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For the past 20+ months I have been using Dreamhost for the web hosting of many various websites. Some of these web sites and projects are for friends and family while others were for myself. The cost was very reasonable and the service quite good for a shared hosting provider. Everything was moving along just fine until the past week.
One user (a friend) on my Dreamhost account works for a non-profit organization and sends out 1000s of emails per week. The email list this person was using was not collected using the opt-in method required by Dreamhost. Apparently there were a couple complaints and Dreamhost decided to take immediate action. Dreamhost sent me an email detailing the issue and how it was a violation of their abuse policy. They wanted me to either show them the list was in fact created using valid opt-in methods or the account would be suspended. Knowing my friend could not provide what Dreamhost wanted, I agreed that their account can be suspended as I already moved them to a different host. I apologized for the issue and thought everything was solid between Dreamhost and I. Boy was I wrong.
A few days later, on a 7 hour drive to Arizona, I received a phone call about some one’s website being offline. After a little bit of research it was obvious to me that my account was suspended. I tried to call Dreamhost but of course they do not offer phone support unless you pay some premium charge for it. At a rest stop in El Centro I was able to open a trouble ticket with Dreamhost using my iPhone. Much later that night I received a response from them stating that my entire master account was disabled due to abuse of their email policy. I was livid now. I looked back at all our documented conversations and tickets and it was never clear to me that the master account was in jeopardy. I was led to believe that the offending user account would be suspended but Dreamhost never told me the master account would be disabled.
With the master account disabled all websites and email accounts stopped working and I am effectively locked out of all my and other’s data from their system. Numerous attempts to discuss the situation with Dreamhost have been futile. They are sticking to their guns on this one. At this point in time I still working to try to get my files off their servers. They did provide me with an account backup, however it was far from complete and the integrity of the files were such that extracting would completely fail.
In my mind, without proper warning, Dreamhost acted irrationally and has created quite the mess for me this past week. I fully support anti-spam and abuse policies which is why I had no problem terminating the offending account. The part that bothers me so much is Dreamhost and I clearly have different interpretations of their emails and statements yet they are unwilling to work with me at all on the situation. On top of all this, any domain which was once listed on my Dreamhost account can NEVER be used on dreamhost again regardless of which account it is associated with.
This past week I have signed up with Site5 and are evaluating their services. Dreamhost had a much easier and cleaner admin interface, however their lack of communcation and clarity leaves a lot to be desired.
