How to protect your DreamHost domains while you are alive
DreamHost lets the account holder name, in advance, who may act on the account after a death, through Account Privileges. While the account holder is alive, DreamHost allows transferring the account and transferring the domain to another registrant.
DreamHost's terms provide a path for DreamHost domains after a death, and what the account holder sets up in advance decides how smoothly that path runs. DreamHost lets the account holder name, in advance, who may act on the account after a death, through Account Privileges. While the account holder is alive, DreamHost allows transferring the account and transferring the domain to another registrant.
How to protect your DreamHost domains
Naming who acts after a death
- Account Privileges
DreamHost's deceased-access article answers "can I designate someone else to access my account" with Account Privileges, with special instructions support records in the account's internal notes naming who gets access at death, or with a third-party service that offers this kind of designation.1
What DreamHost's terms say about sharing and transfers2
- Authorized users and delegates
Account Privileges let the holder give another person access to the panel at panel.dreamhost.com with their own login, scoped as narrowly as a single domain and its email and databases; the access can be modified or revoked at any time.2
The individual privileges are Billing, Grant Privileges, Private Servers, Domains, Domain Registrations, Users, Groups, Databases and Hosting Plans.2
Privileged users do not receive account or billing notices; payment receipts, service renewals and the like go only to the primary email address the account owner has listed.3
- Transferring the account or registration
Domain registrations can be moved between DreamHost accounts; the receiving account pays the transfer fee, which extends the expiration date by one year, and some international domains cannot use this process and need DreamHost support.4
Sources4
Should you save your passwords for your family?
Some people store account passwords so a family member can sign in later. The practice has three practical limits:
- Two-factor authentication often blocks it. Most accounts require a second factor — a code sent to a phone, an authenticator app, a passkey, or a physical key. A saved password alone frequently does not grant access, and the recovery codes that would are easy to lose or let go stale.
- It usually conflicts with the platform's terms. Most operators prohibit account sharing and signing in as another person, including after a death. Stored credentials are not the operator's recognized access path, and using them can violate the terms of service.
- Operators provide other paths. Where an operator offers a designation tool — Apple's Legacy Contact, Google's Inactive Account Manager, a beneficiary designation — that mechanism grants access the operator recognizes. A password manager's own emergency-access or legacy feature passes credentials through a controlled process. Digital assets named in a will or trust give a fiduciary authority under each state's Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (RUFADAA).
Sources
Data sourced from DreamHost primary sources (9 pages reviewed). How we research.
DreamHost customer support
DreamHost Support
Website
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