 10+ different and extensive tests.
Let’s Get Started!
DreamHost shared Hosting
DreamHost was originally founded in 1997 as the New Dream Network. Since then, the company name has changed to DreamHost and currently hosts over a million websites from all over the world. DreamHost currently offers a variety of services to host your website, including Shared hosting, Managed WordPress hosting (DreamPress), VPS hosting, Dedicated hosting, and Domains.
In this particular blog post, we will talk about DreamHost shared hosting.
Plans & Pricing
DreamHost currently offers only two plans in shared hosting. Shared starter and Shared unlimited. With the shared starter plan, you can host only one website and also you will not get email hosting with it. In shared unlimited plan, you will be able to host unlimited websites and also you will get free email hosting with it. So, I think shared unlimited is the most value for money plan. Therefore, I chose Shared Unlimited plan to test DreamHost shared hosting.
Testing Environment
To test DreamHost shared hosting speed and performance, I bought Shared Unlimited plan. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you will already know that I create the same testing website when I perform speed tests. After buying the plan, I installed WordPress and connected it with my domain which I bought from NameCheap.
I do not want to run tests on a blank website, so I installed Blocksy Theme and one of its demo websites called ‘Tasty.’ I have to install four additional extra plugins with the demo website: Blocksy Companion, WP Forms Lite, Stackable, Recipe Card Blocks by WPZOOM.
Hosting: DreamHost Shared
Plan: Shared Unlimited
Server Location: Virginia U
WordPress Version: 5.8
Themes: Blocksy (Active), Twenty twenty One
Plugins: Blocksy Companion, WP Forms Lite, Stackable, Recipe Card Blocks by WPZOOM
After setting this testing environment, I did not perform any extra optimizations like caching, Image compressing, modification, or any other kind of speed improvement. It would be best if you always did these optimizations to improve your website, but I wanted to know the actual performance of DreamHost shared hosting without any optimizations.
Quick Disclaimer:
I want to inform you guys that all the results are honest and authentic in this blog post. To do these kinds of tests, I have to spend a lot of money from my pocket, So I would like to request that if you want to buy DreamHost shared Hosting or any other hosting, please use our affiliate links. You will get an extra discount, and this website will earn a small amount of commission from it. So, we can do more feature speed tests, reviews, and comparisons without any sponsors.
Now, without wasting your precious time, let’s start testing.
TTFB Test
TTFB stands for time to first byte. To put it simply, this is a measurement of how long the browser has to wait before receiving its first byte of data from the server. The longer it takes to get that data, the longer it takes to display your page.
TTFB depends on the Hosting server, Themes, and plugins. But most of the part is played by the hosting server. If hosting using a high-performance server, you will get low TTFB, and if hosting uses a standard specifications server, it will be high.
Most of the hostings stores your website files in a single location. From that server, the hosting will send all the files to the visitors. If your hosting server is located in the USA, your website will get very low TTFB in the USA, Canada, and European countries. But it will be much higher in Asia and Australia.
Therefore when you buy hosting from any of the providers, try to choose the nearest server location from your website’s audience. (not closest to you but closest to your website users)
When visitors come to your website, the browser will send all the requests and ask for the required files to the hosting server. After that, hosting will send an initial reply to the browser. Now, the time between browser requests and hosting initial response will be called TTFB.
Your website will load fast if your hosting TTFB is low. Means, as low is the TTFB of your website, visitor have to wait for less. By this, the bounce rate of your website can decrease drastically.
TTFB can be different from location to location and time to time. Therefore, we will do multiple tests from multiple worldwide locations. So, we can get the best accurate value. In the TTFB test, we will use three different tools and will take five different results.
KeyCDN TTFB Test
TTFB test one is done from KeyCDN Tools. This tool will measure the TTFB from 10 different worldwide locations. I have taken three different results of this test from different other days.
| Server Location | Test 1 | Test 2 | Test 3 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Frankfurt | 786 ms | 743 ms | 779 ms |
| Amsterdam | 742 ms | 672 ms | 717 ms |
| London | 638 ms | 646 ms | 683 ms |
| New York | 443 ms | 461 ms | 453 ms |
| Dallas | 490 ms | 520 ms | 524 ms |
| San Francisco | 602 ms | 697 ms | 683 ms |
| Singapore | 1.09 s | 1.15 s | 1.27 s |
| Sydney | 1.06 s | 1.09 s | 1.12 s |
| Tokyo | 942 ms | 990 ms | 1.03 s |
| Bangalore | 1.2 s | 1.18 s | 1.17 s |
| Global Average | 799 ms | 814 ms | 842 ms |
GT Metrix TTFB Test
TTFB test two is done from GTMetrix. I have done seven different tests to measure the TTFB from seven different locations.
| Server Location | TTFB |
|---|---|
| Vancouver, Canada | 1.3 s |
| Hong Kong, China | 1.6 s |
| London, UK | 1.3 s |
| Mumbai, India | 2.6 s |
| San Antonio, TX, USA | 1.0 s |
| Sydney, Australia | 1.7 s |
| São Paulo, Brazil | 1.2 s |
| Global Average | 1.5 s |
Fast or Slow TTFB Test
TTFB test three is done from Fast or Slow. Fast or Slow will measure the website TTFB and Speed from 18 worldwide locations. This is the heaviest test from all of the tests.
| Server Location | TTFB |
|---|---|
| S Africa | 2965 ms |
| Sweden | 1374 ms |
| India | 4336 ms |
| France | 3560 ms |
| England | 3062 ms |
| Ireland | 2955 ms |
| S Korea | 1748 ms |
| Bahrain | 2939 ms |
| Japan | 4403 ms |
| Brazil | 3450 ms |
| Canada | 1125 ms |
| Hong Kong | 3638 ms |
| Singapore | 5385 ms |
| Australia | 1942 ms |
| Germany | 1784 ms |
| USA (VA) | 1042 ms |
| USA (OH) | 1181 ms |
| USA (OR) | 3714 ms |
Here is the end of the TTFB tests, now we will start the Speed Test.
Speed Test
We will measure the website’s fully loaded time and some core web vitals in the Speed test. The website’s fully loaded time and core web vitals can depend on Hosting servers, Themes, Plugins, and testing page content. But, as I told you before, We used the same testing environment to avoid the Theme, Plugins, and testing page content.
Google PageSpeed
If you want to rank higher in Google search, you should strictly follow the Google Core web vitals. You can measure these parameters from the Google PageSpeed Insights tool, which is the official testing tool of Google.
Therefore, we will do our first speed test in Google PageSpeed Insights. Speed Index and Time to Interactive are parameters we should follow. Google PageSpeed Insights results are not consistent. Therefore, I will conduct three different tests on separate days to get the most accurate results.
Mobile
| Metrics | Test 1 | Test 2 | Test 3 | Average |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Score | 86 | 87 | 88 | 87 |
| Time to Interactive | 4.8 s | 4.6 s | 4.7 s | 4.7 s |
| Speed Index | 4.9 s | 5.4 s | 5.1 s | 5.1 s |
Desktop
| Metrics | Test 1 | Test 2 | Test 3 | Average |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Score | 97 | 95 | 96 | 96 |
| Time to Interactive | 0.7 s | 1.1 s | 1.1 s | 0.9 s |
| Speed Index | 1.8 s | 2.0 s | 1.9 s | 1.9 s |
Pingdom Test
The second speed test is done with Pingdom from seven different worldwide locations. Load time is the factor that we will consider in this test.
| Server Location | Load Time |
|---|---|
| Tokyo – Japan | 4.29 s |
| Frankfurt – Germany | 2.79 s |
| London – UK | 2.06 s |
| Washington D.C. – USA | 1.97 s |
| San Francisco – USA | 2.41 s |
| Sydney – Australia | 3.70 s |
| Ṣo Paulo РBrazil | 3.32 s |
| Global Average | 2.93 s |
GTMetrix Test
The third speed test is done with the GTMetrix tool from seven different worldwide locations. GTMetrix is based on Google PageSpeed Insights. You should look up to Fully Loaded time. I have taken seven different tests from all of the seven locations of GTMetrix. At last, you will see the global average results.
| Server Location | Performance | Speed Index | Fully Loaded Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vancouver, Canada | 76% | 1.9 s | 2.1 s |
| Hong Kong, China | 55% | 2.6 s | 4.3 s |
| London, UK | 64% | 2.2 s | 3.9 s |
| Mumbai, India | 45% | 4.0 s | 4.7 s |
| San Antonio, TX, USA | 78% | 1.6 s | 3.3 s |
| Sydney, Australia | 57% | 2.9 s | 4.0 s |
| São Paulo, Brazil | 70% | 2.1 s | 2.6 s |
| Global Average | 63% | 2.4 s | 3.5 s |
KeyCDN Speed Test
The fourth speed test is done with KeyCDN Tools. There are ten different worldwide locations in the KeyCDN Testing tool. We can measure the website load time, page size, requests, and performance grade with this tool. Page size, requests, and performance grade will be quite the same in all of the tests.
| Server Location | Load Time |
|---|---|
| Frankfurt | 2.44 s |
| Amsterdam | 2.6 s |
| London | 2.15 s |
| New York | 1.68 s |
| Dallas | 2.38 s |
| San Francisco | 2.35 s |
| Singapore | 3.56 s |
| Sydney | 3.43 s |
| Tokyo | 2.91 s |
| Bangalore | 4.15 s |
| Global Average | 2.76 s |
Fast or Slow Speed Test
Test 5 is done with Fast or Slow from 18 different worldwide locations. In these results, we measure website interactive time. The Time to Interactive (TTI) metric measures how long it takes a page to become interactive to the site visitor.
| Vital | Score |
|---|---|
| Performance Score | 71 |
| First Contentful Paint | 1 |
| Speed Index | 53 |
| Largest Contentful Paint | 92 |
| Time to Interactive | 64 |
| Total Blocking Time | 100 |
| Cumulative Layout Shift | 100 |
| Server Location | Interactive |
|---|---|
| S Africa | 5169 ms |
| Sweden | 2271 ms |
| India | 6604 ms |
| France | 4462 ms |
| England | 4342 ms |
| Ireland | 3755 ms |
| S Korea | 3261 ms |
| Bahrain | 5096 ms |
| Japan | 5831 ms |
| Brazil | 4701 ms |
| Canada | 1706 ms |
| Hong Kong | 5957 ms |
| Singapore | 7633 ms |
| Australia | 3552 ms |
| Germany | 2835 ms |
| USA (VA) | 1669 ms |
| USA (OH) | 1641 ms |
| USA (OR) | 4578 ms |
- Largest Contentful Paint: 1.36s
- First Byte: 2.81s
Load Test
In the Load test, we will send some visitors to the testing website, and after the test, we can see the load handling performance of the hosting. To do the load test, I conducted two different tests. In the first test, I sent 100 virtual users to the website. In the second test, I send 250 virtual users to the testing website.
| Response Times | 100 Visits/Minute | 250 Visits/Minute |
| Average | 873 ms | 1340 ms |
| Minimum | 751 ms | 801 ms |
| Maximum | 1532 ms | 7523 ms |
| Success | 99 | 246 |
WP Performance Test
These tests are done by WordPress Performance Testing Plugins.
| Server Score | 4.9 |
| Queries Per Second | 296.64 |
| Execution Time (seconds) | 3.371 |
Uptime Test
- August: 99.69%
- September: 99.98%
- October: 99.99%
- November:
Final Results
- Global Average TTFB:
- Global Average Load Time: 2.76 s
Conclusion
Overall, DreamHost is very good choice if you want to start your blogging career without riping your pocket. Also, DreamHost is officially recommended by WordPress. With 99.99% uptime gaurantee, unlimited innodes, affordable pricing, and 97 day money back gaurantee DreamHost can be very good shared hosting.
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