It’s just 7 months since they passed 600,000 domains and almost exactly a year since they passed half a million domains,

It’s great to see that billing errors and network troubles aside, DreamHost continues their steady growth. If they continue this growth rate they will reach 1 million domains just around new year 2009-2010.

They are thereby continuing their explosive growth and are still adding 600 domains on average every single day.

Looking at the Top Hosting Companies Worldwide DreamHost is now placed as 14th, but more intesting is the fact that only WildWestDomains.com (which is a GoDaddy sister company), Yahoo, and 1&1 really offer web hosting. The rest is either domain sellers, domain parkers or domain squatters.

Is DreamHost really the 4th biggest web host in the World (by number of domains hosted)? Or who is bigger? Anybody got some info on this?

Hurray… DreamHost is now hosting more than 500,000 domains according to WebHosting.Info. With an average of 700 new domains a day since they passed 400,000 it has taken less than 5 months to reach this new milestone.

To celebrate this event DreamHost is currently having a crazy promo: A Crazy Domain Insane package with 500 GB storage space, 5 TB bandwidth, 5 free domains and a $50 discount. That’s $69.40 for the first year of hosting if you sign up for the yearly plan.

Unfortunately DreamHost scooped me this time and got the story first. They even started to announce winners of my contest?! Talk about stealing my thunder.

So how did it happen that the lazy guys at DreamHost got the story first? Well, I’m almost sure they killed by cronjobs watching the WebHosting.Info site, delayed all my emails and infiltrated my army of squirrels I had paid to update the blog the second the news was broken!

Luckily I snapped a picture of Josh in his squirrel disguise, and will try to use it to extort him for a few extra prizes. You better listen Josh or I’ll break your nuts!

Contest Result

As most of you would know, we started a contest just before New Year, where the object was to guess when DreamHost would pass 500,000 hosted domains. 108 dreamhosters submitted their guesses in time for a chance to win an iPod shuffle.

The stats from WebHosting.Info shows 496,673 domains for May 7th and 500,796 for May 14th. Interpolating these numbers shows that DreamHost reached 500,000 domains on Sunday, May 13, 2007.

No one guessed the correct day, but there was two guesses on the day before and four guesses on the day after. Later today I will announce the winner of the drawing between the six guesses on either May 12 or May 14.

P.S: No animal was harmed in the making of this blog post.

As a follow up to my post with the Top 10 Worst Domain Names from last summer, here comes even more unfortunate domain names. If you enjoyed this post, please Digg It !

1. The Royal Tit-Watching (Ornithological) Society Of Britain used the domain:
   www.Nice-Tits.org
   
2. Manufacturer of instruments for monitoring temperature, humidity and pressure Dickson didn’t think twice when they choose:
   www.DicksOnWeb.com
3. A holiday rentals company in Spain is called Choose Spain. Hopefully the vacation won’t be a painful experience:
   www.ChoosesPain.com
   
4. A company selling CAD software and Learning CDs was called ViaGrafix – quite innocent until a blue pill hit the market. The company is now called Learn2.
   www.ViagraFix.com
   
5. TeachersTalk: A community for teachers and student to discuss all areas of teaching… Even how to stalk teachers?
   www.TeacherStalk.com
   
6. The small town Winters’ local newspaper is called Winters Express and can be read online at:
   www.WinterSexPress.com
   
7. An eBay competitor was considering the name Auctions Hit, but found it to be a shitty name:
   www.AuctionShit.com
8. If you offer a scaffold erection/dismantle service, maybe you shouldn’t have a mammoth as your mascot and call your company Mammoth Erection:
   www.MammothErection.com
9. Things to do and see along New York State’s Canals and vacation regions:
   www.NYCAnal.com
10. New Zealand’s “As Seen On TV” is called “But That’s Not All“. But do they sell Butt Hats or not?
    www.ButtHatsNotAll.co.nz
11. The kids might look nice in their Childrens’ Wear, but remember:
    www.ChildrenSwear.co.uk
    
12. IHA Vegas‘ holiday rentals might have a special smell, since:
    www.IHaveGas.com
13. Could a Apple Macintosh make me more masculine? Read more in macHome magazine:
    www.MachoMe.com
    
14. Odds Extractor – Online gambling resource or farmers looking for new and unusual machinery?
    www.OddSexTractor.com
15. If you’re known as Big Al, why not call your online fish supplies store for Big Al’s Online?
    www.BiGalsOnline.com
    
16. SCA Tissue – Away-From-Home tissue products has a terrible issue with their name:
    www.ScatIssue.com
    
17. Even if you’re company is called Cumbria Storage Systems don’t even think about calling your website:
    www.CumStore.co.uk
    
18. Alter Scrap Processing part of The Alter Companies use the domain:
    www.AltersCrap.com
19. Anyone knows if Australian ISP WebOne does some moonlighting?
    www.WeBone.com
    
20. Don’t start a business in Cook Islands… Given that their TLD is .ck and they use .co for commercial domains, you end up with:
    www.budget.Co.ck

Sources: Domain Rookie, Grupthink, MetaFilter and NamePros.

Last January they passed 200,000 domains, in July they reached 300,000 domains and the last 6 months they have continued their growth with tremendous pace. This means that they now have doubled in size in less than one year.

This also means that DreamHost are now finally in the top 20 of the biggest hosts in the world – currently as number 19!

Congratulations once again DreamHost and a Merry Christmas to all of you!

Updated:

After the last week’s problems I thought we needed something to smile about: Independent Sources has compiled a top 10 over companies with unfortunate domain names that can easily be misunderstood.

1. A site called “Who Represents” where you can find the name of the agent that represents a celebrity. Their domain name… wait for it… is
   www.whorepresents.com
2. Experts Exchange, a knowledge base where programmers can exchange advice and views at
   www.expertsexchange.com
3. Looking for a pen? Look no further than Pen Island at
   www.penisland.net
4. Need a therapist? Try Therapist Finder at
   www.therapistfinder.com
5. Then of course, there’s the Italian Power Generator company…
   www.powergenitalia.com
6. And now, we have the Mole Station Native Nursery, based in New South Wales:
   www.molestationnursery.com
7. If you’re looking for computer software, there’s always
   www.ipanywhere.com
8. Welcome to the First Cumming Methodist Church. Their website is
   www.cummingfirst.com
9. Then, of course, there’s these brainless art designers, and their whacky website:
   www.speedofart.com
10. Want to holiday in Lake Tahoe? Try their brochure website at
    www.gotahoe.com

Even better: 20 More Unfortunate Domain Names.

More examples? Post them in the comments…

Back in January I predicted that DreamHost would reach 250,000 domains before 1th of June 2006, but they passed that milestone already in April and almost grew twice as fast as predicted. Any guesses about how many domains they will host in 6 months time? Maybe I should set up a contest?

On a similar note I’ve heard rumors that DreamHost is going to purchase space from another hosting provider inside the Garland Building in order to be able to continue their growth. The Garland Building is home of numerous hosting providers and telecommunication companies including (tm) Media Temple, PowWeb and Freeway. This might be good news for the ones of you who are waiting for dedicated servers.

Two months ago I predicted that DreamHost would reach this magic number just after New Year. Since then they have continued their exponential growth, and is now number 39 on WebHosting.Info’s Worldwide Top 50 Web Hosts based on their total domains count.

So, what’s next? 250.000 domains before 1th of June 2006?

Domains Hosted at DreamHost

It’s interessting to see that while it took 2½ years to go from 40,000 to 80,000 domains, it only took 1 year to go from 80,000 to 160,000 hosted domains.

Still a dreamling though compared to Wild West Domains, Network Solutions and eNom, which are respectively hosting 5.4 mio., 1.9 mio. and 1.8 mio. domains. DreamHost are currently placed in the bottom of the Top 50 Web Hosts Wordwide.