I noticed the other day that the welcome bar at the top of Dreamhost’s web admin panel said I’ve been a customer since February 2000. Technically I’ve used their services since 1998 but I switched to two other web hosting companies briefly in 1999. It’s interesting to see how much they’ve grown. Back when I first heard about Dreamhost (and not long after they started up) in mid-1997 they were just a handful of twenty-somethings with a couple servers in college.
They’ve got an excellent referral/rewards system, too. Anytime you refer someone and they put your account name (mine is susank) in the “Found Us” question, you are paid $97 for the direct referral and $5 if it’s a secondary referral. I’ve got the “Code Monster” plan which they dropped the price on a while ago from $39.95/month to $19.95/month. Each of the plans are a few dollars less if you pay a year or two upfront. Most personal websites would probably be fine with the $9.95/month plan: 800MB of storage, 40GB of monthly bandwidth, 600 email accounts, an excellent email announcement list tool, useful web admin panel, etc.
Dreamhost is running a special deal until the end of today (March 20, 2005) that triples the storage space and monthly bandwidth. My account name is susank if you’d like to note me as your referral. Feel free to email me any questions, too.