After 3 years of testing, let’s compare Bluehost Vs DreamHost and find out how they’ve performed so far…
Bluehost Vs DreamHost – Testing Method
- Prior to testing, I have setup identical content on all 8 Live Test Sites
- Each week over 80,000 speed & uptime tests are run using independent tools, GTmetrix & Pingdom
- Test results below are from 04 Apr 2016 to 22 Dec 2018
Test #1: Speed
The GTmetrix Speed Test checks how long it takes for a website to fully load using a desktop internet browser. This test is then repeated every hour throughout the week (1,340 times).
- Bluehost’s average speed was poor across 2016 & 2017, consistently finishing in the bottom 2 hosts. However, in 2018, there has been a massive turnaround, as they have been our 4th fastest host in both H1 & H2 2018.
- DreamHost has been consistently slow, but were still competitive in 2016. This situation worsened considerably in 2017, in particular the last 9 weeks, where their average speed dropped to 7.15s. As a result of these unacceptably slow times, DreamHost was replaced by Lightning Base on 23 Apr 2017.
- Bluehost is currently ranked in 4th place, while DreamHost is 10th in our Speed Rankings.
H2 2018 Results
H1 2018 Results
H2 2017 Results
H1 2017 Results
Test #2: Uptime
The Pingdom Uptime Test confirms that the website is actually accessible to visitors. This test is then repeated every minute throughout the week (80,640 times).
- Bluehost performed poorly when it came to Uptime across 2016 & 2017. But once again 2018 is a different story, recording just 6 minutes of downtime in H1 2018 and 8 minutes in H2 2018. It is a remarkable result when you consider the past performance, but amazingly Bluehost is the best performing host for uptime in 2018.
- DreamHost’s uptime was acceptable during 2016, finishing mid-table. However, 2017 has been really disappointing, with the last 9 weeks resulting in a downtime of 476 minutes.
- Bluehost is currently ranked 4th, while DreamHost is 9th in our Uptime Rankings.
View the Weekly Uptime Tests
Bluehost vs DreamHost – Overall Test Results
The Overall Ranking accumulates the results from the speed & uptime tests to determine the #1 Host.
- Bluehost was consistently the slowest of our active hosts across 2016 & 2017. Combined with a less than stellar uptime resulted in it being 8th Overall at the end of 2017. But the big news of 2018 is the miraculous turnaround of Bluehost’s speed and especially it’s uptime performance. This has led to a massive jump in the overall rankings.
- After being competitive in 2016, and even showing signs of improvement, DreamHost has dramatically fallen off the cliff in the last 9 weeks of 2017. With no actionable solutions coming through from their support team, DreamHost needed to be replaced as they were not able to compete with our other hosts in both speed and uptime.
- Bluehost is currently 4th with DreamHost in 9th in our Overall Rankings.
Hi, I'm Clint!
