Australia’s DreamIT Host: Serving Up Fast, Affordable Hosting Backed by Prompt Support

TL; DR: DreamIT Host was launched in 2014 after its founders discovered a hole in the Australian web hosting market when it came to high performance, affordability, and exceptional service. Today, the Melbourne-based company has raised the bar in those areas with the latest hardware, budget-friendly plans, and an entirely in-house customer support team. DreamIT Host is currently working to deploy additional servers in Singapore and Tokyo as part of its aim to serve the greater Asia Pacific region.

The Australian hosting market is no stranger to acquisitions — particularly in recent years, as international players have raced to gobble up Aussie-run hosts as part of global expansion efforts.

It’s a winning growth strategy for thriving industry giants, but for consumers of hosting services in Australia? Not so much.

“I’ve seen a pervasive trend of international providers moving in and acquiring many smaller Australian-based hosts,” said Jamie Le, Co-Owner of DreamIT Host, based in Melbourne. “This has resulted in poor customer experiences and a shift in customer preference toward local support and fast performance.”

Jamie told us this effect has only been magnified by the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, which continues to disrupt the operations of international hosting providers.

“These hosting providers are now stuck with long delays in support requests, and they are still adapting to working from home,” Jamie said. “Because we’re based locally, we’ve been able to adapt to working from home quickly without delaying responses to urgent inquiries or negatively impacting our customer service response times. Plus, Aussies prefer dealing with other Aussies.”

In addition to fantastic customer service, DreamIT Host has brought high performance to the Australian hosting market via lightning-fast load times and maximum reliability.

What’s more, the company provides free migrations; one-click installations of popular apps like WordPress, Magento, Drupal, and Joomla; and no-charge hourly backups featuring Acronis technology. With plans to deploy additional servers in Singapore and Tokyo, DreamIT host will soon bring these features to a broader consumer base in the Asia Pacific region.

The company was founded in 2014 as DreamIT to provide hosting services to web developers in Australia. In October 2016, the team changed the company’s name to DreamIT Host after opening up its web hosting services to the public.

By 2017, DreamIT Host began delivering its reseller product, and in 2018, it introduced virtual private and dedicated servers to its product lineup. Today, the company continues to focus on launching servers overseas as part of an expansion effort in the Asia Pacific region.

Jamie told us the company has worked to stay ahead of the curve since its inception, citing its use of non-volatile memory express (NVMe), an interface protocol valued for its ability to boost performance and interoperability on solid-state drives (SSDs).

As of 2018, DreamIT was the only host in Australia offering the technology, which is up to 12 times faster than an SSD server alone. And, as of 2019, all of DreamIT Host’s new web servers feature NVMe drives.

“When we launched, we wanted to be different from everyone else, so we focused on bringing new technologies to the Australian market that were underutilized, such as hourly backups, NVMe, LiteSpeed, and CrossBox,” he said. “Our competitors haven’t introduced NVMe-based hardware, nor have they managed to implement Acronis hourly block-based backups, among other technologies.”

Besides NVMe technology and hourly backups, DreamIT Host’s web hosting plans all include unlimited bandwidth and email accounts, 10 Addon Domains, cPanel with CloudLinux, PHP 5.5 through to 7.3, KernalCare and ConfigServer, Dream Relay, and secondary mail servers.

In addition to boasting exceptional performance through LiteSpeed Web Servers, NVMe-based hardware, and a closely monitored network, DreamIT Host’s hosting and web solutions are packaged in value-based plans. Multiple options are available to meet individual needs, with the opportunity for businesses to upgrade as they grow.

The Startup Web Hosting plan starts at just a few dollars and includes free migrations, 5GB RAID NVMe storage, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited email accounts, and a 2GB memory limit. At the other end of the spectrum, for slightly more, the Business Web Hosting plan offers 50GB RAID NVMe storage and a 6GB memory limit.

Customers looking to reap the benefits of a dedicated server at a relatively low price often turn to DreamIT Host’s virtual private servers, which provide them with more control than is available through shared hosting plans.

The company even offers customizable managed and self-managed VPS plans for which users can specify their preferred software, backup specifications, and monitoring options, among other factors. DreamIT Host also offers managed plans on its dedicated servers, which provide the ultimate in performance while ensuring the user doesn’t have to worry about the technicalities of hosting.

DreamIT Host currently has servers available in Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore.

“Most Australian web hosting providers are based overseas with off-shore customer support and servers,” Jamie said. “Our business is entirely based in Australia, including our customer service team. That’s why our customers love us and have left hundreds of five-star reviews.”

All hosting plans include free access to DreamIT Host’s drag-and-drop website builder, which includes the choice of hundreds of templates and plugins.

Customers who already have a website can simply import that site into the DreamIT Builder — whether the original site was built on WordPress, Joomla, Magento, Wix, or Shopify, among other software. Key features of the no-code solution include responsive design, multilanguage site functionality, and store and cart utilities that make it easy to set up an ecommerce site.

Features like these are a product of the time the DreamIT Host team puts into research and development.

“We’re always testing our new features and new additions to our services,” Jamie said. “Our customers appreciate that, when new features are added to our new plans, we implement them on our legacy servers. This way, all customers enjoy the same benefits without having to worry about their pricing being changed. For example, customers who previously were on our SSD servers received a free upgrade to our faster NVMe-based ones.”

Of course, customers also genuinely appreciate speaking to someone locally and having any issues resolved promptly. Most customer service tickets are fixed in the first reply and within 30 business minutes.

“This high level of customer service is offered to all customers from our Startup Web Hosting all the way to our Managed Server clients,” Jamie said. “Customers who require fast and prompt service enjoy speaking to our Melbourne, Australia, team.”

Jamie told us that DreamIT Host is highly focused on its two internal mottos: “We before me” and “With Soul.”

“We take these two mottos into account with everything we do,” he said. “’We before me’ focuses on our team: goals are achieved together rather than individually. ‘With soul’ refers to putting 100% effort into our clients, hosting plans, and servers.”

Moving forward, DreamIT Host will use that philosophy to enhance its products and services.

“We’ve recently deployed new Ryzen-based servers in Melbourne to better service our New Zealand clients,” Jamie said. “It’s been great to see customer traction growing across the Tasman Sea. Ryzen servers have also been deployed in Melbourne and Sydney.”

The company will also continue expansion into the APAC region.

“Currently, we’re working on deploying additional servers in Singapore and Tokyo,” Jamie said. “We’re aiming to become a high-quality APAC based provider serviced by our English-speaking Melbourne team.”