Anonymously.io
As its name implies, Anonymously.io is a provider of anonymous web hosting with about a decade of invaluable industry experience under its belt. More often than not, companies providing privacy to their customers like to stay private as well, as is the case with Anonymously.io. The absence of information about the company is glaring and no data can be found about the location of its headquarters, its personnel, or its infrastructure in general. The location of its data centers is, however, specified and it is indicated that they are situated somewhere in the Netherlands, most likely in Amsterdam.
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Anonymously.io’s main website is as black as midnight, with specks of starry yellow and it creates a straightforward user experience, particularly since there isn’t much to be seen there. There is no official blog, support forum, presence on social networks or a YouTube channel, preferably one packed with informative or instructional videos.
Having said that, the website's visual style does fit its character. At present, it is available in English language exclusively.
- Also check out our complete list of the best anonymous hosting
Plans and pricing
To ensure your anonymity, Anonymously.io allows its customers to use only one method of payment and it includes Bitcoin (BTC) and similar cryptocurrencies.
With Anonymously.io you can purchase any of the shared hosting, VPS and dedicated server packages, or simply register a new (and, more importantly, anonymous) domain. Currently, there are four different-sized plans for shared hosting, ten for VPS hosting and four for dedicated server hosting, and all of them are properly presented.
The lower cost option is a shared hosting plan titled “Anonymous Web v1” and it costs $4.95 per month and guarantees complete privacy and anonymity. The plan should provide 0.7 core CPU speed, 512MB of RAM, 50GB of bandwidth, 10GB od SSD storage, up to five subdomains, five add-on domains and ten MySQL databases, which seems like a pretty good value for money. In addition, all four plans include a dedicated IP, one-click app installer and a user-friendly cPanel.
In case things go south, keep in mind that Anonymously.io provides a 30-day money-back guarantee with all shared hosting plans.
Ease of use
If the anonymity on the World Wide Web is what you want, you’ll have no trouble getting this with Anonymously.io, since signing up with them requires no personal data. The only information you’ll have to provide is your email address and since all payments are done via cryptocurrencies, your right to anonymity will be provided for in full.
In addition to this, they claim that their servers are located in different offshore locations, which means that they are free to completely ignore DMCA. They also promise not to share any of your online activities with any third party (their motto being “What happens on our servers, stays on our servers”), keeping all your data protected and private. However, you shouldn’t miss reading the rules (which are prominently posted on their website), since engaging in any strictly prohibited activities (and it’s a lengthy list), means your account can and will be suspended or terminated without any notice and all of your data erased.
The decision-making process shouldn’t take much time since all of Anonymous.io’s hosting solutions are pretty well presented. However, some of their plans might be out-of-stock, which you’ll notice only after you try to sign up for one of them. To get more information about their availability in the future, your only option is to get in touch with Anonymous.io’s support team.
However, if you manage to get hold of one of its hosting plans, as soon as your order is complete (and if you choose a shared or VPS plan) your account will be set up instantly. All shared hosting options include an industry-standard Linux-based cPanel as its default control panel (which is always a good news) and with VPS ones you get to choose a control panel you want (cPanel, Vesta, DirectAdmin, WHMCS, Plesk and more) and Anonymous.io’s technical team will acquire it from a third-party provider (for a price) and install it for you (free-of-charge).
Speed and experience
There is not much mention of speed on Anonymously.io’s website, but that didn’t prevent us from putting it to the test. After checking out the speed performance via GTmetrix as our tool of choice, we were faced with rather underwhelming results. The time it took for the page to completely load was just above the average (7.8 seconds in comparison to 8.1) and the largest contentful paint took double the average amount (2.6 seconds in contrast to 1.2). This, together with rest of the vital web metrics, made GTmetrix rate website’s speed performance with a disappointing D (57%).
As for uptime, Anonymously.io guarantees 99.99% over a span of one year, without going into more details. Having that in mind, we monitored the uptime of their website for a month (via UptimeRobot) and managed to record a considerable amount of downtime, which made us doubt the confidence behind their guarantee. The report we got revealed 99.2% of uptime and (this is not a joke) twelve instances of downtime in total, which is a pretty large number considering the site was monitored for one month only. However, since their promises cover the period of one year, we are willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Support
Looking at Anonymously.io’s landing page you might get an impression you can get in touch with their technical team via live chat, but no, there is no live chat. What you get is a ticket system disguised as a live chat, and although you can send them a message at any time, you might have to wait for a while for them to respond. To test their responsiveness, we tried reaching them via ticket and haven’t got a reply to this date, which may as well serve as an answer to our question.
An email address is available as well, but it is reserved for reports of policy abuse only. The “Support” key that lies prominently on Anonymously.io’s landing page doesn’t do a thing, so don’t risk getting carpal tunnel syndrome by continually clicking on it. Another aspect of their customer support that leaves a lot to be desired are self-help options (like knowledgebase, FAQ section and video guides), since Anonymously.io offers none.
The competition
Besides being a perfect web hosting solution for newcomers, personal blogs and simple websites, as well as small and large businesses alike, Hostinger is famous for accepting cryptocurrencies as a payment method and not being too intrusive about its customer’s personal data. You may not feel as anonymous as with Anonymously.io, but you’ll be getting a choice of data centers, a complete range of hosting options and features and all for a pocket-friendly price.
Another excellent all-inclusive hosting option is HostGator which, while not being dedicated to anonymity as much as Anonymously.io is, provides an option called domain privacy. This means that all your personal information will be concealed by the register. However, HostGator doesn’t accept payments via crypto while with Anonymously.io it is the only available payment method.
Bluehost has data centers that are scattered across the world, while all of Anonymously.io’s servers are offshore, with the one in the Netherlands being the only option mentioned on their website. In addition, Bluehost provides a full range of hosting-related services and options and is one of the most beginner-friendly solutions on the market. Nonetheless, since it doesn’t offer anonymous hosting as an option, to stay utterly unidentifiable you’ll have to go with Anonymously.io.
For those who want to keep their private information really private, Hostwinds is another great option and, to boot, the one that comes with well-structured and fairly-priced hosting packages, amazing customer support, presentable performance and a risk-free 60-day money-back guarantee. Anonymously.io’s dedication to anonymity may be its major selling point, but their customer support definitely isn’t one.
Final verdict
If you are looking for a way to stay in the shadows while making your home on the global network, Anonymously.io is a good way to go. They have more than a decade of experience, a decent diversity of hosting services, all features one would expect today and all at reasonable cost. That being said, Anonymously.io lacks self-help options and when we tried to contact their support staff, we never got a reply, which makes Anonymously.io somewhat hard to recommend.
If you want to stay anonymous but with a well-known host which offers a support you can rely on, go with HostGator. If anonymity is not your top priority, you are in safe hands with Bluehost as well.
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