DreamHost rocks. Yes, they have downtime, but every shared hosting company has downtime – especially when they grow as fast as DH does. There is not one hosting site that I’ve ever experienced that has not had some downtime here or there. Its one of the risks you put up with for only paying less than $10 a month for all the services you get from a good host. And DH is better than most – real shell access, good ‘one-click installers’, and a knowledgeable staff, even if they are overworked and it takes a while for them to get back to you on a question.
So when someone ‘big’ complains that some startup cant provide a demo to potential investors, I have to say that maybe a real company would set up on their own server. When you’re on a shared service, you are ALWAYS at the mercy of others. If you need to have uptime, you probably need your own box. Even VMs or VPS hosting has the same issue if someone decides to essentially take down the box.
Long story short – if you are hosting a blog, personal site, or some other site that is not critical for your livelihood, you can’t go wrong with DreamHost. If you need your site to stay in business, so you can pay rent or for food, think about investing about $100/month in a dedicated server somewhere like ServerMatrix.