Amazon S3 vs DreamHost

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

@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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

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.

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 🙂

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

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

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.

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!

Dreamhost won’t ever (repeat EVER) let you use those monthly figures. Have a high bandwidth website? Go with Amazon. Dreamhost will shut you down and hold your data hostage long before you reach the limits on your account.

They work like this: Advertise outrages low prices for storage/bandwidth – consumer is like “OMG YEA! they’re offering more than xyz company for much less! – I’ll choose nightmarehost”. Then your typical customer only uses 1gig of network traffic a month and 20mb of disk space.(Key take away: Nightmare hosts profits.)

Now this might be fine, lets say you’re a business startup.. hey this is great, no problems for my first 6 months because we’re just getting started… oh look we’re getting popular, our traffic is increasing steadily and i’m on the way to using 60% of my allocated resources for this month — then BAM nightmare host shuts you down because the amount of traffic you’re receiving is effecting its low usage customers that have the SAME service… you provide the math showing you’ll never consume the resources they have promised in the timeframe…. too bad so sad bye bye.

Your business fails because they wont allow you to access the data stored on their servers, customers cant access your website. And guess what, they won’t delete your data from their servers… upon requesting numerous times over several months until you give up because you cant afford to hire a lawyer and they know it (as why else would you buy into snake oil like that)

Nightmarehost… don’t do it.