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Why Web Hosting Privacy Matters and 5 Places to Get It

Published on November 12, 2020February 5, 2021

You must worry about a myriad of things when considering web hosts.

Well, depending on what you need a website for, it’s understandable if extra privacy isn’t top of your list. But who wants to leave their privacy to chance? Online privacy is an increasing concern for 53 percent of internet users worldwide.

So people are taking great strides to keep their digital residue down to a minimum.

If you read on, you’ll know why your web hosting privacy matters and five hosting providers that offer anonymous services.

Why Web Hosting Privacy Matters

According to professionals, the hosting service marketing is nearing $154 billion. Hence, it’s easier to find niche hosting providers that take your privacy needs seriously. If you need to host a simple personal blog, chances are you may prioritize design and ease of use over other features. But for users looking to remain private, that’s a different ball game.

In our digitally connected world, it only makes sense that you’d want to keep your personal information away from hackers, third-party brokers, and identity thieves.

But that’s not all there is to it. Hosting your website anonymously keeps you away from certain legal risks and limitations due to jurisdictions.

Technically, when you host your website in countries like Sweden, or Iceland with strong (and entrenched) privacy laws, you’ll be saving yourself a lot of trouble.

Another reason why web hosting privacy matters is because your government may spy on you.

Some countries’ governments make it difficult for people to air their views through:

Censorships
Regulations
Taxes, and
Criminalization

Individuals either stop running some kinds of businesses or risk jail time.

However, if you worry about leaving digital residues or hosting controversial content, you must be picky with your hosting provider.

Read on to see five hosting providers that offer you complete hosting privacy.

5 Web Hosting Providers That Offer Privacy

Some of the criteria to keep in mind when searching for anonymous hosting providers are:

A “no-logs” registration process. (by email alone)
Anonymous payment gateways through cryptocurrencies
Domain privacy protection.

The following hosting providers tick all the boxes and more.

Bahnhof

Bahnhof is a web hosting provider and residential ISP based in Sweden. They provide clients with secure cloud solutions and maximum security against mass surveillance and data leaks.

Bahnhof powers its secure data centers with 100 percent green energy and flourishes under Swedish favorable data protection laws.

While Bahnhof caters to users with traditional data center needs, it also provides cloud alternatives with Virtual Data Center (VDC), Virtual Private Server (VPS), and colocation services.

Bahnhof has four customizable VPS packages on OpenStack. Small, Medium, Large, and Custom, which users can customize with the following features:

1-24 vCPU
1-128 GB VRAM
5-2000 GB VHD SSD
Linux

Bahnhof is notable for hosting the infamous yet anonymous WikiLeaks. They also run a certification process for data centers that use renewable energy called Triple Green.

Tranquillity

Tranquillity is an environment-friendly, no-logs hosting provider in Sweden. They live up to their “no-logs” feature and are cautious of leaving digital footprints on the internet.

You can make payments through Paypal and Bitcoin and contact them through secure channels like GnuPG and XMPP.

Tranquillity offers the following web hosting features.

VPS – €8 per month (VAT inclusive)
100 Mbit(no traffic limits)
1GB Ram
30GB SSD storage
IPv4
IPv6
UPS

However, they charge up to €5 per month for extra storage. And €50 plus VAT for commercial internet connection.

OrangeWebsite

OrangeWebsite is an Iceland-based offshore hosting provider, offering anonymous hosting solutions since 2009. They encourage uncensored speech and guarantee data privacy for users.

To show their commitment to privacy and freedom of speech, OrangeWebsite allows clients to host Tor relay and exit nodes on their VPS servers.

They require only an email address to sign up and receive anonymous payments via Bitcoin and Monero. However, they also accept payments via PayPal and bank transfers.

OrangeWebsite has three hosting solutions:

Shared (cPanel) Hosting

The shared hosting package has four hosting plans with the following features:

cPanel plus SSL security.
SSL-secured webmail.
Spam Assassin.
Green Site Seal.
osCommerce Shopping Cart.
Softaculous one-click installer.
WordPress, Boonex Dolphin, Drupal, and 330 other scripts.

Virtual Private Servers (VPS)

This hosting package has seven fully-managed hosting plans. It allows one dedicated IP address and root access.

It offers cPanel, Windows web servers, Encompass, Linux distributions, and other pre-installed control panels.

You can also get a dedicated CPU core, advanced DDoS protection, and a secure external backup service for an extra charge.

Dedicated Servers

This package has four dedicated server plans with these features:

Four dedicated IP addresses
Quad-core processor
Root access
DDoS protection
Pre-installed control panels
Free setup
24/7 support.

Your options will vary based on RAM, disk space, processor, and bandwidth.

FlokiNet

FlokiNet is another provider that offers friendly, anonymous hosting. Like OrangeWebsite, they’re also based in Iceland and accept payments in Bitcoin, Monero, and Paysafecard.

The company also has encrypted data servers in Finland and Romania, offering secure, flexible, and autonomous hosting solutions since 2012.

They provide a unique set of tools and features to help you build websites and maintain your privacy without cutting on performance.

FlokiNet provides shared hosting, virtual private servers (VPS), and dedicated servers as hosting solutions. These solutions come with the following features:

Installation of a desired operating system
SSH access
SSD storage
SSL certificates for all domains
9 percent uptime
Free migration assistance
DDoS/firewall protection(in Romania only)
Softaculous app installer
Requires only email to sign up
Legal adult content (on Finnish and Romanian servers)
Accepts several cryptocurrencies and other payment options

FlokiNET also offers services like penetration testing, Team Speak, and secure VoIP to protect your IT infrastructure and allow smooth digital operations.

Greenhost

Greenhost is an eco-friendly web hosting company based in the Netherlands. They support DNSSEC and specializes in encryptions and open source applications like:

GlobaLeaks
Etherpad
VPN/Viper platforms
Zimbra mail and collaboration server and more

Greenhost offers three hosting plans – Basic, Professional, and Premium packages. And a Virtual Private Server with Ceph, SSD, and Xen as pillars.

Points to Remember

Aside from primarily paying with cryptocurrencies and offshore data centers, an anonymous web hosting plan works like a regular or local hosting plan.

Typically, the features vary according to the services each package offers. But, complete data privacy, site performance, and reliability are set-in-stone features, you must look out for when looking for a web host.

To learn more about host performance visit hostscore.net.

Which Type of Hosting is Best for Starters?

Published on June 24, 2019December 12, 2019

Technology/Uncategorized

There is a diverse range of web hosting packages available which can be availed from different companies, which in some cases make it much difficult to decide on what’s the right host for you. Especially, starters and beginners find it overwhelming. One who just started learning things about websites, blogs, or eCommerce stores can make use of free services to learn things, and lots of free picks you can try before purchasing a premium hosting. However, it’s highly recommended to pick a paid plan for your business sites instead of relying on a free service.

Free hosting services are only suitable for learning new stuff, experimenting, and testing updates before implementing to your professional websites. That’s it. This guide will help beginners decide which type of hosting service they should choose for their first website. For additional information, you should read this Hosting.Review comparison of the best web hosting providers for small businesses.

What is Web Hosting?

It is online storage provided by servers located in data centers from different companies to store your blog data such as database, content, apps files, and other information. Anyone with specified permissions can access, write, or delete them. These data files and content can be accessed any time round the clock through the World Wide Web.

Simply put, web hosting is just like your local computer storage, but in our case, it’s servers located in data centers instead of your PC. These data centers consist of hundreds and some times, thousands of servers to host thousands of domains of organizations, individuals, and webmasters. Users can lease web hosting on a monthly or annually basis.

Types of Web Hosting

There are different types; however, the following are the most used and well known.

Shared Hosting

Perhaps, one of the most affordable yet budget-friendly kind is shared hosting which best suites for beginners, starters, and new business to save on cost. It is suitable for small websites having a few amounts of monthly visitors with moderate server load. Keep in mind, a sudden traffic rise can break the server because of low server resources. You share your shared servers with many other domains thus it makes it a cheap option. Some of the topnotch hosts are SiteGround and NameCheap to avail reliable yet affordable web hosting. You can also visit MyTipsHub for a list of popular affordable yet cheap WordPress hosting services to save some time on research as well as bucks.

VPS Hosting

If your website is getting some bit higher amount of visitors, then a virtual private server will be better options then shared server. It’s quite similar to the above-mentioned type, but clients get a dedicated environment which is also shared with other users on the same server. The significant difference is that your resources are isolated with advanced protection to avoid downtimes, slow speed due to other huge sites on the same server, and improved security. It costs higher but delivers excellent performance.

Dedicated Server Hosting

Dedicated hosting is highly suitable for huge websites getting tons of traffic and millions of visitors each month. Your provider offer you a dedicated server reserved only for you, it is not shared with other customers. You pay for the whole server, maintain it, can install the desired operating system, and utilize it according to your needs with advanced system control. It costs way higher like more than a hundred bucks per month but brings many dedicated features including IP address, priority support, unlimited hosted domains.

Cloud Hosting

Cloud-based hosting is another type which comes with advanced features, fastest hosting speeds, high reliability, and easy scalability. Nowadays, cloud servers, in some cases, costs way cheaper compared to VPS and shared hosting. There are many companies who offer competitive cloud space with developer features. Beginners can choose cloud hosting, but it requires technical skills to manage it like DigitalOcean. You cannot set up a website without knowing SSH commands with DigitalOcean.

Managed WordPress Hosting

If you’re planning to build a site backed by the most popular CMS “WordPress” then going with a managed WP host can not only saves you time but many technical problems because your host will take care of all technical issues. Users with sufficient budget can choose a managed plan to put all efforts into production and content creation.

The company optimizes all of its servers for optimal performance as well as ultimate loading speed. You won’t need to install a cache plugin for speed optimization as every plan comes with default server-side cache configuration. It also costs higher compared to the shared, cloud, and sometimes VPS depending on the provider.

If you’re a starter, blogger or a startup company, then feel free to visit a shared hosting provider like Blue host and opt-in a basic plan to save some bucks. It is the best option for you. For those already running a website with considerable monthly traffic can choose from VPS, dedicated, or WordPress hosting. All you’ll need to do is analyze your visitors’ numbers by visiting Google Analytics reports and make a necessary decision.

Main differences between VPS and dedicated hosting

Published on April 22, 2019April 9, 2020

Technology

Why do I need Web Hosting?

If you want to have a website, you need a web host. All of the web pages need to be stored somewhere and that is the job of a web server. In order to make the websites available to everyone everywhere, you need a web host. Technically, you can serve pages from your PC but that is highly impractical as the internet connection is probably going to be less powerful than you need it to be in order to serve multiple users at the same time. Web hosting companies help you with that issue by offering you a powerful web server that can store the pages and serve them to many users at the same time. That is, in all likelihood, something you can’t do on your own and so, today web hosting companies are a necessity.

VPS vs dedicated hosting

There are a lot of things to take into consideration when looking at web hosting companies. As some of the more important factors, web4africa.com singles out fast and stable networks, high-quality hardware, and 24/7 monitoring. Thinking about what web hosting includes, this all makes a lot of sense. Another thing you should think about is whether you should opt for a VPS or dedicated hosting.

By choosing VPS, or a Virtual Private Server hosting, you’re agreeing to share the server’s resources with few other websites and if you are interested you can find out top picks here. This is not to be confused with shared hosting where you’re sharing the resources with a lot more websites. Unlike VPS, dedicated hosting means that one entire physical server is dedicated just for you. The resources are always available to you with VPS hosting, but they are shared among few other websites meaning that sometimes, it’s not going to be shared equally and that it’s not always guaranteed for your use.

Dedicated hosting gives you complete control over the server and the CPU. You can have up to eight CPU cores for your use, and the performance isn’t threatened in any way as you’re not sharing resources with other websites.

What should I choose?

Many websites switch to VPS once they’ve outgrown shared hosting. It is a great solution as you don’t need to think about the maintenance of the server and its security. Those are some things your web hosting company needs to worry about. On the other hand, dedicated servers require you to cover the costs of maintenance making the VPS a cheaper option. VPS comes with technical support and represents an ideal solution for many websites as it’s much better than shared hosting, but still much cheaper than dedicated hosting. By using VPS, you can increase or decrease the resources you’re using depending on your needs. So, in order to know which option is best for you, you need to consider your future plans, the growth of the business, your strategies, business goals, and similar. If you’re foreseeing a big growth for your business in the future, then switching to VPS, or even dedicated hosting, from shared hosting is a good idea.