Joseph Scott’s Blog

50 Responses to “Amazon S3 vs DreamHost”

1. October 3rd, 2006 at 9:42 pm Amazon S3 vs DreamHost « Bloggitation

   [...] read more | digg story [...]

2. October 4th, 2006 at 12:15 am Gordon Mohr

   

   (1) Dreamhost takes occasional snapshots and will “try and recover” files on request. S3 claims to have geographically distributed copies of your data as soon as the PUT is acknowledged.

   (2) Disk and network I/O at Dreamhost is presumably bottlenecked by the one host providing your account. The same amount of data at S3 may be spread over hundreds of hosts, without bottlenecks.

   (3) S3 scales as large as desired through the same web service storage API;pric I suspect the Dreamhost shared hosting will run into problems at some multi-terabyte size.

   (4) S3 now also works with Amazon’s “Elastic Compute Cloud” (“EC2″) with free high-speed bandwidth between S3 and EC2. So for certain kinds of jobs that go beyond any one systems’ storage or processing capacity, there’s a synergy that’s hard to match elsewhere.

   (5) The cost-to-load (bandwidth) shouldn’t be assessed against a single month for comparison’s sake. If you instead compare the steady-state after loading — for example, “storing 200GB safely for 1 month” — the costs are much closer: $9.95 vs $30.

   (6) Dreamhost apparently just bumped up their storage size. For example, the ad in your margin still only claims 20GB/month at the Level 1 price. 20GB at S3 for 1 month is only $3 (an extra $4 if uploading is counted), so until recently Amazon was cheaper.

   S3 offers something different than a few hundred GB on a shared host… and is priced accordingly. The S3 price may come down, too, but it’s such a unique service I bet they’re finding plenty of customers at current pricing.

3. October 4th, 2006 at 4:47 am Eric D. Burdo

   

   You also have to consider speed. My guess is that S3 will easily outperform Dreamhost. You already mentioned downtime. That will affect your choices too.

   And then there is the connectivity. Most users will want something easier than FTP. That is where S3 will come in.

   And finally, what sort of guarantee does each have?

4. October 4th, 2006 at 8:06 am kenrick

   

   uh yeah after losing about 100 sites one weekend, I won’t host stuff at dreamhost anymore – this was during their huge colo disaster, granted it could happen to anybody that was the last straw on a large pile of hay in terms of problems for me.

5. October 4th, 2006 at 9:33 am SwellJoe

   

   You’ve left off the $49.95 setup fee for DreamHost on the month to month plan. S3 has no startup fees. So, for very short-term projects that don’t actually require 200GB of storage, S3 will win. But DreamHost is certainly cheaper (than S3 and anything else I’ve ever seen) for generic hosting.

6. October 4th, 2006 at 12:39 pm maxpower

   

   Nice comparison! I’ve been using S3 for awhile via JungleDisk. The main advantage I see to using this setup over DreamHost is encryption. JungleDisk encrypts everything as I send it, dreamhost would store everything the way I send it. Just a bit more security this way. Also, I only want to store a few GB and leave it there, so S3 makes a lot more sense for me.

7. October 4th, 2006 at 2:55 pm Craig Hughes

   

   Another nice thing about Dreamhost is that you can run rsync to it, instead of having to post the whole fricking 200GB backup every time, which massively reduces bandwidth use and backup time for incrementals. Also, since the underlying “disk” with dreamhost really is a disk, you can even do rsync with the ‘–link-dest’ option to keep rollback points.

8. October 4th, 2006 at 6:18 pm Michael

   

   “Also, I only want to store a few GB and leave it there, so S3 makes a lot more sense for me.”

   Dreamhost now offers a Files Forever service. Upload once, pay one low price, and your files are stored indefinitely, whether you remain a Dreamhost customer or not. Easily share your files with others if you’d like, download as often as you want or need, and never pay another dime regardless on bandwidth. You can even charge others for access to your files if you’d like to use the service as an online store.

   That’s pretty much all you can do with it, however, so it definitely can’t compete with S3 in terms of flexibility.

9. October 4th, 2006 at 8:16 pm Jamie

   

   If you read the Dream Host blog you’ll see on their ‘overselling’ post that it actually costs them $10 per GB they host. They’re overselling banking on the fact that very few people actually use the full capacity they’re allocated. They state that proudly in black and white along with their reasons.

   See: http://blog.dreamhost.com/2006/05/18/the-truth-about-overselling/

   S3 is the reliable way to go. If you use Dream Host and others have the same idea as you… Dream Host’s not going to be around for long.

10. October 5th, 2006 at 7:49 am Architected Information » links for 2006-10-04

    [...] Amazon S3 vs DreamHost | Joseph Scott’s Blog An short post that does a compares the price of serving static files with Amazon S3 vs. a leading internet provider. (tags: dreamhost s3 amazon hosting economics) [...]

11. October 6th, 2006 at 4:16 pm Idiotprogrammer » Blog Archive » Amazon S3 backup: pros and cons

    [...] Jeremy Zawodny on Amazon S3 backup (with lots of helpful comments).  IN a nutshell, people think S3 is cool and cheap, although many think dreamhost.com backup service is better. See also the legal issues htdw recovering passwords by Elinor Mills  (thanks to Jim Thompson) Analysts say: youtube is headed for a big crash.  Or google is planning to buy it for 1.6 billion. Seems we have a bit of disagreement. [...]

12. October 8th, 2006 at 4:30 am Amazon S3 at TaopaiC的自言自語

    [...] 另外, DreamHost 最近增加儲存空間和流量上限, 這篇 DreamHost 和 Amazon S3 的比較, 但這只是數值上的比較, 其實並不公平. [...]

13. October 8th, 2006 at 5:59 am Cecil_T

    

    Your numbers are using DreamHost to its fullest efficiency (which in reality would never happen). Let’s use a more realistic example – you want to store 210 GB of data and will transfer 100 GB over the course of a month. Now the S3 costs drop to $51 / month. Still higher but much more reasonable.

    Almost all ISP’s oversell, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it allows people to do what you just did and just “go by the numbers” without thinking about the realistic usage they need. It’s like AOL or a cell phone provider including 3000 minutes per month. If you include 3000 minutes per month you might as well include 5000 minutes per month – it sounds better, but really very few people will take advantage of the increase.

14. October 8th, 2006 at 10:07 am Web Worker Daily » Blog Archive S3, Online Storage & Data Details «

    [...] On the paid side of things, Joseph Scott finds that Dreamhost is actually a better deal than S3, especially if you are dealing in huge amounts of data. Not sure if they are as reliable as S3, so you might have to make that call. [...]

15. October 8th, 2006 at 10:28 am Web Worker Daily » Blog Archive S3, Online Storage & BingoDisk «

    [...] On the paid side of things, Joseph Scott finds that Dreamhost is actually a better deal than S3, especially if you are dealing in huge amounts of data. Not sure if they are as reliable as S3, so you might have to make that call. [...]

16. October 9th, 2006 at 1:20 am Sergey

    

    Craig, You can do incremental backup to S3 too, you just need proper software, like S3 Backup http://www.maluke.com/s3man/

17. October 10th, 2006 at 8:11 am Drew

    

    I have been using a combination of sftp drive and Syncback with a level 1 dreamhost account for about a week (took advantage of the anniversary special to buy 200gigs for one year for 20 bucks).

    My experience has been that uploading my backup to dreamhost is SLOW to the nth degree (limited by my pathetic Comcast upstream speed). Syncback, since it isn’t Rsync, requires the sftp drive software to maintain a minimum level of security (never use plain FTP for anything important) but it will do an excellent job of backing up or syncing files across locations (even zipping each file on the destination). Sftp drive is not free software, but it works VERY well.

    I had a scare last night when my dreamhost server just quit responding for about 30 minutes (what can I expect on a shared “overselling” host), but fortunately that occured AFTER a test backup session.

    Perfect world would be native rSync in windows (just like my Mac!!!) and complete faith that dreamhost won’t implode again… neither of these 2 conditions seems likely. Barring all that, I’m looking into using true crypt on the data at the backup destination combined with my current workflow. We’ll see how it scales to using the full 200gigs (since I’ve only tried around 10gigs so far).

18. October 10th, 2006 at 8:16 am Dreamhost versus Amazon S3 - Backup solutions « Drew’s Blog

    [...] And Amazon S3 vs DreamHost | Joseph Scott’s Blog Amazon S3 vs DreamHost Tue 3 Oct 2006 @ 9:34:59 pm [...]

19. October 10th, 2006 at 4:25 pm -TMA-1- » links for 2006-10-11

    [...] Amazon S3 vs DreamHost | Joseph Scott’s Blog (tags: Tech Amazon S3 DreamHost) [...]

20. October 11th, 2006 at 8:33 pm prozeco

    

    Hi,

    who would seriously compare Dreamhost and S3? Ok, I mean, backups on Dreamhost are better than no backups at all, but just slightly. I also was a customer of DH during the horror months (and also before when everything went smoother) and am now hosting my stuff on mediatemple.

    Use DH for hosting large files if you like, but you should never see it as a secured backup space.

    S3 is perfect for backups, and either you write your own tools to fill your buckets (cpan or pear modules available) or you use s3sync or s3man.

    ~p

    P.S.: encryption… no matter which storage you use, you’re always free to e.g. use openssl with the algorithm of your choice to make the files unusable for others.

21. October 18th, 2006 at 2:41 pm Geoff

    

    @Drew: Get cygwin and install rsync. Cygwin is mandatory for sane use of XP.

    Does Dreamhost have TOSs that limit file storage? I know Media Temple’s new Grid thingie (with 100GB for $20 or less a month) says that at least 75% of the file usage needs to be served to the web–it’s not OK just to dump files there.

    I think Amazon S3 is great for small file storage–a few pennies and you have your stuff whenever you need it. A thesis or book manuscript, something you can’t afford to lose.

22. October 18th, 2006 at 2:45 pm Geoff

    

    Other options are Joyent/Textdrive’s Bingo! and Strongspace.

23. November 6th, 2006 at 7:18 pm Kalid

    

    Thanks for putting this together. I’m considering using S3 to host static files for storage for my site, InstaCalc.com. Funnily enough, you can plug these numbers into the site to figure out what it would cost:

    http://tinyurl.com/y3j4ba.

    On the site, 2TB = 2048GB so the numbers are a little higher. If you want exactly 2000GB, you can plug that in instead.

24. November 6th, 2006 at 7:20 pm Kalid

    

    Whoops, there was an extra period after the link. It should be:

    http://tinyurl.com/y3j4ba

    Thanks,

    -Kalid

25. December 1st, 2006 at 7:32 am Scott M.

    

    Having used DreamHost for over 2 years I’ll chime in and say that it’s so unreliable I’d never use it for backups. I wouldn’t even use them for mission-critical Web sites. The best thing about DH is that they’re cheap, offer a lot of control, and they’re cheap.

26. December 30th, 2006 at 12:38 pm Andrew

    

    Yup, I second that. Dreamhost is cheap, cheap cheap. I have been using dreamhost for about a year and I like them for what there are. They host my personal domains/email and development domains. They are super SLOW for transfers. I would not even think about using them for backup. Nevermind the fact that it is thier advertized policy that they will try really really hard not to lose your data (http://wiki.dreamhost.com/index.php/Automated_domain_snapshots)

27. April 2nd, 2007 at 9:10 am Mac Backup To Dreamhost | Joseph Scott's Blog

    [...] I posted a brief comparison to Amazon S3 and Dreamhost one thing I didn’t do was suggest how one could actually use Dreamhost in a similar way as [...]

28. May 2nd, 2007 at 11:29 am Ramon

    

    I think the biggest difference is that Dreamhost is hosting for small to medium sized sites only, AWS is aimed at all sizes, on a business focused needs like scalability for example.
    You cannot have a higher scalability and realiability for your hosting then with AWS.

29. May 5th, 2007 at 11:15 am Dreamhost Sucks At Hosting by Elliott Back

    [...] Amazon S3 v.s. Dreamhost [...]

30. May 15th, 2007 at 12:07 pm Mark

    

    It is not a fair comparision between Amazon S3 and Dreamhost …

    The problem is … Before you hit 200G/2TB, dreamhost ALREADY shutdown your site down due to hundred of reasons, for example “Your site already take too much resources, and cuase the server unstable.” …

31. June 8th, 2007 at 8:41 am Jeff

    

    I use them both but I don’t trust Dreamhost due to a few emails that I’ve received for using too many resources and I am still less then 1% of disk space.

    I was trying to upload about 1.2G of information a few weeks back and they cut off my request after only 800M and I just happened to be pushing up a few hundred Meg file. Dreamhost does seem to “give” you all that extra space until you need or try to use it.

    I wish S3 supported subversion access (like they do with torrents) because that seems to be my main use of Dreamhost at the moment.

32. June 12th, 2007 at 11:25 am cbmeeks

    

    There are a million sites/hosts cheaper than S3. Cheaper != better.

    Look at SmugMug. They have HUNDREDS of MILLIONS of images. They use S3 to host a lot of their data. While they don’t specify an exact amount, they imply it’s terabytes.

    Now, ask them why they don’t use DH since it is such a better deal…they will laugh in your face.

    Bottom line is that Amazon has priced S3 so that they actually make money at any level. This is smart.

    I mean, if you’re the kind of person that believes in only the numbers and not the reality, then come host with my company. I will sell you 8500 gigs of storage and 50000 terabytes of bandwidth per day. All for only $2.45 per month.

    cbmeeks
    http://www.eblarg.com

33. June 15th, 2007 at 7:37 pm xpnctoc

    

    Your bandwidth numbers are skewed. S3 bandwidth cost is $0.13/GB upload and $0.18/GB download — not $0.20 either direction.

    And I still believe that you get what you pay for. I looked at a similar deal through HugeHost — using a ridiculously cheap hosting provider as a data store rather than an actual host. But there’s so many hosts like that out there, no doubt some of them are pricing themselves right out of business. I’d rather go with a well-known, respectable name, even if it’s a little more expensive.

    Heck, $0.15/gig still beats the pants off of some of these jokers who are still advertising 100 MEGABYTES for as little as $10/mo. What sucker is keeping those guys in business?

34. June 15th, 2007 at 8:39 pm xpnctoc

    

    I was mistaken. Let me correct myself. Your bandwidth numbers are even more skewed than I thought. I’m looking at my S3 account right now. Amazon quote $0.10/GB upload, and a graduated plan that works its way from $0.18 to $0.13 per download. So in the context of primarily using the service as an offsite backup, your numbers are almost double the actual cost. That’s still a good bit pricier than DH, but not nearly on the order of what your article indicated.

35. June 26th, 2007 at 10:58 am Shawn Fumo

    

    xpnctoc, keep in mind that this was written in October of last year and that S3’s prices have gone down since then.

36. June 30th, 2007 at 8:34 am Nick Catalano

    

    OK, lets say I am a download site. I host 1000 2MB files. That’s 2GBish. $0.30 for storage

    Now lets say that there are 1,000,000 hits on all of those files. (not each file 1 million times, but an aggregate of 1 million)

    That one day’s bandwidth usage is 2 million megabytes … 2 million megabytes in Gigabytes is 2,000 GB

    Which is, at $0.18/GB…. $360

    Only thing is, these all went out in 1 day. Every single file. At full speed.

    Dreamhost can serve 100,000 2MB files on one shared hosting server? At the line speed of the user? Without maxing out the switch that server is on?

    How often is your 200GB worth of content, all 200GB, accessed? Actually, do you even use all 200GB? I bet you don’t. I bet you use less than 15GB… which, if put on S3, would cost you $1.50 …

    And I also bet that you don’t transfer all 15GB during one month… a lot of it is simply sitting there… the stuff that you do transfer… oh… a bunch of blog posts (text g-zipped by PHP/Apache, and a bunch of other misc pictures… I’m pretty sure there aren’t many competitors to Flickr on Dreamhost…

    Dreamhost practices one principal. Overselling. Dreamhost could give you one billion GB of space and nobody on the server would use it. Or it would use up so much IO and other resources that dreamhost would kick you off (read the AUP, they can kick you off for just about any reason)

    S3 is not an effective backup tool, however. The prices per-GB for simply backing up files is not really competitive with a lot of other providers on the market (especially since they make you pay to send data to them.) But it wasn’t made for that use. It was made for sharing static files over and over again. And (even more now) using their Xen based computing cluster (which I just got access to) for hourly-billed usage. Which is really, really, really cool. But that goes beyond the scope of this article, and this post

37. July 21st, 2007 at 6:28 pm Akash Takyar

    

    I think if you want to make better plans typically for your web applications then S3 would be a better option.

    Eventually if your product becomes popular and you start getting hits to your application then you will not really have time to shift to S3 server or increase space on an unreliable host.

    Often we never think from scalability point of view. If you really wish to develop a scalable and reliable web application then S3 would be a much better option and don’t forget the best advantage you don’t have to invest $$$ from the start you just pay as you go. Since from day 1 you are ready for a scalable and reliable application.

38. August 27th, 2007 at 1:00 am Mike

    

    I have just moved my site’s images from Dreamhost to D3. Why? Because under the load my site has they kept crashing apache…

39. November 20th, 2007 at 9:36 am value CDN

    

    It is like comparing apples to oranges. Dreamhost is a hosting provider, however, S3 offers file hosting with full API that is more geared towards application developers. You get what you pay :)

40. December 5th, 2007 at 12:25 am Matt

    

    I would much rather be a customer of a company that used S3 than one that used DH

41. December 26th, 2007 at 1:01 pm Value CDN

    

    Have you checked out Value CDN or Panther pricing? They also offer very competitive rates at much lower cost than S3.

42. December 27th, 2007 at 3:35 pm LOL

    

    Have you even ever used dreamhost?

    Try using all the disk space
    or bandwidth and *poof* your account is suspended.

43. January 3rd, 2008 at 3:18 pm Television Archiving » Blog Archive » links for 2008-01-03

    [...] Amazon S3 vs DreamHost | Joseph Scott’s Blog (tags: backup s3 storage archiving) [...]

44. February 24th, 2008 at 11:13 am Offsite

    

    Dreamhost has about 97% availability.

45. March 1st, 2008 at 6:43 pm Pinco Pallo

    

    Dreamhost sucks.
    They closed my account because I used it to store my personal data as backup…

46. March 23rd, 2008 at 2:26 pm Brian

    

    You can do encrypted, incremental backups to S3 from linux with duplicity.

    http://www.nongnu.org/duplicity/

47. April 24th, 2008 at 1:45 pm Brad

    

    Dreamhost has a policy that disallows the use of a backup on their server. Also, as mentioned by others, they will cut you off when you’ve used more resources than the invisible limit set by them which is way less than the amount advertised.

48. April 26th, 2008 at 7:45 am Lindsay

    

    The details of my experience with Dreamhost vs S3 are detailed here:
    http://macrolinz.com/macrolinz/index.php/2008/04/25/dreamhosts-500gb-hosting-really-is-a-dream/

    Long story short, you can’t actually use the 500+GB at Dreamhost so Amazon S3 is the winner.

    As for using S3Drive for Subversion on S3, it won’t work. It doesn’t cache the files locally which is something Subversion needs to work. JungleDisk does cache and you can set up a repository that works, but it’s not free and you can’t access the data in your buckets without it (so if the tool goes away you’ll have a tough time). I’m looking into other options myself.

49. August 4th, 2008 at 12:36 pm Bob Mitchell

    

    Gosh, this is a very old thread, but I wonder is S3 is *still* best or if there are any other solutions?

    Option research time!

50. February 2nd, 2009 at 9:27 am Dreamhost backup plans

    [...] http://joseph.randomnetworks.com/archives/2006/10/03/amazon-s3-vs-dreamhost/ [...]