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DreamHost is a California-based web hosting provider and domain name registrar. Founded in April 1997 by four undergraduate students at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California (who originally used the name NewDream Network and the domain name newdream.net for their company), it now claims to host over 200,000 domain names (as of January 29, 2006) on a network of Linux-based servers based in Los Angeles.
DreamHost is also an ICANN-accredited domain registrar. It used to operate the .la country code domain, the country code for Laos which is being marketed as a domain for Los Angeles. It stopped operating it in February 2006 because it reportedly received very few customers.
Promotions
Some users of DreamHost services promote them enthusiastically; the fact that they can profit from referrals through an affiliate rewards program (in which all customers are automatically enrolled) plays a part, but many customers are genuine fans of the service. However, it also has its critics, with some customers quitting and disparaging DreamHost because they experienced difficulties and failed to get them adequately resolved. They have had periodic "growing pains" where an influx of new customers exceeded their ability to provide good service immediately, and some instability resulted, though they usually were back to normal in a few weeks. One frequent criticism is the lack of direct telephone support; customers must submit support requests in a web form and wait up to 24 hours for a response.
Control panel
Another aspect of DreamHost that is subject to both praise and criticism is their control panel, which is a proprietary one devised by their own programmers. Fans like how it gives access to a wide variety of services provided by DreamHost, including allowing the setup of blogs and wikis using software installed on their servers. Critics dislike its "nonstandard" nature, preferring the cPanel software commonly used by many other hosting providers.