This blog is hosted by DreamHost, and I think it will continue to be so even though DreamHost has had some technical problems lately.

Why? Because DreamHost is a great company! And so says a lot of other people on the net.

Why? Because they encourage you to be a loyal customer and to talk well about them.

When I picked DreamHost I did not do a ton of research, but I checked a few other options. What finally got me to choose DreamHost was that a lot of people were writing positive things about them in the comments to a post on Slashdot. They were DreamHost fans, probably for the same reasons I am:

1. They have a newsletter. Not a communications breakthrough in itself, but this newsletter is written in a human voice and with a lot of humor. Sometimes so much humor that I have a hard time understanding what they’re trying to tell me. Still, it’s a fun read that I’ve even used as an example of a great newsletter at work.
2. They have a blog, also written in a human voice. It’s not necessary for DreamHost to have a blog – I’m sure their servers would go on working just fine even if they didn’t write a single humorous post about things such as why they’re having trouble buying a new storage solution or why iTunes Music Store sucks. They even posted about a silly mistake the CEO of their favorite competitor made in an interview in a magazine.

   If you’re in PR, try convincing your client to start a corporate blog with besserwisser posts about your competitor’s CEO. I dare you.

3. They reward you for being loyal, with relevant rewards.

   
   Effect of loyalty rewards. Statistical sample: me.

   How many times have you received an offer to sign up for a service (notably a mobile phone contract or a newspaper) and get a – let’s say – free iPod shuffle as a bonus? But if you politely ask if you as a long-time customer can get something, you get a straight no. Which is very backwards for services that are almost identical between providers, such as broadband and mobile phones, as it only encourages you to switch providers now and then and teaches you that disloyalty is the way to save money.

   With DreamHost, the longer you stay with them, the more you get. And no free iPod shuffles here! Instead, you’re getting more of what you came for originally, which is storage and bandwidth. My account grows with 2GB of storage per week which means that since I’ve been a customer since May 2003 I now have 418 spacious GB of storage to fill.

4. They reward you if you refer someone to DreamHost, a reward you can either keep for yourself (as cash) of share with the person you referred to DreamHost. You set the amount to keep and the amount to share yourself, so you can practically run your own DreamHost promotion. Through this rewards system, DreamHost makes every customer who is willing to put a referral link on their site part of their sales team. Not a revolutionary idea, I know, but it’s well implemented.
5. To top it off, they have a monthly charity you can donate to through their billing system. DreamHost matches the donations made by customers, so the charity gets twice the amount you pay.

This is why DreamHost is a great word-of-mouth company.

The newsletter and the blog makes you feel DreamHost is a friendlier-than-average company run by people who likes their job. Maybe it even makes you accept if they’re not perfect sometimes. The referral and loyalty rewards makes you pay less, get more, and stay with the company (so you can talk about it even more). And the charity makes you feel just a little bit better about it all.