DreamHost vs WP Engine

Not at all. Our control panel is beginner-friendly, and we offer expert support, AI tools, and even free website setup to help you get started.

We’ll help you get started quickly with a free Handcrafted Starter Website—our team will build a 4-page site for you at no cost, so you can get online fast with zero setup required. Prefer a DIY approach? Use Liftoff, our AI-powered WordPress builder, to launch a personalized site in under 60 seconds. Just choose your hosting plan and answer a few simple questions—no technical skills needed. Either way, getting your site live is fast, easy, and free to start.

Yes, we've got you covered. Every hosting plan includes one Free Handcrafted Starter Website to help you get started. Our team will handle setup, add your initial content, and customize your template all at no extra cost.

We offer 24/7 support from a dedicated, in-house team that knows WordPress inside and out. You can reach us through live chat or email anytime you need help. No outsourcing, no bots—just real experts ready to assist you.

For WordPress sites, we offer a free automatic migration tool that makes the process fast and easy with zero downtime. Just install the plugin and follow a few simple steps, no technical expertise required.For non-WordPress sites, you have two options:Manually migrate your non-WordPress site by backing up your website files and uploading them to DreamHost. You can learn more about this here.Hire our Pro Services to help migrate your site! Please note that sites built with proprietary site builders (e.g., Wix, Weebly, or Squarespace) and Windows Server-based "Active Server Pages" (ASP) websites may incur additional fees for site migration. If you have any questions, schedule a free consultation with us.

Our annual and multi-year Web Hosting, DreamPress, and VPS plans include a free 1-year domain registration. Your domain registration also includes free private registration (Domain Privacy Protection).

Totally. Web Hosting is a smart, budget-friendly starting point, and when your site needs more, whether that's traffic, content, or performance, you can upgrade to a plan with more server space, dedicated resources, advanced security, and faster 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 Web 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.

Yes! All of DreamHost's web hosting plans include a free 3-month trial of Professional Email @yourdomain, with the number of mailboxes varying by plan. Learn more about business email hosting at your own domain.

Promotional pricing applies to your first term, and every DreamHost plan card shows the exact renewal rate right next to the promo price. You will never have to dig through fine print to find out what year two costs.

Absolutely. Every DreamHost web hosting plan offers monthly billing, so you can start without a long commitment. Longer terms earn bigger discounts, but the choice is always yours.

The visitor numbers on each plan describe the traffic that tier comfortably handles, not a hard cap. Bandwidth is unmetered on every plan, so a busy month never triggers overage fees. If your site consistently needs more resources, upgrading to a bigger plan takes just a few clicks.

Managed WordPress Hosting means we handle the technical heavy lifting—speed, security, updates, and backups—so you can focus on your site or business. If you want better performance and dedicated WordPressexpert support, DreamPress is the right fit.

Unlike shared hosting or basic WordPress plans, DreamPress includes advanced WordPress-specific features out of the box: on-demand backups, BunnyCDN, NGINX caching, failover protection, free professional migrations, and 24/7 expert WordPress support. It's purpose-built for performance and reliability.

With Professional Migration, our experts personally move your site—no bots or automation—ensuring zero downtime and no errors. Normally a $199 service, it's included free with every DreamPress plan (1 migration per site). If you prefer DIY, our free Automated Migration plugin helps you move your site in just a few clicks.

It's simple. Choose your plan, and WordPress is automatically installed and optimized. Want to launch even faster? Use Liftoff, our AI-powered website builder, to create a full WordPress site with content and structure in minutes.

Yes! DreamPress supports up to 20 WordPress sites, depending on your plan. You can upgrade, downgrade, or reallocate resources at any time, right from your DreamHost panel.

A VPS gives you a full virtual server with root access. You install what you need, configure your stack, and run whatever applications you want. It's designed for developers, technical builders, and self-hosters who need flexibility beyond traditional web hosting. If you're running Node, Python, Docker, or anything your AI tools help you build, you're in the right place.If you're looking for a more hands-off experience, you can explore our managed VPS options here.If you're looking to run a WordPress site, DreamPress managed hosting is a better fit.

You manage your applications and software stack — but we don't disappear. DreamHost guarantees the underlying infrastructure: hardware, network, and uptime. Our support team is available 24/7.

Anything that runs on Linux. Node.js, Python services, Docker containers, AI-powered APIs, automation platforms, analytics tools, self-hosted productivity suites, custom databases, game servers — you have complete freedom over the software stack. You can install any OS, runtime, framework, or service you need. If it runs on a Linux server, it runs here.

No. All plans include unmetered bandwidth — no transfer caps, no overage fees, no surprises when traffic spikes. You pay the same flat monthly rate whether your app gets 10 visitors or 10,000.

Yes. You can move between Stack plans as your resource requirements grow — from Stack 4 to Stack 32 is straightforward, and your environment moves with you. Scaling down to a smaller Stack is not currently supported.

DreamHost support is available 24/7 — hardware, network, and connectivity are all supported by our team. You can also reach us via live chat or email through the panel at any time.

Think of a dedicated web server as a storage unit for your website or web applications. It keeps documents, videos, images and other computer files online. Web hosting companies rent space to you. All you’ve got to do is upload files or a website onto the server.

Dedicated servers are fully-managed, business class servers. They are perfect for resource-heavy apps and giant websites. With a dedicated server, you have full control over how to configure your hosting environment making it perfect for major hosting needs.

A dedicated server is the ultimate in power, security, and control. With a dedicated server, you won’t have to share resources with anyone. Here are some of the top reasons that people choose a dedicated server over other hosting options:Security is a top priorityYou expect consistently high levels of trafficPage load times need to be lightning fastYou need custom programming optionsYou’re anticipating major growth Learn More

VPS: A Virtual Private Server, still involves hosting several websites on the same server, but there's a hypervisor that ensures that one website doesn't start causing trouble for the other sites on the server. With Managed VPS Hosting, you're allocated a certain amount of RAM and server space, with unmetered bandwidth. Dedicated: You're able to choose the equipment, including the amount and type of RAM, the size and type of hard drive and the processor, used in the server. Further, 100 percent of the server's resources are allocated to your site and they aren't shared with any others.

Error logs are necessary for most WordPress troubleshooting. You can access the most recent 24 hours of PHP/Apache error logs in two different ways: how to access WordPress error logs.

We’ve outlined two methods for resetting your password, a traditional method and a method directly from the database: two ways to reset a WordPress password.

Here you will find a comprehensive list of WP Engine platform settings. Please reach out to our 24-hour Support team with any questions.

This article will cover how to import a database file into your WP Engine environment.

Follow this link for detailed instructions about how to update WordPress URLs.

Follow this link to learn more about how to solve problems when updating WordPress URLs.

Follow this link to learn more about understanding the WP Engine Error Logs.

Learn more about WordPress Backups and Restoring your website.

Learn more about copying to staging.

Learn more about common errors that WordPress users face and how to resolve them.

Learn how to purge your site cache in this detailed article.

Learn more about Improving Cacheability for WordPress websites.

Yes, learn more about how WP Engine works with LargeFS: Configuring Unlimited Storage with Amazon S3.

WP Engine will make the services available 99.95% of the time, excluding any excused downtime. The WP Engine SLA amends the agreement between WP Engine and customer and addresses the uptime guarantees in relation to the services we provide to you and your remedies for our failure to meet such guarantees.

We offer hosting solutions for WordPress websites and businesses of all sizes, from SMB to enterprise. We also offer eCommerce hosting and advanced solutions with customizable packages. See which hosting plan is right for your needs.

If you’re experiencing a technical issue on your website, please reach out to our 24-hour Support team and give us the opportunity to help you resolve it. Per our terms of service, account cancellations require a 30 day notice via our cancellation form.

WP Engine provides everything a WordPress website needs. Learn more about our award-winning hosting platform.

WP Engine is the most trusted enterprise platform for WordPress. Learn more about our enterprise hosting plans.

It’s free to migrate a site to WP Engine. Our automated migration plugin makes it simple.

Yes! Here’s the information needed to do a manual site migration.

It’s easy to launch a site with WP Engine, here’s how.

It’s possible to test your site on WP Engine after migrating without changing your DNS, just by editing a file on your computer.

This guide will take you through the process of exporting your database from your previous host, so that you can then migrate it to WP Engine.

Once you’ve downloaded your wp-content folder from your previous host, you can easily upload this folder or zip file to our Support Team so we can help you with this step of the manual migration process.

Learn more about transferable sites and environments.

Learn how to manage user roles on WP Engine.

The billing menu in your User Portal provides access to several plan-related functions, such as invoices, modifying billing info or changing your plan level.

Our pricing is partially based on the number of monthly visits to your site, we’ve provided as clear of guidelines as possible about which visits are considered billable.

When your number of visits exceeds your plan limit (here’s how we count visits), we charge you a small overage for each 1,000 visitors over your limit. If you are on a Startup, Professional, Growth, or Scale plan, the overage is $2 per 1,000 extra monthly visitors.

The WP Engine User Portal enables users to make many adjustments to their plans through upgrades, downgrades, and add-on features.

Follow this link to learn more about WP Engine’s Automated Migration plugin.

Yes, we recommend following this link to update plugins automatically with Smart Plugin Manager.

Follow this link to see our list of essential WordPress eCommerce plugins.

Follow this link to see the top 10 WordPress plugins on WP Engine.

Yes, follow this link to learn more about creating geographically customized content.

When hosting your WordPress site on WP Engine, you may need to connect directly to your website’s file system. On other platforms you may already be used to using FTP. At WP Engine we use SFTP which works the same, except it uses a layer of encryption for security and is restricted to a secured port. Read more about using SFTP on WP Engine.

Once you’ve downloaded your wp-content folder from your previous host, you can easily upload this folder or zip file to our Support Team so we can help you with this step of the manual migration process.

Git is a powerful development tool which enables developers or a development team to securely push code changes from their local machine to their site on WP Engine with the benefit of version control. Read more about using Git Push on WP Engine.

Here’s how to setup and connect to SSH Gateway. SSH, also known as Secure Shell, is the method of connecting from your computer to the web server where your site is hosted.

SSL/TLS certificates enable visitors to connect to your site with HTTPS, a secure protocol for exchanging information on the Internet. See more information on SSL (secure sockets layer) certificates.

Click here to learn more about adding SSL to your WP Engine site.

Yes, learn more about how to upload 3rd Party SSL Certificates.

Learn more about securing all URLs with SSL.

Learn more about obtaining free SSL Certificates with Lets Encrypt.

While we manage many parts of your website hosting, default email functionality on WP Engine is limited. Normal emails, such as password resets, will not typically have any issues sending. However, for robust email functionality, monitoring and scalability, we highly suggest utilizing a 3rd party email host.

We typically recommend using a 3rd party transactional mail provider such as Mailgun, Gmail, or Sendinblue. These services allow you to send emails from a specialized mail IP and will include a higher level of customization, such as more robust logging. See our full list of recommended email providers.

Learn more about DMARC Policies for Email Deliverability.

Learn more about sending Email Blasts on WP Engine.

Yes! With a dedicated security team specializing in WordPress behind it, our platform’s enterprise-grade technology automates threat detection to block 72M attacks daily while keeping your website vulnerabilities up to date. See more about WP Engine security protocols.

Yes, learn more about WP Engine’s enterprise-grade security.

Learn more about how to handle the WordPress update process.

Multisite for WordPress is a feature that allows you to create a “network” of subsites within a single instance of WordPress. Learn more about multisite for WordPress.

/support/what-is-wordpress-multisite/#Custom_Main_Site_DomainFollow this link to learn more about how to Add New Sites and Map a Custom Domain.

Follow this link to learn more about changing your Multisite Primary Domain.

Follow this link to learn more about Enabling Multisite on your WordPress website.