From our start in 1997, DreamHost has always believed in doing things differently, doing things independently, and doing things better.
It’s in our DNA to offer the products and services that our customers want to use that offer tangible benefits. That means, for us, developing and creating a lot of features in-house.
We have a passion for building our products with our customers in mind and for supporting them with tools — developed in-house by us — that make it easy for them to manage those products.
Having our technical support in-house and empowered to provide attentive, individualized solutions to problems is the best way to help and support our customers.
Our in-house mindset allows us to do so much more for our customers without them having to go through third parties or us having to go through third parties to help them.
So where can you see that demonstrated?
Control Panel Independence
Take a look at our proprietary control panel. It enables our customers to manage their domains and hosting needs themselves. An in-house control panel enables us to make that experience the best possible one and keeps to our ethos of providing and supporting our customers directly.
From day one, we’ve finely crafted and honed a control panel that meets our customers’ needs and is bespoke for our platform.
It’s something we have control over, which we wouldn’t have by offering a third-party control panel.
Having our own in-house control panel means that when customers have a feature request or wish to see an improvement, we can just build it and add it ourselves.
We aren’t reliant on a third-party control panel provider who can say “yes” or “no” to improvements based on how they want to roll it out for all their hosting company clients. If a request isn’t financially viable to implement across their network, it’s very unlikely to get built.
Hosting companies reliant on a third-party control panel provider also face the prospect of annual price increases which many pass on to customers, as they cannot be absorbed.
Some control panel providers have raised prices as much as four times in as many years, resulting in hosting companies having to raise their prices.
Having our bespoke in-house control panel allows us to not only listen to requests for improvements from our customers but also to implement them without the need to go to a third party and wait for those improvements to be developed or even to be considered for development.
Webmail
There are times when, of course, it’s not practical or feasible to do things in-house, such as email, and that’s why we offer Roundcube for webmail or give the option to upgrade to Google Workspace.
Technical Support
When it comes to technical support, in-house is how it is for us and how it should be. It gives our customers an opportunity to engage with our support team if they need some help or advice.
Being in-house enables and empowers our teams to share and incorporate the ideas and suggestions we receive from customers who use our products and services. It’s something they’re eager to do!
Continuous Improvement
There’s no complicated route from a customer suggesting something before our product teams hear about it. Like many other companies, we use Slack for our daily instant messaging among our teams, and we have an internal Slack channel where those suggestions and experiences are shared with the relevant teams. This provides a great way for us to take action on those ideas.
The End Result
Keeping things in-house, from products and services through to our technical support, has huge benefits in how we engage with our customers, and that’s something we’re committed to.
We’ve always placed a high value on listening to our customers and doing things in-house enables us to meet their needs as quickly and as effectively as possible.