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by jjkmk 3564 days ago
Whats wrong with using Dreamhost for nameservers, does it make any difference at all?
2 comments

I've used Dreamhost as my primary registrar for something like 15 years now and generally I've used them for DNS too. Their nameservers and DNS updating is pretty wonky. Really slow to update and admins that insist the update made in the Control Panel has fully propagated across their internal nameservers when it clearly hadn't. Had to wait hours for it to actually propagate out to their real public-facing nameservers a few times. Not worth it, especially when you just need to make a quick change.

I basically quit using Dreamhost for any hosting-related activities other than DNS a long time ago. Even though my shared account is old and so it supposedly has unlimited everything, it's throttled to like 300k (I assume all shared plans are). Also not worth it in the age of the $5/mo VPS.

I flirted with Hover as a registrar for a few names but didn't like it either.

I've started using Route53 for all DNS-related services, including name registration, and I'm happy with it. Wish I didn't have to pay the registration fee again to move all of my domains over to Route53 or I'd be off DH completely by now.

Not the op of that comment, but in my experience, DH is something to be avoided :) it's been a few years, but still have unpleasant memories of cryptic errors, stability issues, and a clunky control panel.
What hosting providers in that range are better?

I'm fairly satisfied with them, but I only really use static web hosting for low traffic sites. Apparently their mailing list services go down all the time.

Compared to the hosting provider I used over a decade ago, 1and1, Dreamhost is top notch... but I'd like to hear of anything better. I still believe in shared hosting!!!

Also that time they messed up their auto-billing and stole $7 million from their customers.
"Stole" is very misleading. Yes, their billing system had a bug and charged a bunch of customers in error. But DH handled it very well, were very transparent about what happened, refunded all the money (of course), and even went so far as to reimburse people that incurred overdraft fees.
"Even went so far as to reimburse people"!? They directly caused those people to lose money! Of course they reimbursed them; the alternative would have been to reimburse them after a slam dunk legal case.

Dress it up however you like, they took $7 million that wasn't theirs.

And then they gave it back, that doesn't seem that bad. They made a mistake, and they fixed. No one is perfect.