WordPress is, in theory, a straightforward application to host. You need an internet connection, an environment that supports PHP, and a database compatible with MySQL. Many WordPress hosting companies provide that bare minimum and charge you a couple of dollars a month for it.
That will get you a site, but it won’t be fast, it won’t be secure, and it won’t be scalable. To build a WordPress site suitable for modern businesses with demanding requirements, you need servers and networks, hosting environments, and support services built by engineering teams with a deep understanding of WordPress.
That is the aim of premium managed WordPress hosting providers. In this article, we’re going to look at two of the biggest managed WordPress hosting providers: Pressable and DreamHost. To make sure we’re looking at roughly comparable platforms, we’ll focus on DreamHost’s DreamPress service and not its less capable low-cost WordPress offering.
What is Pressable?
Pressable is a managed hosting platform from Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, WordPress VIP, and WooCommerce. It provides premium WordPress and WooCommerce hosting for agencies, ecommerce sellers, and growing businesses with complex or high-traffic sites. Pressable serves customers who manage professional WordPress sites and includes support and tools geared toward businesses that rely on WordPress as part of their core operations.
What is DreamHost?
DreamHost is a hosting provider that offers a broad spectrum of general-purpose hosting services, including shared, managed, VPS, and dedicated hosting. It also provides WordPress-specific hosting plans of two main types. Firstly, low-cost and low-resource plans suitable for personal sites and micro-businesses. Secondly, higher-cost and higher resource managed hosting plans, marketed as DreamPress, that target larger sites and agencies that need multiple-site hosting.
Pressable vs. Dreamhost WordPress Comparison Table
| Pressable WordPress Hosting | Dreamhost WordPress Hosting | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting Cost | $20.83 / mo billed annually |
$14.99/month (promotional) billed annually Renews at $19.99/month |
| Bandwidth | Unlimited | Unmetered |
| Storage | 20 GB – 325 GB+ | 15 GB – 200 GB |
| Uptime | 100% uptime guarantee | 100% |
| Geo-Redundant High Availability |
All plans include multi-region failover Real-time replication between data centers |
Enhanced availability with failover No real-time replication |
| Number of WordPress Sites | 1-100+ | 1 – 20 |
| Performance |
WP Cloud architecture Edge Cache & built-in CDN Multi-layer caching Autoscaling workers & CPU |
Bunny CDN included Varnish + Redis + NGINX caching Container-based cloud platform |
| Platform | WP Cloud | Container-based cloud platform |
| Backups |
Daily & hourly automated, plus real-time via Jetpack 30-day retention |
Daily automated 2-week retention (4 weeks on Pro) |
| Site Monitoring and Reports | Included (uptime tracking, performance metrics, visitor analytics, proactive alerting) |
Traffic Dashboard AI error log analysis |
| Multisite Support | Subdomain & subdirectory on high-traffic or Signature 5+ plans | Not supported on DreamPress |
| WooCommerce Support | Purpose-built WooCommerce Cloud Platform | Supported |
| Staging Sites | Available on all plans | Available on all plans |
| DDoS protection and mitigation | DDoS Protection with Edge Cache Defensive Mode | DDoS protection via Bunny CDN |
| Malware Protection and Removal |
Real-time scanning Hands-on hack recovery assistance |
DreamShield Protect scans on higher-tier plans Paid add-on for lower tiers |
| Customer Support and Assistance |
24/7 chat with WP experts Premium Slack support is available Four-minute average response time |
Live chat, email, phone-back |
| Jetpack Security | Included free on all accounts | Not included |
| WordPress Migration | Free white-glove service and self-service plugin option |
Free migration Self-service plugin |
| Hosting Automation | Full REST API: site provisioning, backups, plugins, themes, collaborators, domains, DNS, caching, SSL. |
Minimal API No site provisioning or DreamPress management |
| Developer Tools |
SSH access Git deployments WP-CLI support Pressable REST API |
SSH and SFTP Git support WP-CLI |
| WordPress.org recommendation | Yes | No |
Don’t Let Slow Hosting Throttle Your Growth
Pressable isn’t just a faster host, it’s a smarter long-term bet built for high performance without the high stress.
Hosting Platform
Pressable
Pressable is based on WP Cloud, Automattic’s container-based WordPress platform as a service, which is also used for WordPress.com and WordPress VIP. Automattic hosts millions of WordPress sites and WooCommerce stores, and the company’s engineers used the lessons they learned to design a hosting environment that provides consistent performance and uptime at enormous scale.
Each site and store on WP Cloud is hosted in an isolated container with dedicated, scalable resources. The containers can be distributed across servers and geographical locations to ensure WordPress gets the resources it needs at any point in time.
Amazon Lightsail is a more straightforward way to host a WordPress site on a single cloud server, but it is only suitable for smaller sites. It does not provide the optimization, scalability, and reliability that high-traffic sites depend on.
DreamHost
DreamHost’s managed WordPress hosting was recently upgraded from a VM-based platform to a container-based platform that provides a solid foundation for WordPress hosting, although it lacks WP Cloud’s WordPress-specific design. DreamPress offers an isolated environment with dedicated resources, though scaling to handle increased traffic requires manual plan upgrades.
Scalability
Pressable
Pressable provides automatic vertical scaling. WordPress and WooCommerce sites on premium hosting plans can burst up to 100+ PHP workers/CPU cores without manual intervention or plan changes. Pressable’s dynamic scaling allows sites to respond gracefully to traffic spikes without negatively affecting performance and user experience. Resources scale up automatically and scale back when load normalizes.
Pressable hosting plans are tiered by the number of sites, visitor capacity, and storage, not by feature restrictions. All sites have access to automatic vertical scaling. Moving between plans is straightforward and can be done without service disruption or performance degradation.
DreamHost
DreamHost plans offer more limited scalability and no automatic scaling. Each DreamPress site runs with fixed, pre-allocated resources. The platform does not automatically allocate extra resources based on current needs. The only configurable resource is memory, which can be increased manually within the limits of the user’s current plan.
To increase CPU and storage, DreamHost clients must upgrade to a higher-tier plan. Doing so is much faster on the new container-based infrastructure, but without a manual upgrade WordPress sites may suffer degraded performance during traffic surges.
Resilience and High Availability
Pressable
Pressable’s container-based hosting and geo-redundant architecture allow the platform to replicate sites across multiple data centers in real-time. If a node or data center experiences issues, traffic automatically routes to a healthy location within seconds. This cross-region failover is built into every plan and enables Pressable’s 100% uptime guarantee.
DreamHost
DreamHost advertises its managed WordPress hosting as highly available, but that description is qualified by limitations in the platform’s ability to instantly fail over to a redundant instance. Instead of the real-time duplication to geographically distant data centers required by high availability, DreamHost immediately synchronizes configuration files, but other files take up to five minutes.
DreamHost offers better availability and resilience than standard WordPress hosting, but it cannot match Pressable’s real-time synchronization and almost instant failover.
Agency and Developer Tools
Pressable
All Pressable accounts include standard developer tools such as SSH access, Git deployments, WP-CLI, and staging environments on all plans.
Pressable also provides a full REST API for site lifecycle management. Agencies can programmatically create, clone, and delete sites; trigger backups and restores; manage plugins and themes; and control collaborator permissions across their portfolio.
DreamHost
DreamHost also includes standard developer tools on its higher-tier plans: SSH, WP-CLI, and Git support. Staging environments are included on all DreamPress plans.
However, DreamHost’s API is limited to account-level operations such as DNS records, user management, and bandwidth monitoring. There’s no programmatic way to provision DreamPress sites, trigger backups, manage plugins, or control collaborator access. Site management requires manual dashboard work. DreamHost works fine for managing a handful of sites manually, but it lacks the automation capabilities that agencies need to scale efficiently.
Why Choose Pressable as Your Dreamhost Alternative
Easy-to-Use Managed WordPress Hosting
Pressable takes care of your site so you don’t have to. From setup to day-to-day management, Pressable is simple, streamlined, and stress-free.
- Automatic WordPress core and plugin updates
- One-click staging sites, backups, and restores
- Intuitive dashboard with usage and performance data
Keep Your Sites Safe With Built-In WordPress Security
All of our WordPress managed hosting accounts include powerful, always-on security features to safeguard your site against vulnerabilities and threats.
- Real-time malware scanning and threat monitoring
- A fully managed web application firewall (WAF) blocks malicious traffic
- Free Jetpack Security provides real-time backups with one-click restores, brute force prevention, and spam protection
Stay Online With High-Availability WordPress Hosting
Downtime isn’t an option. Pressable’s infrastructure is built for resilience, with automatic failover and global redundancy to keep your site available around the clock.
- 100% network uptime guarantee
- Geo-redundant data centers with live replication
- Automatic failover across server nodes and regions
Get Help From WordPress Experts, Anytime
Connect with a support team that knows WordPress inside and out. There are no support tiers, no scripted responses, and no long wait times. Just answers from people who understand WordPress and our hosting platform.
- 24/7 access to WordPress-certified support
- Every technician is a WordPress expert
- Average first response time is fewer than four minutes
Scale Without Limits or Penalties
As your traffic grows, Pressable grows with you. The platform scales automatically to handle traffic spikes and growing audiences.
- Auto-scaling CPU and PHP workers up to 110 cores
- Generous visitor allowances and unlimited bandwidth on every plan
- No overage fees or resource throttling
- I love the speed that my website comes up.
- Sites haven’t gone down since moving to Pressable.
- Best hosting support, bar none.
- Above and beyond any other host.
- Worth every penny.
- Easy way to switch hosting.
- Great value for the quality we get.
- Much faster speeds than other big box hosting.
- AMAZING support.
- Sites run smoother, faster and the difference is amazing.
- Press ABLE, that’s the name.
- The features I needed were all there.
- I wish I’d found Pressable earlier.