VPS reviews

Introduction

This used to be just a post on Shadow Forums. But I figure the information is important enough that I might as well put the effort to format it and put it up here. The reviewed providers come from this list, this one and also this one. This has been written a while back and might not be fully up to date, though I did update some parts. Since I really don't like doing these anymore, some of the reviews might seem dismissive even to the point of "sudden death" principle (one bad thing and you're out). Forgive me; the good ones will still be analyzed adequately. Anyway, let's go:

List of VPSes

Zergrush

Based in Romania.

Extremely restrictive ToS. No piracy, no violating copyright, no nudity, no violence, no "foul language", no racism, sexism, etc... even no linking to sites that contain any of those!! How can anyone be consistently judging whether any of the stuff he links to violates those rules? It's obviously impossible.

Reserves the right to suspend service for any reason and any duration.

Allows to define parameters while buying - RAM (but 1gb regular+1gb swap is lowest...), HDD size, amount of CPU, whether you want additional IP addresses. 20GB HDD+1GB RAM comes out to 40 euro per year. Pretty cheap compared to Incognet eg, similar in price to BuyVM.

Available OS include Alma, Ubuntu, Centos, Debian. No custom OS option built-in but could try to add that in the "Notes" while registering, maybe.

Accepts crypto through something called "utrust" that I've never heard about.

Needs first-party JS and cookies to register.

Guarantees 99.8% uptime with promise of 50% discount on the next month if violated. Need to send mail to claim it though.

Appears to not block outgoing mail (as in, hosting mail servers is possible).

Sadly asks for real name, phone, and billing address. They will surely confirm the details, since they are all about legality and paying taxes (displaying the 19% tax prominently during registration...), so this host is absolutely worthless. They also keep the data for a minimum of 10 years.

Skhron

Stockholm, Sweden and Warsaw, Poland as available locations. Yet, the Polish servers are all out of stock.

Requires a JS-based browser check to proceed to the shopping cart.

ToS prohibits "any activity harmful to minors" as well as threats, libel, harassment, obscenity, and "offensive material".

Has some really cheap prices, eg. 40 euro per year for 1GB RAM/15GB disk. More than twice as cheap as even already very cheap providers.

Needs similar data to Zergrush, therefore useless either way.

Senang Online

Can't figure out how to actually buy anything, buttons don't work even with JS, at least in Pale Moon. In fact, the page becomes entirely white when everything in uMatrix is enabled. This might just be because the site is so slow, but I can't say for sure. It loads without JS but can't 'select a plan' then? I figured it might be a Pale Moon problem, so tested with unmodified ungoogled-chromium, and got greeted with white page once again. Edit: plan selection page actually loads after a long time in ug-c. But still cannot pick anything; it seems the design is just broken. Next.

Pulse Servers

Needs JS-based browser check to enter the site at all.

Same exact UI as Zergrush, but doesn't allow you to pick-and-choose parameters, only rely on existing plans.

The cheapest is 10 USD per month, with 1GB RAM and 20GB SSD, or 60GB HDD (nice of them to provide this option I guess).

Ubuntu, Alma and Debian as available OS.

DDoS protection included.

London, UK; Hillsboro, Oregon, USA; and Quebec, Canada available as locations.

Does not block outgoing mail (except through TOR) but limits sending to 1000 per day, so providing free public mail services might not be viable.

Does not promise any uptime.

Of course, needs the same data as Zergrush, and won't let you through until it's all filled in. Can't be bothered to read the ToS or privacy policy.

Also blocks TOR.

At the moment of writing (April 28, 2026), cert is invalid too.

Orange Website

Based in Iceland, which has one of the best data retention laws, last time I checked. Don't rely on it to defend you from USA feds though, because Iceland has already cooperated with them at least once.

Extremely expensive. Cheapest plan is 30 euro per month, with 1gb RAM and 20gb disk space... Can pay an additional 22 euro for CPanel (lol), 25 euro for backups (double lol) and 80 euro for "unlimited" DDoS protection (truly a steal!). Orange hosting will squeeze you like an orange.

Alma, Arch, Centos, Debian, Fedora, FreeBSD, Elastix, Gentoo, PfSense, SUSE and Ubuntu available as OS. Wow, lots of options, but no custom. Has a notes field but no idea if it accepts custom OSes; it should though.

ToS prohibits potential "harm to minors", including loli images. They also ban hate speech against race, ethnicity, and religion. Selling drugs or counterfeit money is also not allowed. In addition to all the usual stuff like hacking, spam, etc...which applies to probably every host here as well.

Orange Website reserves the right to trash you "with or without notice". Meaning it will be without. They can also revise policies, and too without notice.

Crypto is paid through third party providers BitPay or Coinpayment. It is non-refundable.

Guarantees 99.9% uptime on VPSes with free guaranteed month if notified by mail. But they approve only by some unspecified internal monitoring.

Blocks email server port unless you have the 60 USD VPS and jump through a bunch of other hoops, including writing an essay on why you need this functionality.

I still had hope for this, if you are rich and not too spicy. Then I noticed it requires solving recaptcha (or whatever google uses these days, since I didn't actually bother to allow it in umatrix). Haha.

Njalla

I like this for domains, might test for servers at some point. Website is fast and functional and doesn't include third party stuff. Registration needs JS though.

Paying with crypto is easy (Monero accepted) and requires no personal data nor third party services.

Debian, Ubuntu, Centos, Rocky, Alpine, Arch available as OS. Doesn't mention custom.

Cheapest plan costs 15 euro. 1.5gb RAM and 15gb disk space. Significantly more expensive than most.

Needs an SSH key to sign up for a VPS.

Support can only be contacted by a form, not direct mail.

ToS is better than most. Basically hacking, spam, and "illegal stuff" is banned. Yet, they still have that "we can modify at any time and it becomes effective immediately" clause. They also reserve the right to change the "content" or "scope" of offered services at any time. What exactly that means, I have no idea, but it is worrying if they can just eg. remove your server without you breaking the rules.

The only data that is collected is your E-mail or XMPP address, username, and password.

Servers are positioned in Sweden.

No guaranteed uptime as far as I can see.

BLOCKS EMAIL SERVER PORT ALWAYS AND COMPLETELY.

NiceVPS

Registration works without JS.

Cheapest plan is 16 euro, with 1gb RAM and 15gb disk space. Can add "Bulletproof DDoS protection" during registration, which is extremely expensive. Additional disk space can be bought with 3 euro per 10gb. Automatic backups for about 1 euro (now compare to Orange).

MANY OS allowed during installation, including custom.

ToS says they won't suspend your account unless they get a court order from Dominica. But they also say that they reserve the right to suspend for any reason. Yeah, don't ask me to explain legal stuff. But, I really don't think they will suspend without either the court order, hosting CP or "terrorist propaganda", or not resolving copyright claims on your own, which you seemingly have to do. They also say they might temporarily suspend for repairs or maintenance, but will provide notice.

Only the E-mail, username, and password are saved.

PGP key is provided so I assume direct E-mail communication is possible.

Several times NiceVPS mentions that they are basically not responsible for anything that happens, so don't expect any support or recourse for their fuckups. There's no refunds, etc. Whatever, it's not like an anonymous shadow will sue. They also want you to "defend them exhaustively" from legal challenges, including financially, lol! I wonder why some hosts say stuff like that, if they theoretically should lack a way to even enforce it.

My impression is that this host really doesn't care about what you do on it, and just doesn't want to be fucked legally. But, I'm not sure if their trick will work, TBH. The servers are positioned in the Netherlands, why would they think that some Dominican law will matter instead? Why would they think that a random has the power to defend them in court?

After picking Monero to pay with, there is 15 minutes before you have to send. 4 confirmations are required to process the payment.

I'm not going to do it right now though, but I want to try this service in the future. Seems like it might be a "gem". Also like the UI.

Allows buying domains, as well.

Koddos

JS needed for the buy page to be functional.

Netherlands and Virginia, USA available as locations, unless you want the more expensive Hong Kong one.

Centos, Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, SUSE as OS. Seemingly old versions. There's also the "none" option which I assume means you bring your own.

Registration UI is the same as Zergrush, and requires the same data.

1GB RAM+20GB HDD costs 18 USD per month, which is more than most others. You can get a 512MB one for 10 USD though. Includes DDoS protection, if you want to. 30 USD per month for 10gbps.

Many payment options available, including Monero, but so what? It's useless because of the data grabbing. Again can't really be bothered to look at the ToS after the service has already eliminated itself.

Hostiko

Needs JS for the registration page to show anything. Then asks for name and phone. But name doesn't have to be real and phone can be skipped, surprisingly (to me).

Prices are shown in Ukrainian hryvnias, and per day, too <__<. 1000 hryvnias is about 24 US dollars. The cheapest plan appears to be one in Germany with 1gb RAM and 20gb disk space. The cost is 20 hryvnias per day, or 600 per month, or about 15 dollars which is not that cheap actually. There are also similarly priced ones based in Ukraine (and fucking Kyiv too!), which I of course don't recommend since they might get bombed or something. There are also much more expensive Polish plans that are supposedly super secure.

Debian, Ubuntu, Centos, Fedora, Alma, Rocky, Alpine and Oracle available as OS; no custom that I can see.

ToS is pretty interesting in that the service actually assumes some responsibility for once: The Operator holds full responsibility for solving any problems related to their hosts and internet connection.

Yet, though it says early that only things illegal in the Ukraine / EU are banned, it later has a problem with hate speech, insults, and copyright violations, and will just trash you account on discovery of those. There are, however, refunds at least - and once again the service assumes responsibility for network failures, etc. They are also "obligated" to fix vulns, wow! I don't think I've ever seen this stipulation elsewhere. But, good for them.

When you (well, me) try to add funds by crypto, it tries to load the page https://nowpayments.io/ but fails, as it is behind Cloudflare. Too bad, this might have been a decent option otherwise.

Flokinet

Contains Finland, Netherlands, and the coveted Iceland as locations.

Iceland costs 10.5 euro for 1gb RAM and 20gb disk. Finland 8.5 euro, Romania 7.5. 5 euro added to every purchase for the setup cost (o rly...). 1TBPs DDoS protection included with every order! Something you'd have to pay giant money for with the others?

Cannot buy without JS in the end, though the initial parts seem to work.

Debian, Ubuntu, Alma, Fedora, OpenSUSE available as OS. No custom, but has notes field later.

UI for the buy page is similar to Zergrush and the others, but the personal data fields can be skipped.

Monero is accepted, but CoinPayments used for processing. It asks for name and surname but I'm pretty sure they can be faked. 3h until time for paying expires. UPDATE May 2026: coinpayments is now Cloudflared, so won't load if you block that.

Contact by E-mail is allowed and they even have a PGP key.

So far so good. Let's look at the ToS. First of all:

FlokiNET has no right to without prior notification to the Customer perform changes to the Service or this Agreement. When changes which significantly affect the function or content of the service, the Customer shall be given the opportunity to prematurely break the contract without any charges. The changes will be affect one month after notice.

So yeah, we have another service who actually bothers to take responsibility, unlike all the others who simply say "we'll just do whatever we want and you just have to deal with it, hahaha!". Very good.

Does not mention banning email servers completely, but has an absolutely insane antispam policy in which you not only get fucked by fines (or suspended) if your server ends up on some blacklist and you don't fix it in 2 hours. From some recent research I've learned that these blacklist are quite "trigger happy", and you can end up on there even if eg. a neighboring IP sends spam. Better not to host a mail server on here.

Can't find any uptime guarantees.

Weak privacy:

FlokiNET collects and logs your IP address, the time and duration of your visit, the time and duration of the pages you view on our website (where applicable) and information about your computer system, such as your browser type and operating system, whenever you access or use a FlokiNET service.

And stores everything forever:

You may cancel your account at any time and request that your personal information be deleted from our databases, except for any accounting records of purchases, which we are required by law to retain for 7 years, network access logs, which we may retain for any period of time at our discretion, in cases where there are outstanding financial obligations or in cases where illegal activity is suspected (as determined by FlokiNET management or law enforcement officials), in which case personal information may be retained indefinitely for the purposes of ongoing investigation and prevention of recurrence of fraud, or in cases where a breach of the Terms and Conditions and applicable Service Level Agreement has resulted in the termination of your account (as defined by revocation of your permission to use FlokiNET's services), in which case personal information may be retained indefinitely for the purposes of preventing further use of FlokiNET's services by the offending individual.

ToS bans hacking with a fine of 1 million euro for violating (lol! wonder how they would enforce it). Nothing about sexism, etc. weirdly enough. Oh, there is an acceptable use policy, so let's look at it. Hacking and related things are banned as before. CP, selling pharmaceuticals without license, terrorism, doxing. Wow! So no policing speech or imagery aside from CP. Quite impressive. However, a researcher (archive) (MozArchive) dug deeper and discovered they ban loli, shota, nazism, and supposedly covid misinformation. Sad. Still an okay service overall I think. And by okay I mean Monero is accepted, and no personal data required. Otherwise it has not many advantages, really.

Alexhost

Moldova, Netherlands, Sweden, Bulgaria, Switzerland, France, England available as locations.

CentOS, Debian, RockyLinux, Proxmox, Ubuntu, AlmaLinux, FreeBSD and Windows available as OS.

The cheapest plan of 1.5gb ram and a 10gb disk costs 4 euro monthly. However it is only available in Moldova; the rest of the countries have it grayed out. But, you can get one inside the others with much better specs (4gb RAM and 40gb disk), for the same or even lesser price (10 euro) that most VPSes have their 1gb / 20gb plans.

Crypto is accepted but seemingly only Bitcoin and Litecoin.

None of this matters however because Alexhost wants your town, name and surname, postal code, phone (required this time!), and also to solve hcaptcha. Sayonara!

99stack

Needs to register and confirm E-mail before doing anything. JS needed for this step.

To actually get a VPS, you need to go to Resources > Instances, and then pick one of the MANY MANY places from all over the world (so much I can't be bothered to list). But, you can easily avoid dystopian EU / USA laws for example, by hosting somewhere on other continents.

Cheapest plan is 1gb ram and 25gb disk for $8. Many many plans though.

DDoS protection available for an additional $10 per month.

Customs ISOs clearly allowed. Edit: but I don't think this feature works like in the other hosts. There are some requirements the ISO must satisfy. As far as I can see, there is no VNC so the ISOs must already have ssh capability by default, I guess? So it's better to use the default ones. Of which Slackware is one! The only host that has it! Edit: it's only available some locations though.

Crypto payments done by nowpayments or coinpayments. Monero and an extreme amount of other cryptocurrencies (seemingly all) allowed. Coinpayments asks for name and surname but seems to allow faking. Nowpayments is CF, and shouldn't be used.

Support E-mail address is publicly posted. Edit: they reply really quickly!

This could be really good. Let's check out the acceptable use policy. Hacking, spam, and funnily enough ads are banned. So are CP, "hate against groups", violating privacy, infringing copyright, promoting illegal activity, drugs, and being deceptive in regards to consumer protection (wow this is really interesting, unironically). Another not allowed thing is creating 'a risk to safety, health or national security.' I don't like it, but it all depends on how wide this box actually is. Can you get banned for spicy anti-vaccine takes? I haven't, so far.

Ban appeals are possible with refunds and seemingly restoration of the account. Nice. Crypto is non refundable though.

Privacy policy sucks and doesn't tell us for how long is data stored aside from the generic "as long as we need it"...But it seems almost everyone now uses this get out of jail free card. Yet, no revealing data seems to be needed to sign up for this. IP address used to login is stored for 6 months though, so don't use your own, obviously. This seems like a good service, really, considering the decent prices, OK privacy, monero support, UI and availability of places. It seems "professional" but says "No opinion is too "controversial", we encourage open discussion", so might be willing to sacrifice itself for free speech. In "About us", it also says:

99stack about page:

As an entity devoid of debt, government grants, and investors, we maintain complete independence, affording us the liberty of choice. We prioritize clean energy sources, environmentally responsible hardware production and disposal, and favorable labor conditions.

Wow, the positives just keep coming.

They care about copyright, but have a team to resolve notices by themselves. If you actually break the copyright law wherever you host your server, they will block access to the offending content. But, they seem to actually make sure that you are breaking the law first, instead of just folding. And they give notice to you.

More investigation required on this one. As in, someone willing to actually use it for a while. It might be a gem that's flying completely under the radar!

E-mail servers completely allowed (in "G3" regions, so not all - ensure you have one of those if you want that)! 99.99% uptime guaranteed! But seems to have weird "exceptions" such as for stuff such as "maintenance" and "upgrades". Yet, they seem to actually follow the 99.99% statistic regardless - "Changed from 100% up-time guarantee to 99.99% referring to the average up-time". You can get credit added for violations but again, you need to message them.

UPDATE: some new stuff I found. Service is billed by the hour. If you kill your server, whatever remained is refunded to your account (and you can get a server in another location eg). If you break SSH, you need to reinstall, but there are warnings that reinstallation might not work. I messaged the support (they reply quickly) and they said they are exploring the details and will update the docs. What worked for me was swapping ISO to another, rebooting, then back to the one I want, and rebooting again - and not using the reinstall option at all. They say it probably has the same effect as reinstalling but will dig into it. If reinstalling fails, you can kill your server and get a new one without money costs (so says the support anyway, I did not test it). If you don't pick backups option (paid) during registration, you can't get it back and can't make snapshots after. TOR isn't discriminated at all as far as I can see, because I do everything there through it. Really fast and functional UI. I am impressed with this host so far. But a bad free speech policy eg could ruin it all. We will see.

UPDATE April 2026: I really like this host overall. However it has one big problem in that the resources seem to be shared between users; your server can slow down heavily or even go down if other people are being too demanding. 99.99% promised uptime is a mirage by my definition of uptime. And, it also has referal links so you can get discounts, for something I didn't mention yet.

1984

Needs JS to register as without it, the 'confirm password' field doesn't appear. They will send a confirmation E-mail.

Debian, Rocky, Alma, Centos, Ubuntu allowed as OS. Debian has several versions with preinstalled stuff like VPNs or webservers.

1GB RAM+25 disk costs 7.6euro per month. You can freely increase the numbers on the buy screen.

BTC and Monero available as cryptos. 24% tax automatically added. Supposedly this is due to "Icelandic regulations" and can be bypassed by inputting real name and address from another country. Amazing, maybe those laws are not as great as is usually said. You have 4 days to pay to the given wallet.

ToS allows refunds if you leave, but you need to give notice by email earlier. They won't reveal data unless by court order, but nothing is required to be submitted as far as I can see. And, the requester needs to know your name, payment details and E-mail before 1984 will release the data.

Mail servers don't appear to be banned, but spam / "unsolicited mailing lists" are.

Can't find any uptime guarantees.

Weapons, drugs, copyrighted material, porn or sexuality, piracy, and everything that 1984 considers "harmful or ethically objectionable" is banned (and even linking to other sites that contain such things, similar shitty impossible policy as Zergrush). You might get banned without notice if discovered.

Might be okay if you are not at all spicy, but clearly not a free speech host at all.

Vikhost

Based in Ukraine (and Kyiv too...), brags about being super secure in terms protecting data from power outages, etc. But doesn't explain how they would be protected from the flying bombs.

1 GB RAM+25GB disk space costs 6 USD per month. Yet, monthly payment is impossible; the least is quarterly.

Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS, Alma, Rocky, Fedora and Windows available as OS; custom by contact but also has "comments" field so maybe it's possible to put it there as well.

More disk space, RAM and CPU cores is settable on the buy page. So you can in theory have 1gb ram with 1000gb disk space. CPanel costs 80 USD (lol). Additional IP addresses only by direct contact.

Familiar Zergrush UI and the same familiar data needed. Will deny you if you don't input it. Since it also needs a phone it will probably attempt to confirm, so for me the host is useless. Would be nice if they made it obvious upfront.

Strike

Great prices at 4 euro for 1GB RAM + 10GB disk. Or 7 for 3GB RAM and 20GB disk. These are in USA because the "small" Polish ones are sold out; but you can still get the ones with 6GB/40GB for 11 euro. Discounts possible if you pick yearly payment.

Windows, Ubuntu, Centos, Debian available as OS.

Aaand right before the finish line of registration it tries to grab your name, surname, city and phone (all required). Also blocks TOR without telling. Trash.

Server Factory

Needs JS and cookies to even access the site. Then pretends to have 4 USD VPS available, but if you try to order it redirects you to another page where prices start from 15 USD, and specs from 4gb RAM and 50gb disk space. Oh, but it turns out it's quarterly payment, so, it actually does turn out to be about 4 USD per month, and for that specs might be worth it. Actually, this is the best price I've ever seen, about 3 times better than the already very cheap BuyVM, which is kinda sus. But for people who only need low specs it doesn't actually make a difference.

Debian, Ubuntu, Alma, Rocky, Centos, Fedora, Windows, and MikroTok RouterOS available as OS.

After registration, need to confirm E-mail. They will send four E-mails, one of which contains a confirmation code, which you need to input, then you get access to the invoice menu. Then when you pick crypto it will send you to coinify.com which needs not only 1st party but third party JS so that paying works. And after all that you learn that Monero is not available (but a bunch of others are). Picking ethereum gives 15 minutes to pay. No idea what happens after as I really don't want to pay for this.

ToS requires you to resolve copyright notices by yourself. No hacking and related things. Wow! That's it. No sexism, or even CP bans, but they might be doing that anyway in practice. Still not sure if this host actually requires personal data, privacy policy talks about taxes etc. I registered without but who knows if they don't end up wanting it later. Privacy policy says "The required information we request at the time of registration must be entered in full. Otherwise, we shall reject the registration." though they did not reject me. Browser data, referers, IPs, etc are stored. Duration is "until we don't need it", of course.

No hard evidence about this one but seems dangerous. UPDATE April 2026: now also under maintenance (nonworking).

QloudHost

Expected Cloudflare again, but no.

Location: Amsterdam, Netherlands.

To buy, needs a JS-dependent browser check similar to cloudflare's, but not cloudflare (I think it's Imunify360). And nothing third party is loaded, so I think it is just local. Funnily, Imunify360's site is cloudflared (is their own security solution not enough?)

Alma, Rocky, Debian, Ubuntu available as OS.

Cheapest VPS is 19 USD per month, with 4gb RAM and 50gb disk. Someone who needs something light shouldn't need to be paying this much, but there is no plan for him at QloudHost. And that 19 becomes 22 if you choose to pay monthly and not for a year in advance. CPanel for an additional 27USD but there is some "CyberPanel" that is free. "Offsite backups" for an additional 20USD. And you can get Imunify360 for $12.

The painful "familiar" UI and the "familiar" needed data reared their ugly heads. Of course you won't be let through without filling it all. Whether they verify it I can't be bothered to care anymore. Just don't ask for it.

Coinpayments processes crypto payments but again, doesn't matter due to the above.

Mynymbox

JS needed to finish buying.

Finland, Germany (unavailable), Netherlands offered as locations.

When you click a buy button, it attempts a redirect to https://client.mynymbox.io, but it fails. Oh wait, tried a few times and it loaded. So let's continue. Cheapest plan is 512MB RAM / 10GB disk. Finally something for static site hosters. 4 euro per month. 3 free backup slots, more can be gotten by contacting the team. Additional IP addresses for 2.5 euro per month, for one. No DDoS protection that I can detect.

Alma, Alpine, Arch, Centos, Debian, Fedora, FreeBSD, Rocky, Scientific, Suse, Ubuntu, Windows Server available as preinstalled OS. Allows custom OS cleanly. But I haven't tested this functionality.

Familiar UI but doesn't ask for the offending data.

Crypto processing is local; Monero allowed.

Since the host hasn't eliminated itself yet, let's check their ToS. Ehh, stuff refuses to load again. They might be unreliable in the end. Anyway, ToS says refunds are allowed only during first three days after buying. UPDATE May 2026: this host has suddenly deleted most of the blocks in the ToS, and is now pretty much a free speech host. Only the usual stuff like CP and illegal marketplaces are banned.

Privacy policy says they will only share data in case of a valid court order (they don't say where the orders have to come from).

Mail servers banned by default, can pay 10 euro (one-time) to be able to host them. But no spam or mass mailing allowed. As well as many other requirements like supporting all the security protocols, etc. Not sure it's worth it on this host.

Can't find any uptime guarantees.

Contact by E-mail is allowed; PGP key provided.

Mynymbox also does domains, but isn't a DNS provider, so you need another service (eg Hurricane DNS) for full functionality anyway.

Seems like a really good host, rivaling Privex, at this point.

Datalix

Debian, Ubuntu, Windows, Alma, Rocky, Centos, Fedora available as OS.

Cannot move the slider for accepting ToS without JS, so JS required to sign up.

Privacy policy and ToS are in German only.

The cheapest plans out there! 2.45 euro for 2gb RAM and 20gb disk.

Keeps pestering you about some tax and tries to get you to fill personal information "correctly" in the settings, but I'm not sure if any of that is actually needed. I still managed to reach coinpayments to be able to "top up credit" with monero. But I don't intend to buy from a service that even has the personal data fields at all; I know it's not really caring about anonymity then. And I can't read the policies so...

Dashboard froze my Pale Moon.

This might be decent actually, but unable to prove.

COIN|HOST

Extreme prices (the cheapest is 150 euro per month); this seems to only offer dedicated servers or something called "confidential computing servers". For the latter, it claims that the CPU encrypts the memory and disk so even a hack or raid or a rogue employee can't extract any data - which is really cool if true. However, for the confidential servers you need to "talk to their team", unlike the dedicated where you can just sign up.

Privacy policy says they collect this data when you sign up:

  • Name
  • Address
  • Email Address(s)
  • Telephone number(s)
  • IP address
  • Payment details

They don't say for how long they keep it, though. HCaptcha is also required to solve. ToS contains a lot of banned stuff, but if they really can't see shit, how could they enforce it? Despite all that, this provider might still be one to check out if you can deal with the price, just because of the security properties - assuming they are legit. Let me reiterate, this is really big, if true. And I've never seen it before, it might even sort-of justify the insane price. Of course, I would not use it regardless because of the data grabbing; but the security properties are still interesting.

Oh, and the only available location is Switzerland. And no Monero.

Cockbox

This seems like a really great host, maybe the "best" if you don't mind the name / reputation. Basically doesn't care about what you do on it as long as it doesn't break Romanian law, or is spam / hacking. Doesn't collect shit and only releases on court order. Of course, in case of that, whatever you have stored in there will be up for grabs by the feds. But that applies to every host out there.

Was able to register without JS or personal data, simple captcha only needed to solve.

No plans at the moment aside from expensive dedicated servers. Cheapest plan would be 2GB / 20GB for $15 if it was available. Not too cheap but not terribly expensive either.

Says that it supports monero.

ToS says you can't get banned on the spam list Spamhaus.

I'll say more when it's available to buy, maybe. For now, all I can add is that one of my friends uses it and doesn't complain.

Hiddence

CF captcha required to register, no indication that registration failed because of it, except if you look into umatrix.

Aluy

Centos, Debian, Ubuntu as OS.

Needs JS to buy though it's not obvious at first glance.

Freely mixable parameters during buying. 10Gb disk / 512 mb ram is the lowest and will cost 2.50 euro monthly.

Then boom doxing attempt (scroll up to Zergrush). Not this shit again!

Privex

This is really good, maybe one of the best. Unless you want to use Slackware as custom ISO because that shit doesn't work for some reason (and by this I mean it didn't even want to boot at first. After I fixed that problem, I couldn't set up networking no matter what I did). Really I'd just stick to the provided ones.

Doesn't need personal data and doesn't pretend that it does.

Has TOR / I2P addresses.

Sweden, Netherlands, Germany, Finland, US West / East available as locations. But Finland is empty in terms of VPSes.

One of the few hosts who have 512 MB RAM plans, for 5 USD per month. In general Sweden has the best prices, eg 2GB RAM / 35 GB disk for only 10 USD, which in most other hosts would pay you for 1Gb / 15GB or so. Sweden (and Netherlands) also has servers owned by Privex, meaning you don't deal with third parties there.

Has an order form that doesn't need JS, making it one of only two (?) hosts that can do that.

ToS is basically what you'd expect, no hacking spam and illegal stuff in the regions your server is in (porn is allowed in Sweden / Netherlands, making Sweden again the best choice). According to crippled.media (archive) (MozArchive), Privex doesn't bend (presumably about loli). Good advertisement for free speech focus.

Has fast and functional UI.

Monero allowed.

If you cancel a server you get refunds to your account and can buy another. Really cool.

Has PGP keys and various E-mail addresses listed, meaning E-mail contact is presumably possible.

Doesn't say they block E-mail servers so I guess they don't. No uptime guarantees stated.

Really the only big flaw is the custom ISOs not working properly (for me anyway, in case of slack). So you might have to pick from Ubuntu, Centos, Debian, Fedora, Arch or Rocky. Custom also takes them 3 days to upload, as another reason to not use one.

Also has referal links allowing discounts for the people you invite.

Kyun

With JS disabled, the website doesn't display anything except a pledge to enable it. And when you do that, you will see that the website is very heavy, causing massive CPU load on older computers. In Pale Moon, it doesn't work at all. Forms are often unresponsive. The dashboard sometimes shows VPS as down or without an OS installed despite the reality being different.

No guaranteed uptime, in practice the service goes down often.

Monero is supported, and processing is local. Whether you can receive a refund in it will be decided on a case by case basis.

Doesn't need personal data to sign up.

USA and Romania offered as locations. However, they are rarely actually available to buy.

Relatively cheap prices at 5 USD for 1GB RAM and 10GB disk space.

DDoS protection breaks XMPP on Romanian servers, and cannot be disabled.

Allows hosting mail servers.

High free speech focus, only restricting anything to do with child porn and loli, as well as hacking and spam. Also lenient on immediate termination; you get the chance to remove the offending content.

Has a warrant canary showing they leaked data to governments 6 times. Don't get me wrong, transparency is a positive, and few other providers care about it.

Decent host if free speech and privacy are all you care about, but some quirks like the unreliability, low server availability, and malfunctioning website make it less than ideal.

Some caveats about my reviews

Summary

In the end, I only really like 2 hosts - 99stack and Privex (edit: Mynymbox now seems solid). One has more server availability (you can escape "western" or "5/9/14 eyes" legal dystopia), the other has an onion and lack of JS dependence. Both support monero, mostly free speech focused (Privex seems somewhat better here), don't require personal data, have good UIs and browser compatibility. Some other hosts have similarly good properties, but too high price for my liking, or other minor flaws. A few hosts have not been reviewed, that you might think should have been, so let me explain those. BuyVM is great...except, to find it actually available for purchase needs an intervention from supernatural forces, so it's pointless to hope for it. Incognet shouldn't even be considered after the bullshit they pulled.

VPS / feature99stackPrivexMynymboxNiceVPSFlokinet
Personal data requiredNoneNoneNoneNoneNone
IP storage6 monthsNoneCan store, anonymizes after unspecified timeNoneStores forever
Inhibits anonymizersNoNoNoNoNo
TOR / I2P addressesNeitherBothTOR onlyTOR onlyNeither
Free speechOK; bans a few additional thingsHeavy and proven free speech focusHeavy free speech focusFree speech focus; needs you to resolve reports, but doesn't suspendNot a free speech host
Mail server hostingAllowed (in some places)Assuming allowedUnblockable for 10 euroAssuming allowedEffectively banned
Server availabilityHighLowLowNetherlands onlyLow
Uptime guarantee99.99%NoneNone99.99%None
CryptocurrenciesMonero+othersMonero+othersMonero+othersMonero+othersMonero+others
Crypto processingThird partyFirst partyFirst partyFirst partyCloudflared third-party
PriceMidMidMidExpensiveMid
RefundsAs server fundsAs server fundsOnly for 3 daysNoneAs server funds
Backups20% of original plan cost.No3 slots free, more by contact6% of original plan cost.Built-in
DDoS protection100GBps for 10 USD/month. Only some regions.NoneNone10GBps free; additional extremely expensive.Built-in 1TBps
Custom OSesDysfunctionalDysfunctionalUploadableUploadableHas notes field

Only passable VPSes went into the table. More might be added in the future. Keep in mind that free speech ratings are partially assumed. Not everything can be gleaned from the often vague ToSes. Stuff would have to be tested directly by putting up offending pages and seeing how the hosts end up reacting. Some other things are also only derived from statements of the VPSes themselves, as I haven't signed up for those (only ever used Privex, dead BuyVM, Incognet and 99stack).

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