Dreamhost offers Free 50GB Personal Backup for Customers

In the August newsletter, Dreamhost announced a change in policy: The ability for every customer to have FTP or SFTP access to 50GB of personal backup space, seperate from your normal hosting. Scroll to the bottom for a coupon to get $50 off your new hosting at dreamhost.

The section from the newsletter was as follows:

1.  New… 50GB Free Personal Backups!

I’ve noticed my newsletters seem to have less and less themes recently.

Well, except for last month, I guess that had the Olympic theme. I guess
by recently, I mean really recently; like really, REALLY recently. Like,
just this newsletter.

In keeping with my no-theme theme, uh oh, I think I just made a destroy-
the-universe-LHC-style self-contradiction, here’s a new feature that
pretty much has nothing to do with anything I said in the introduction!

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=users.backup

Now, you know how we give out a LOT of disk space with our hosting? Well
technically that space is only supposed to be used for your _actual_ web
site (and email / database stuff) .. not as an online backup for your
music, pictures, videos, other servers, etc!

Well, just like every other web host does, we’ve been sort of cracking
down on that some lately, and it seems to catch some people by surprise!
Nobody likes being surprised, especially in the shower, which is where
we typically brought it up, and so now we offer a solution:

You CAN use 50GB of your disk space for backups now! The only caveat is,
it’s a separate ftp (or sftp) user on a separate server and it can’t
serve any web pages. There are also NO BACKUPS kept of THESE backups
(they should already BE your backups, not your only copy), and if you go
over 50GB, extra space is only 10 cents a GB a month (a.k.a. cheap)!

Obviously they realized a lot of people wanted somewhere in ‘the cloud’ to store important files, and my guess is they realized that the man hours cracking down on abusers was better spent doing what they do best: making their customers happy. Needless to say, I’m counted among them. It’s not fancy, it’s rather straight-forward to upload through SFTP (recommended), but it’s a welcome addition to the services already offered for a very low monthly/annual price.

My only gripe is that the username for the backup is chosen for you by dreamhost, and thus if you do lose your computer and all your data, you will need to login to your panel to find the username they supplied for you before you can access those important files.

Secondarily, I recommend taking those important files and using IZarc to zip them up and encrypt them, password protected. This way, besides a secure transfer, your data is safe from prying eyes. If you were looking for a hosting solution I don’t recommend going any farther. Check out dreamhost, and feel free to use the promo code FOOL50 to get $50 off of your order. There is a bevy of other dreamhost promo codes available on that page of the blog as well.

Tags: 50gb, backup, dream host, dreamhost, dreamhost promo code, personal backup, promo code, promo codes