Shared Website Hosting

Let's break it down. The basics: you want a website. You've got great ideas for content, a vision board describing your site's mood, and even a wishlist for additional functions you want for your website. But how exactly do you get your site online? That's where hosting comes in. Your website needs a hosting provider to get it up on the web and publicly available to visit. Web hosts are companies that provide the server space necessary to store your website. As web traffic attempts to access your site, the necessary data is transmitted from the server to the visitors' device. Web hosting providers do, however, differ in the variety of plan types and options they offer. So having a quality web host is crucial.

Just getting started? With a Starter Shared plan, you can host one website — a great place to begin! If you're looking to manage a handful of sites, a Shared Unlimited plan allows you to host any number of websites (we say unlimited and we mean it!). Whatever flexibility you need, DreamHost offers it.

Whether you're building your business or your brand (or both), you want to put your best foot forward. An exclusive email tied to your domain can give you a professional edge as you work to grow your website. With DreamHost's Shared Unlimited plan, you get a dedicated email @ your domain. Additionally, DreamHost offers paid email plans, so anybody — even Starter Shared customers — can add professional email from their domain, up to five mailboxes with 25GB of disk storage each. And hey, you don't have to pay a pretty penny for these services; they start as low as $1.67 a month!

A domain name is the unique .com (or dot whatever) address where your site can be found on the web. But in order to get your website online, you'll also need a web host to provide the server space necessary to store your site. For a fully-functional site, you need both a domain name and a good web host. Like peanut butter and jelly, they're better together. To make things simple, you can keep your needs in-house, letting one provider supply both your domain name and web hosting needs. Let DreamHost multitask for you — at a great price.

Totally. We know your ultimate goal is probably to grow your website over time. We want that for you! When your site's traffic reaches rush-hour levels, is overflowing with content, or simply needs more high-powered tech and features, you can upgrade to a plan with extra bells, whistles, and performance power. While Shared Hosting is a smart, budget-friendly option when you're a beginner, a content-rich and heavily-trafficked site may demand a larger-scale plan, meaning additional server space, specially-dedicated resources, advanced security, and accelerated speeds.

Wondering when to upgrade? If you notice diminished site performance or lack necessary space or resources, it's time to consider bumping your site to the next level and choosing a better-fit hosting package. No matter the current size of your website, DreamHost offers a perfectly-matched plan. We adapt to match your needs, making upgrading easy.

We care about safety big time — and so do your site's visitors. With a Shared Hosting account, you get an SSL certificate for free to add to your site. In this day and age, having an SSL for your site is a no-brainer best practice. Not only does an SSL help your visitors feel safe interacting with your site — this is particularly important if you run an e-commerce site — but it avoids penalizations you might otherwise earn from search engines without one. No website wants an “unsafe” or “insecure” label to bruise their reputation. While a SSL certificate isn't an end-all, be-all defense against internet baddies, it's certainly a great first step in the right direction to putting your site visitors at ease.

Yep! Forget about packing up virtual boxes or worrying about a forwarding address— we'll handle the transfer tasks and make moving to DreamHost E-A-S-Y. By transferring your domain registration from your old provider to DreamHost, you can easily manage all aspects of your domain from one convenient location. See our guide to get more details about moving.