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Best Anonymous Web Hosting
Given how easy it is for not just organizations but people to exploit your data, keeping your detail private online is extremely important. And anonymous web hosting is integral to that as it allows you to register under a pseudonym and pay using protected methods like cryptocurrency.
Today, we will cover the five best anonymous web hosting available in 2022.
But, first, let's look at what anonymous hosting is. So, without further ado, let's dive straight into it.
What is anonymous hosting?
Anonymous web hosting enables you to maintain your anonymity and privacy when registering your domain by not requiring a postal address or any personal data such as your address, email address, and phone number. It allows you to register with a fake name or create accounts using pseudonyms.
The payment option also always includes cryptocurrencies so as not to be traced back to the buyer or expose your private data. Moreover, such hosting is hosted offshore so that local and even certain international-based authorities won't be able to access your site, access the data stored on it, or track the server back to you.
Why choose anonymous hosting?
Privacy is nearly impossible on the internet, but you can quickly attain it with anonymous hosting. When signing up, you are not required to share your personal information with the provider. Besides, by using cryptocurrency payment gateways, the provider further ensures that no private or identifying data about the customer is revealed.
Overall, anonymous web-hosting providers offer advanced options such as a dedicated IP and domain privacy protection for you to remain hidden.
Our Rating Process and Criteria
We've tested hundreds of hosting solutions and selected five of the best anonymous hosts that are worth the money regarding privacy.
To determine the best anonymous web hosting, we considered four major factors :
Site performance
Weak servers can push your site offline, costing you sales and revenue. Go for a hosting company with excellent uptime scores, preferably 99.5%. Quick server responsiveness and speed are also crucial for your website and business.
Advanced features
Regular web data backup, ability to add domains, clarity in terms of account limitation, amount of disk space and bandwidth provided, email hosting, one-click installer, and ability to upgrade your plan are features that make a hosting provider worthwhile.
Security
Besides having your site and data accessible at all times, the hosting provider needs to be trusted and secure. Your provider should offer security features like security monitoring, DDoS protection, LetsEncrypt SSL, RAID, and secure data centers.
Robust support
It is essential to have a host that offers live support, 24/7, to guide you whenever technical problems arise and you can't solve them by yourself. Email, support tickets, and live chat, as well as social media visibility, are what you need.
Our Top 5 Picks for the Best Anonymous Web hosting
1. Hostinger - Best Cheap Anonymous Hosting
Overall Score: 4.75 / 5
For as low as 2.59/mo, Hostinger offers some of the best web hosting services on the market. You can create an account on Hostinger without providing a large amount of personal information, and you can pay using anonymous methods, including with cryptocurrencies.
Uptime and Response Time
Hostinger is stable, fast, and can handle increased traffic even on cheap plans. It also offers a 99.9% uptime with sporadic outages due to server maintenance. As for its average response time, it provides a good 500ms. Hostinger can offer fast speed thanks to its server location spread worldwide, which allows you to choose from.
Advanced features
Hostinger keeps its tech fresh and upgraded from SSD drives to the latest PHP versions or fast LiteSpeed web servers that boost website speed. It also offers free website migration and WordPress optimization with the latest PHP version, both HTTP/2 and HTTP/3, IPv6, and advanced caching. All of its plans also allow you to host up to 100 mailboxes.
Security
Hostinger has pretty good security features and measures in place with free SSL and 24/7 monitoring. Depending on the plan, you also get daily or weekly backups, and you can always set up 2-factor authentication (2FA). For customer support, they have 24/7 live chat, a ticketing system, email, and an extensive knowledge base but no phone.
2. Hostwinds - Best for Options Abundance
Overall Score: 4.5 / 5
Hostwinds offers everything from cheap shared hosting to advanced dedicated server and cloud solutions. It has many impressive features, including SSD-based storage, spam filtering, free migration, and both phone and live chat support.
You can add domain privacy to your package for a few dollars per month, which won't allow people to see who's behind your website. The service also accepts cryptocurrency payments.
Options
Known for its superb variety of web hosting packages, Hostings offers shared, VPS, cloud, and dedicated servers. There are three shared options, with prices ranging from $5.24 to $8.24 monthly for an initial subscription though prices will increase significantly on renewal. Managed and unmanaged anonymous VPS hosts are available for Windows and Linux here. Cloud hosting, meanwhile, starts from just $4.99 a month, while advanced dedicated servers will cost you at least $106 a month.
Performance
While a bit more expensive than some competitors, HostWinds has a leading 99.99% uptime guarantee and is backed by advanced tools and excellent performance.
SSL certificate & WordPress
Its Softaculous one-click installer makes installing scripts and apps super easy. There's also a site builder to help you get started. In addition, you will benefit from a neat cPanel control panel to install and manage your SSL installations while a self-signed SSL certificate is installed by default.
3. AccuWeb - Best for WordPress Sites
Overall Score: 4.47 / 5
AccuWeb Hosting offers a fully-managed service with generous data allowances for your anonymous hosting needs for a WordPress site. The site accepts cryptocurrencies, has multiple data centers worldwide with on-site security, and offers free daily data backups and customer support through live chat, email, telephone, and a web knowledge base.
Performance
Web host speed matters a lot, and even with the most basic of shared hosting, you get a near-perfect uptime with an average response time of an acceptable 250-300ms range. Accu Web Hosting's VPS range aims to boost website performance by giving you dedicated RAM and CPU resources.
Creating a site
Accu Web's full-featured cPanel setup provides you with several tools to help create a site. Softaculous is for easy installation of WordPress, MediaWiki, PrestaShop, and hundreds of other web apps. The RV site builder is a simple drag-and-drop website builder with plenty of widgets and editing options. Advanced features include WP-CLI to manage WordPress via the command line, GIT-based version control, and staging to edit your WordPress project without affecting the production site.
Shared Hosting
The most basic shared hosting begins with a Personal Web Hosting plan with free SSL, cPanel site management, a free domain, and a bundled website builder. Meanwhile, shared cloud hosting offers a more scalable product that is best for handling sites that experience large traffic spikes. AccuWeb has high bandwidth allocations to provide you even on its cheapest US server at 20TB. However, specs and prices vary considerably depending on your chosen data center.
4. HostGator - Best for Small & Medium Business
Overall Score: 4.37 / 5
To protect your anonymity, HostGator accepts crypto and doesn't ask for a certain amount of information when you sign up. Its Domain Privacy feature hides all of that data from public databases. HostGator also offers weekly cloud backups as well as 24-hour support.
Performance
During the performance testing, the site was never down, and its response times averaged 378ms for its shared hosting products at the slower end. If you need help, its knowledge base has a lot of sensibly organized content. Customer support is meanwhile available 24/7/365 via live chat and telephone.
Site Management
HostGator's online dashboard allows you to manage your account and completely control your web space. There's a 'Control Panel' section that includes links to standard site management modules such as Email Accounts, Webmail, File Manager, and Databases. Also, with one click, you can get on with uploading files, creating email accounts, or anything else you need to do.
Creating a website
The shared hosting package of HostGator has several tools to help you create and manage a website. Its auto-installer, the Softaculous setup, enables speedy installation of over 400 apps, including Joomla, Magento, Drupal, PrestaShop, MediaWiki, phpBB, and more. There's also a free Weebly Builder plan with an excellent drag-and-drop editor. While the site can be hosted on your domain, it is limited to 500MB in size and displays ads.
5. Namecheap - Best for Cheap Domain and Hosting
Overall Score: 4.25 / 5
Namecheap is an attractive anonymous hosting provider known for its low prices and acceptance of crypto payments. It has a built-in CDN, a neat website builder, and automatic backups. Besides, you also get free domain privacy features and don't need identity verification when you sign up. To improve security, you can deploy DNS, VPN, and 2FA for free.
Price
You will get access to a basic website builder, automatic backups, a built-in CDN, and the Softaculous one-click installer for less than a couple of dollars per month. While many advanced features are lacking, Namecheap is known for its rock-bottom prices.
Free Website Builder
You can create a new website after signing up for a new Namecheap subscription. But there are no automatic site creation processes, and you'll need to go to your cPanel control panel to get started. WordPress or another CMS, however, can be installed through the Softaculous one-click installer.
Performance
While Namecheap offers an excellent 100% uptime, its slow page load speeds and long server response times at 625ms are concerning. But Namecheap may still be fast enough for those looking for a budget hosting provider.