After 3 years of testing, let’s compare DreamHost vs GoDaddy and find out how they’ve performed so far…
DreamHost vs GoDaddy – 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).
- 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.
- GoDaddy’s Speed was the fastest throughout 2016. They maintained similar speeds in 2017, but other hosts started to outperform them. And now the most recent results for GoDaddy in H2 2018 have plummeted to the slowest of all active hosts.
- GoDaddy is currently sitting in 5th 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).
- 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.
- GoDaddy have performed brilliantly when it comes to Uptime over the last 3 years. Unfortunately, there was 2 blemishes on their record, during Week 73 they incurred 96 minutes of downtime and Week 130 they had 47 minutes of downtime. To put this into perspective, across the other 138 weeks of testing, they have only had 107 minutes of downtime. Even with these poor weeks, they are still one of the better performers.
- GoDaddy is currently 3rd, with DreamHost 9th in our Uptime Rankings.
View the Weekly Uptime Tests
DreamHost vs GoDaddy – Overall Test Results
The Overall Ranking accumulates the results from the speed & uptime tests to determine the #1 Host.
- 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.
- GoDaddy’s performance has was excellent across the board in 2016, however, across 2017 & H1 2018 there have been a couple of hosts that have overtaken them in both the speed and uptime departments. The biggest disappointment has been their H2 2018 speed, which has seen them fall well behind our top 2 hosts.
- GoDaddy is currently 3rd, while DreamHost is 9th in our Overall Rankings.
Hi, I'm Clint!
