The best web host for a blog, portfolio, or basic online store is an affordable, low budget plan that you can grow into as your audience grows. Two hosts with a strong claim of being suitable for beginners are Spaceship and DreamHost.
Spaceship has been around since 2023, and is owned by the same people as the more established Namecheap. Interestingly, (although perhaps not surprisingly) Spaceship offers a largely identical collection of plans.
We’ve compared Spaceship’s Web Hosting Essential and DreamHost’s Shared Starter plans, evaluating each host on pricing, features, customer service, and server performance.
Pricing
Choosing an entry level plan is a good way to keep costs down when launching a new online store or website. Both hosts offer competitively priced shared plans, but the trade-off is that you get the lowest spec hardware and limited features.
The Spaceship Web Hosting Essential plan is surprisingly affordable at just $3.88 a month. Other options are available, however: $1.66/mo if you pay for 12 months up-front, or $1.21/mo for 24 months. Note that these discounted options will revert to full-price after those periods end.
Spaceship also has a 30-day free trial, which we took advantage of. The features of the hosting are identical before and after the trial’s conclusion.
DreamHost, meanwhile, has a $2.95/mo option if you pay for 12 months up-front, which renews at the equivalent of $6.99 a month after the discount ends. Alternatively, pay $10.99/mo on a rolling contract. A 30-day money-back guarantee is available.
Infrastructure
Shared hosting means that the website you set up in the hosting is on a server with several other websites, owned by other customers. While these accounts and websites are secure from each other, all rely on the same server hardware. Consequently, the server’s resources – CPU, RAM, and bandwidth – are carefully balanced. When demand for one website increases, others slow… but if that site gets too many visits, it can be de-prioritized in favor of the other sites.
With the Spaceship Web Hosting Essential plan, you get 20GB of SSD cloud storage space and 1x CPU with 1GB of RAM, and unlimited websites (limited to 300,000 files – around three WordPress sites). Only 5x domains can be hosted with Spaceship’s Essential plan, however, but bandwidth is unmetered.
With DreamHost, no information about the CPU or storage is available, beyond “Fast SSL Storage.” It also only supports a single website, but unlimited traffic is included.
Features
Spaceship
We looked at the Spaceship Essential plan, which while stripped back compared to more expensive options, offers 5x mailboxes, SSL, and a website builder tool. It also supports up to 50 SQL databases, and web development tools for PHP, Node.JS, Python, and Ruby, with support for 50 FTP accounts.
Built-in security is provided by Imunify360 (which handles DDoS, malware, and other threats), but additional features are bolt-ons, like WordPress AI tools and automatic backup.
Site migrations can be conducted at the point of purchase, or later, and there is support for cPanel migrations. Although tidy and minimalist, the admin interface is unlike any other host, employing design language that seems quite unfamiliar in this context.
DreamHost
With DreamHost Shared Starter, you get WordPress automatically installed and an optional migration tool, along with a free domain (.COM) and choice of global servers. Dreamhost’s AI Liftoff Website Builder is useful, and on par with similar tools from other hosts, but its Business Advisor tool (based on GPT-4o) is more interesting. It aims to offer solutions to on-site problems, and your project’s wider online presence.
You also get five subdomains, FTP, SFTP, and shell access for up to 6 users, and WP-CLI, which can all be administered using the custom control panel.
Support
With entry-level plans the WordPress installation is not managed, and neither is anything else you install. While support is available, you’re responsible for updating WordPress, managing backups, and ensuring the site runs efficiently.
With Spaceship, support is less of a focus than it is with other hosts. For example, there is no menu link to the knowledge base, which is sparse compared with DreamHost’s offering. While you can find the knowledge base in the footer, you might prefer the floating live chat box, with agents available 24/7.
DreamHost’s comprehensive knowledge base is the hub of the support experience, and good enough to use before contacting their support. A status page is also provided to help identify problems quickly, but there isn’t a 24/7 live chat. However, raising a question out of hours resulted in a quick email response.
Performance comparison
We installed WordPress on each host, and built a modest store using the WooCommerce plugin, before performing tests using Siege and WordPress Benchmark.
Siege
Siege is a command line utility with various testing tools; our focus is to learn how the servers handle concurrent website visits. We simulated this with Siege, for 9 simultaneous visits, then for 15.
| Row 0 – Cell 0 |
Spaceship |
Row 0 – Cell 2 |
DreamHost |
Row 0 – Cell 4 |
| Row 1 – Cell 0 |
9 concurrent |
15 concurrent |
9 concurrent |
15 concurrent |
|
Transactions |
4040 |
6239 |
6573 |
8046 |
|
Availability |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
|
Elapsed time |
299.77 |
299.64 |
299.24 |
299.98 |
|
Data transferred |
13.40 |
20.71 |
278.83 |
339.73 |
|
Response time |
0.67 |
0.72 |
0.41 |
0.56 |
|
Transaction rate |
13.48 |
20.82 |
21.97 |
26.82 |
|
Throughput |
0.04 |
0.07 |
0.93 |
1.13 |
|
Concurrency |
8.98 |
14.97 |
8.96 |
14.93 |
|
Successful transactions |
4042 |
6240 |
6573 |
8046 |
|
Failed transactions |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
|
Longest transaction |
1.78 |
8.86 |
9.29 |
12.61 |
|
Shortest transaction |
0.62 |
0.62 |
0.10 |
0.10 |
Based on these tests, DreamHost appears to handle more requests over a shorter duration. To conclude, based on our tests, DreamHost is faster than Spaceship.
WordPress benchmarks
We assessed each host using the free WordPress Benchmark plugin to gather metrics on the server’s suitability for hosting WordPress.
| Row 0 – Cell 0 |
Spaceship |
DreamHost |
|
CPU & Memory |
Row 1 – Cell 1 | Row 1 – Cell 2 |
|
Operations with large text data |
6.9 |
9.48 |
|
Random binary data operations |
8.07 |
6.53 |
|
Recursive mathematical calculations |
5.93 |
3.7 |
|
Iterative mathematical calculations |
7.97 |
6.32 |
|
Filesystem |
Row 6 – Cell 1 | Row 6 – Cell 2 |
|
Filesystem write ability |
3.6 |
7.57 |
|
Local file copy and access speed |
4.85 |
10 |
|
Small file IO test |
8.58 |
9.57 |
|
Database |
Row 10 – Cell 1 | Row 10 – Cell 2 |
|
Importing large amount of data to database |
6.1 |
0.98 |
|
Simple queries on a single table |
8.73 |
5.6 |
|
Complex database queries on multiple tables |
7.55 |
4.92 |
|
Object cache |
Row 14 – Cell 1 | Row 14 – Cell 2 |
|
Persistent object cache enabled |
0 |
0 |
|
Network |
Row 16 – Cell 1 | Row 16 – Cell 2 |
|
Network download speed test |
9.25 |
9.7 |
|
Overall |
6.7 |
6.3 |
While some elements of the infrastructure handle the requirements of modern hosting well (such as network speed), the fact is that these compare well against each other, but less so when viewed with more expensive plans.
Verdict
Spaceship makes a strong case for your custom. It is affordable and provides everything you need to get started quickly. Support is good, although the knowledge base could do with some work, and while the admin side of the hosting could be improved, it has most of what you need. Unfortunately, Spaceship hosting just doesn’t offer enough in terms of features or testing.
DreamHost has better support, a stronger knowledge base, and its features are more complete. The AI tools are useful, of course, and there is less requirement to add bolt-ons to get what are essentially basic features. While slightly more expensive than Spaceship, the added features account for the difference, as does the superior performance in testing.
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/BqBE6w5jh9fVETXo5jPZPm-1920-80.jpg
Source link
