reasoning behind choosing dreamhost over namecheap for shared hosting?

Well one thing is that it's generally not advisable to have your hosting and your domain through the same company. There have been many problems reported over the years when it comes to trying to leave and move to another hosting company. It's less common now to find hosts that charge you money to redirect your domain away from them, but it's still common to encounter social engineering ways to make it at least seem too much trouble to move, and just renew your hosting.

If your domain is registered separately, it's no worries - you just download your backup from wherever you backup to (for small sites I recommend google drive as it's 15GB free) and load them up on the new host then point your registrar to them, all done.

But other than that there's no real reason. There are literally thousands of hosting companies. Maybe they chose dreamhost just because they've been around so long (21 years), have a decent rep and aren't owned by one of the mega-corps. They need to offer something relatively safe after all.

But yeah, you can use anyone. The one thing to be wary of is that most "review" sites you see are acutally paid affiliates. This industry is worth so much money, that hosts will literally give an affiliate all of the first year value on the hope you stay with them.

The closest I find to unbiased reviews are on wenhostingtalk.com and (in australia) whirlpool.net.au

Bare in mind though that web hosting talk is still mostly frequented by people running small reseller businesses, so the tone can be disproportionately negative towards big companies ;)

At the end of the day, whichever host you choose, send their sales team an email before buying asking these questions: -Is there a cancellation fee if I end my hosting early? -Do I get the remainder of my money back if I cancel early? -What are all limits to the hosting plan I've selected? (There's no such thing as unlimited ;) ) -What happens if I exceed one of these limits? -Do you support Let's encrypt? (Free SSL - encryption, necessery for when you start having login/payment data) -any other questions you have

It's pretty standard these days to rush you through a pretty minimal sales pitch with everything other than the words "unlimited" hidden in the Ts&C's - get an email from their sales team addressing the hidden restrictions and potential charges to refer to later. Oh and never buy three years of hosting up front lol.

I'm wondering the same thing man.