Common Craft Blog
I Heart Dreamhost
By leelefever on April 05, 2005 - 2:10pm
I've been a customer of Dreamhost (who hosts some of my web sites) for a couple of years now and they have always impressed me with their reliability and service- but that's only part of my admiration.
Perhaps the biggest part is their attitude -- they are fun. They make a real effort to create an experience around their services. The experience (even when bad things happen) is personal, authentic and usable.
Their email newsletter always makes me laugh. They have added wikis to their set of tools and here's how I learned about the wiki in the newsletter:
Looking at our wicked wiki I'm sure has gotten you a mite jealous. Heck, I'm jealous. I hear jealousy is second only to envy in the seven deadly sins, so you better quit your jealous jonesin right now! And here's why:
(link to secure site)
...now has a new One-Click Install for your wiki-wanton butt cheeks.. the Media Wiki open-source PHP wiki software! Now the very same crazy program we're using for wiki.dreamhost.com can be installed at your DreamHosted website.. and in just one wiki-clicky!
The Dreamhost folks speak to me (as a customer) in a way that I'm not used to and it's why reason I'm writing this post. They have an excellent product and the courage to be different and unconventional, even with something as boring as web hosting.
Would your company put the phrase "butt cheeks" in a company newsletter? I think not, but perhaps they should consider it.
I Heart Dreamhost
I've been a Dreamhost customer for a couple of years now and have been incredibly happy with them. Not only do they talk like humans (e.g. Cluetrain), they treat me like one in their interactions. When entering a support request, customers can specify their existing knowledge/expertise level (all the way to "I know more about this than you do") and the tech really treats you accordingly.
DH is a great example of what companies should become.
I Heart Dreamhost
Another company that is good for unusual communications is CDbaby.com. Not only are their order verification emails entertaining, but a year after my last order, they sent me a really nice "we miss you" note with a list of new releases in the genres that I was interested in.
I Heart Dreamhost
I bow down and worship Dreamhost. Been with them for seven years now. They are absolutely amazing folks.
I Heart Dreamhost
Dreamhost had a problem last weekend. Left me with my websites down for 5 days. No acknowledgement of the problem, response was several days from submitting a 'site outage' level request, no explanation of what went wrong other than their settings were messed up. I still don't know the source of the problem. I don't think I was alone as they had up to 500 open service requests for most of the week.
I have been with Dreamhost 5 years. This latest incident destroyed the trust that had built up that they were a dependable web hosting service.