“Most people want to have a website, but almost nobody wants to make one.” – This short sentence says a lot about where the hosting industry is today. For Dallas Kaszuba, one of the people who helped build the early internet, hosting is no longer only about servers or code – it is about helping people get results without forcing them to become web developers
From fun projects to automation
DreamHost started in 1997, when the web was still new and messy. Dallas and his college friends were coding for fun. “We didn’t even know we were building a hosting company,” he says. At that time, there were no ready tools. They wrote everything from scratch – billing systems, bug trackers, server software. It was a mix of curiosity and play.
That “let’s just build it” mindset shaped DreamHost for years. The company stayed independent, built open-source projects like Ceph and OpenStack, and always focused on technology. But things have changed. “We used to be very product-focused, maybe too much. Now we think more about the user. Technology is just a tool.”
AI enters the stage
Artificial Intelligence has moved from buzzword to everyday reality. But for the hosting world, AI is not about fancy experiments – it’s about solving a very old problem: people don’t want to build websites. Dallas Kaszuba sees this as both a challenge and a huge opportunity.
“Most people want the result, not the process,” he says. “They don’t want to spend hours clicking through templates or adjusting layouts. They just want a website that works.”
This is where DreamHost is heading with its bold idea: “Free websites for everyone.” The company wants to remove the main barrier – effort. By using AI and automation, DreamHost offers to build the first version of a site for free. The goal is to make it so simple that anyone can have a working website within minutes, without design or coding knowledge.
It sounds almost too generous, but Dallas explains that the logic is simple: “We’re not spending a lot of time on each site. We use automation, AI, and smart tools to make the process fast. The truth is, even when we offer free sites, not everyone takes them. That tells you something about human behavior – people want results, but they still hesitate to start.”
This “AI-first” approach also challenges the old idea of what hosting companies actually do.
For years, hosts sold tools: domain names, site builders, control panels. The user was expected to do the work. Now, AI makes it possible to sell finished results instead. Instead of giving customers a hammer, you give them the house.
Dallas believes this shift will soon make traditional site builders obsolete: “Site builders are at the end of their road. They won’t disappear tomorrow, but AI will replace them. People won’t drag and drop anymore – they’ll just talk to the system.”
Imagine typing, “Make me a homepage for my bakery with my logo and menu,” and getting it done in seconds. No plugins. No templates. No tutorials. That’s the kind of simplicity DreamHost is aiming for.
But for Dallas, the magic is not only in automation – it’s in how AI changes expectations.
When users realize that a computer can create a decent first version of their site in minutes, their standard for “easy” shifts forever. And once something becomes that easy, there’s no going back.
“AI won’t replace humans,” he says. “It will replace friction.”
Keeping humans in the loop
Dallas Kaszuba is clear about one thing: AI should not replace people. For him, technology works best when it supports human work – not when it tries to erase it. “A human is always there,” he says. “You’re never alone. Human support is part of the product.”
That statement might sound simple, but in today’s tech world it goes against the trend. Many companies dream about full automation: fewer humans, more bots, lower costs. DreamHost is taking the opposite direction – blending automation with empathy.
For Dallas, this is not nostalgia. It’s a strategic choice. “Productivity is important, of course. But at the end of the day, people don’t trust code. They trust other people.”
AI can build pages, answer questions, or write scripts. But it can’t understand the frustration of a small business owner who just lost their website on a Friday night. That’s why DreamHost keeps humans in the process – not as a last resort, but as a built-in feature.
In Kaszuba’s vision, AI handles the routine. Humans handle the moments that matter.
Think of it like a relay race: automation does the running, but a person takes the baton when judgment or creativity is needed.
DreamHost is already exploring how this can work in practice. Imagine you’re setting up a website. You hit a problem. Instead of opening a ticket or waiting in a chat queue, a support engineer can join your live session – see what you see, help you fix the issue in real time, and even explain what happened.
That’s not customer service. That’s collaboration.
It’s a small but meaningful shift: support moves from reactive to interactive.
For the hosting industry, this idea has big implications. If AI makes the basic tasks instant and automatic, then human interaction becomes the true premium.
In other words – in a world run by machines, the human touch becomes the ultimate differentiator.
Dallas sums it up simply: “The goal isn’t to remove people from the system. It’s to make sure the people who are there can do their best work – faster, smarter, and with more context.”
A message for industry leaders
This is not a story about hype. It’s a story about where real value is moving. In the early days of the internet, value came from hardware – the servers, cables, and datacenters that kept the web alive.
Then it shifted to software – control panels, automation tools, and cloud platforms.
Now it’s moving again – toward something less visible but far more powerful: understanding human intent. DreamHost is betting on that shift. AI now takes care of the repetitive, predictable tasks. Humans bring judgment, creativity, and empathy – the things machines can’t fake. The hosting part still matters, but it’s no longer the headline. It’s the quiet foundation that makes everything else possible.
This change forces every company in the industry to ask a hard question: What business are we really in?
If your company still defines itself by “uptime,” “CPUs,” or “control panels,” you might already be speaking the wrong language. These are no longer points of difference – they are the price of entry.
The next advantage won’t come from faster servers or cheaper plans. It will come from better understanding what the user actually wants – and making that happen with as little friction as possible.
In that sense, the hosting company of the future may not look like a hosting company at all. It will look like a trusted partner – a mix of automation, intelligence, and human support that quietly removes obstacles between an idea and its online life.
This article is based on an interview with Dallas Kaszuba, co-founder of DreamHost, in the Konrad Corner Podcast by Konrad Keck.