I ran into this thread in the DreamHost forum the other day:

A Better Payment Process

Hi DH,

As someone who tends to have something to renew on a monthly basis, the payment process is incredibly frustrating. I used to have a form prefiller configured for the payment page, but now that DH has switched processor (the integration could do with some serious style work) that no longer works.

It would be great if DH considered a modern payment processor that facilitated saved payment methods.

Thank you.

I ran into this when I paid my bill today. This is the final nail in the coffin for me. I was going to write a long response about this in the forum, but I decided to remain calm and post my response here, which seemed far more appropriate:

I’ve just encountered this. It is frustrating to say the least, as I too, make payments on a monthly basis.

I have been with DreamHost for a long time, and have generally been happy for most of that time. Most of the problems I encountered were due to a mistake on my part or a lack of research on my part. The problems that weren’t my fault were solved quickly and efficiently.

I liked the redesign of the panel, especially that it was responsive. (It seems I do everything from my phone these days.) I have found DreamObjects to be an effective and inexpensive CDN, especially for large audio files. I find DreamHost’s domain registration process to be easier than other places I’ve registered domains with.

Unfortunately, DreamHost has also made some incredibly bad decisions lately. Removing sudo from VPS, not communicating about the cause of their ongoing email fiascos (yes, not communicating effectively about is worse than not being able to do anything about it), the disastrous forced switch to Atmail (which I initially liked, but is far from a well-thought out product), the constant push to upgrade to DreamCompute, the often petulant attitude of certain staff members when you criticize or question these decisions is, and now this (which is, presumably, being done in the name of security, although I am not stupid enough make payments on an unsecure computer) is, ultimately, more than enough for me. I am out of here. I’ll stick around for the domain registrations and DreamObjects (two things which DreamHost still does well), but I plan on moving my hosting and my email elsewhere by the end of the year. It will be less frustration for me, and less frustration for DreamHost, presumably.

If you like the changes DreamHost is making and the direction is going, then you are in the right place, and I hope things continue to go well for you. But if you are unhappy with the direction DreamHost is going, there is no use complaining about it. Just move on. After all, plenty of people come to DreamHost after terrible experiences at other hosts. In the end, it’s just business. Plenty of other businesses will be happy to take your dollar, just as DreamHost will surely find plenty of other customers. I just won’t be the one sending them there.

That’s what I was going to say, anyway. Now that I’ve said that, I’ve realized something else—

If I have learned anything over the past decade, it’s that loyalty means absolutely nothing. I’ve been with DreamHost seven years (actually longer, because I had a different account with them before), and while I enjoyed most of my time with them, and delighted in sending business their way, it’s over. I’ve agonized over this decision, because of the loyalty thing, but then I realized that loyalty doesn’t buy toilet paper.

I am done with the frustration. I’m also done with the guilt about feeling disloyal. Companies obviously have no sense of loyalty to me (or to any of us, although their marketing arms work mightily hard to make us think so). I’ve found a new host now, and I like them, but when they start doing silly things and not listening to their customers, I’ll move on from them, too.

Only that time I’ll do it without feeling guilty about it. I’ve learned my lesson.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.