{ "generated": "2026-08-14", "canonical": "https://onionvps.com/data/answers.json", "stats": { "total": 100, "topics": 8, "words": 13099 }, "topics": [ { "id": "buying", "label": "Choosing & sizing", "blurb": "What a VPS is, what it costs, and how to size one without overbuying.", "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/topic/buying" }, { "id": "privacy", "label": "Privacy & no-KYC", "blurb": "What a provider knows about you, and how to make that as little as possible.", "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/topic/privacy" }, { "id": "payment", "label": "Crypto payment", "blurb": "Paying for infrastructure without a bank, a card or an identity check.", "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/topic/payment" }, { "id": "legal", "label": "Law & jurisdiction", "blurb": "Offshore hosting, the DMCA, subpoenas, abuse handling and what is actually allowed.", "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/topic/legal" }, { "id": "technical", "label": "Setup & operation", "blurb": "SSH, firewalls, mail, Docker, backups and the rest of running a server.", "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/topic/technical" }, { "id": "performance", "label": "Performance & reliability", "blurb": "Steal time, latency, benchmarking and what uptime numbers really mean.", "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/topic/performance" }, { "id": "regions", "label": "Locations & jurisdictions", "blurb": "Where to put a server, and what changes when you move it.", "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/topic/regions" }, { "id": "company", "label": "About OnionVPS", "blurb": "Who we are, what we hold, and what we will and will not do.", "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/topic/company" } ], "note": "`short` is a self-contained answer of 35–75 words, written to be quoted verbatim with attribution.", "answers": [ { "slug": "what-is-a-vps", "question": "What is a VPS?", "shortAnswer": "A VPS (virtual private server) is a virtual machine with guaranteed CPU, memory and storage, running its own operating system on shared physical hardware. You get full root access and can install anything. It sits between shared hosting, where you control almost nothing, and a dedicated server, where you rent the whole machine.", "detail": [ "The important word is \"private\": unlike shared hosting, the resources allocated to your instance are reserved for you, and other tenants cannot consume them. With KVM virtualisation the isolation is enforced by the processor itself, so your instance runs its own kernel and cannot see, or be seen by, its neighbours.", "In practice a VPS behaves exactly like a physical Linux or Windows server that happens to be somewhere else. You connect over SSH or RDP, install software with the normal package manager, and configure the firewall yourself. Nothing about the workflow is virtualisation-specific." ], "points": [ "Full root or Administrator access, including custom kernels", "Guaranteed CPU, RAM and disk that neighbours cannot take", "Its own public IPv4 address and, here, a routed IPv6 /64", "Any operating system that boots — not a fixed list" ], "table": null, "topic": "buying", "related": [ "vps-vs-shared-hosting-difference", "what-is-kvm-virtualisation", "what-is-a-vps-used-for" ], "wordCount": 185, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/what-is-a-vps" }, { "slug": "what-is-a-vps-used-for", "question": "What is a VPS used for?", "shortAnswer": "A VPS runs anything that needs to be online continuously: websites and APIs, game servers, VPN and proxy endpoints, mail servers, trading bots, CI runners, Docker workloads, media and file servers, blockchain nodes, and remote development environments. The common thread is a persistent machine with a public address and root access.", "detail": [ "The most common single use is hosting a website or application that outgrew shared hosting — typically because it needed a background worker, a specific runtime version, or a service that is not a web server at all.", "The second-largest category is private infrastructure: a personal VPN, a DNS resolver that your ISP does not operate, a file sync server, a media library. These workloads need very little hardware and a great deal of thought about jurisdiction, which is why a $4 instance in the right country often beats a large instance in the wrong one." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "buying", "related": [ "what-is-a-vps", "how-much-does-a-vps-cost", "what-is-the-cheapest-usable-vps" ], "wordCount": 148, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/what-is-a-vps-used-for" }, { "slug": "how-much-does-a-vps-cost", "question": "How much does a VPS cost?", "shortAnswer": "A usable VPS starts at about $4 a month for 1 vCPU, 1 GB of RAM and 20 GB of NVMe storage. A production instance with dedicated cores, 8 GB of RAM and 160 GB of storage runs around $34 a month. Storage-heavy plans with several terabytes start near $22. Longer billing terms reduce these by 5–22%.", "detail": [ "Price is driven mainly by three things: whether the cores are shared or dedicated, how much RAM you need, and how much storage. Bandwidth is usually included in the plan rather than billed separately, which is the largest single cost difference between a VPS and a hyperscaler cloud instance.", "Beware of prices that look impossible. A \"$1 VPS\" is almost always OpenVZ with oversold memory, no real kernel and no ability to run Docker. The floor for genuine KVM with reserved memory sits around $3–4." ], "points": [], "table": { "caption": "Typical monthly cost by workload", "head": [ "Workload", "Sensible specification", "Approx. cost" ], "rows": [ [ "VPN, DNS, small bot", "1 vCPU / 1 GB / 20 GB", "$4" ], [ "Personal website, blog", "2 vCPU / 4 GB / 80 GB", "$19" ], [ "Production web app", "4 vCPU / 8 GB / 160 GB", "$34" ], [ "Game server (20 slots)", "4 dedicated / 8 GB high-clock", "$49" ], [ "Seedbox / media, 4 TB", "4 vCPU / 8 GB / 4 TB", "$39" ], [ "CI runner, monorepo", "6 vCPU / 16 GB / 320 GB", "$62" ] ] }, "topic": "buying", "related": [ "what-is-the-cheapest-usable-vps", "how-much-ram-do-i-need-for-a-vps", "is-a-vps-worth-it" ], "wordCount": 143, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/how-much-does-a-vps-cost" }, { "slug": "what-is-the-cheapest-usable-vps", "question": "What is the cheapest VPS that is actually usable?", "shortAnswer": "About $4 a month buys 1 vCPU, 1 GB of RAM and 20 GB of NVMe on real KVM virtualisation. That is genuinely enough for a WireGuard VPN, a DNS resolver, a Tor relay, a small bot or a static site. Below that price you are almost certainly buying an oversold container rather than a virtual machine.", "detail": [ "The trap at the bottom of the market is virtualisation type. OpenVZ and LXC instances share the host kernel, which means memory is routinely oversold, Docker does not work reliably, and you cannot load kernel modules — so no WireGuard on older hosts, no custom firewall modules, no nested virtualisation.", "A 1 GB KVM instance running Debian or Alpine has roughly 850 MB genuinely available after the operating system. That is a comfortable amount for a single-purpose service and a tight amount for anything with a database." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "buying", "related": [ "how-much-does-a-vps-cost", "kvm-vs-openvz-difference", "how-much-ram-do-i-need-for-a-vps" ], "wordCount": 145, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/what-is-the-cheapest-usable-vps" }, { "slug": "how-much-ram-do-i-need-for-a-vps", "question": "How much RAM does a VPS need?", "shortAnswer": "Match RAM to the workload, not to a price tier. 1 GB runs a VPN, DNS resolver or small bot. 2–4 GB runs a small website with a database. 8 GB is the comfortable floor for a production application or Docker stack. 16 GB and up is for CI, large databases, Magento or heavy crawling.", "detail": [ "RAM is the resource that fails hardest when it runs out: the kernel OOM killer terminates whatever it judges most expensive, which is usually your database. CPU exhaustion makes things slow; memory exhaustion makes things stop.", "Operating system baselines matter at the low end. Alpine idles at roughly 80 MB, Debian at about 120 MB, Ubuntu at about 250 MB and Windows Server at roughly 1.5 GB. On a 1 GB instance that choice determines how much is genuinely yours." ], "points": [], "table": { "caption": "RAM by workload", "head": [ "Workload", "Minimum", "Comfortable" ], "rows": [ [ "WireGuard VPN, DNS, Tor relay", "512 MB", "1 GB" ], [ "Static site or small blog", "1 GB", "2 GB" ], [ "WordPress with database", "2 GB", "4 GB" ], [ "Docker stack with Postgres", "4 GB", "8 GB" ], [ "Minecraft, 10–20 players", "4 GB", "8 GB" ], [ "Matrix Synapse, federated", "4 GB", "8 GB" ], [ "CI runner, monorepo", "8 GB", "16 GB" ], [ "Magento 2 in production", "8 GB", "16 GB" ], [ "Windows Server + application", "4 GB", "8 GB" ] ] }, "topic": "buying", "related": [ "how-many-vcpu-do-i-need", "why-is-my-vps-slow", "how-much-does-a-vps-cost" ], "wordCount": 136, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/how-much-ram-do-i-need-for-a-vps" }, { "slug": "how-many-vcpu-do-i-need", "question": "How many vCPUs does a VPS need?", "shortAnswer": "Most workloads need fewer cores than people buy. One shared core saturates a gigabit VPN link. Two dedicated cores run a busy website. Four run a game server or a Docker stack. Beyond eight, you are usually buying parallelism for builds, crawling or transcoding. Whether cores are dedicated matters more than how many there are.", "detail": [ "The specification that actually determines responsiveness is dedicated versus shared. A shared vCPU is scheduled against other tenants, so under contention your process waits — visible as steal time. Two dedicated cores routinely outperform four shared ones for anything latency-sensitive.", "Single-thread clock speed matters for a specific set of workloads: game server tick loops, trading strategies, most PHP request handling and single-threaded compilation. For those, a high-frequency dual-core beats a slow eight-core." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "buying", "related": [ "what-is-cpu-steal-time", "shared-vs-dedicated-vcpu-difference", "how-much-ram-do-i-need-for-a-vps" ], "wordCount": 128, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/how-many-vcpu-do-i-need" }, { "slug": "how-much-bandwidth-does-a-vps-need", "question": "How much bandwidth does a VPS need?", "shortAnswer": "Most projects use far less than they fear. A typical blog serving 50,000 monthly visits uses about 100 GB. A VPN carrying 1080p video for one person uses roughly 3 GB per hour. Video streaming and seedboxes are the exceptions, where terabytes are normal. Plans here include 2–50 TB, and one is unmetered.", "detail": [ "Estimate from page weight rather than intuition: multiply average page size by page views. A 2 MB page served 50,000 times is 100 GB. Images and video dominate; text and code are noise by comparison.", "Two things consume bandwidth in ways people underestimate: automated crawlers hitting your site, and backups leaving it. Both are worth measuring before choosing a plan." ], "points": [], "table": { "caption": "Monthly transfer by workload", "head": [ "Workload", "Typical monthly transfer" ], "rows": [ [ "Blog, 50k visits", "~100 GB" ], [ "Web application, 500k requests", "~300 GB" ], [ "Personal VPN, heavy use", "~1–2 TB" ], [ "Game server, 20 slots", "~1 TB" ], [ "Jellyfin for a household", "~3–5 TB" ], [ "Seedbox at ratio", "10–40 TB" ] ] }, "topic": "buying", "related": [ "how-much-does-a-vps-cost", "seedbox-storage-sizing" ], "wordCount": 114, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/how-much-bandwidth-does-a-vps-need" }, { "slug": "how-to-choose-a-vps-provider", "question": "How do I choose a VPS provider?", "shortAnswer": "Check five things: virtualisation type (KVM, not OpenVZ), whether cores are dedicated, which jurisdiction the server sits in, what identity data the provider collects, and what happens when someone complains about you. Price is the easiest thing to compare and the least likely to matter after the first month.", "detail": [ "Virtualisation type is the single most common hidden difference. If the provider does not state KVM explicitly, assume container-based virtualisation with oversold memory.", "The second question almost nobody asks before signing up is the abuse policy. Providers vary enormously in whether an automated complaint results in a forwarded email, a warning, or an immediate suspension with your data inaccessible. Read that page before you read the pricing page." ], "points": [ "Is it KVM? If unstated, assume it is not.", "Are the vCPUs dedicated or shared, and does the provider define the term?", "Which country is the hardware in, and which legal system does that imply?", "What identity information is required, and what is retained?", "What is the published response to abuse complaints and legal demands?", "Is there an out-of-band console, or does a firewall mistake mean a support ticket?" ], "table": null, "topic": "buying", "related": [ "what-is-kvm-virtualisation", "will-i-be-suspended-for-a-complaint", "best-country-for-offshore-hosting" ], "wordCount": 186, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/how-to-choose-a-vps-provider" }, { "slug": "can-i-upgrade-a-vps-later", "question": "Can I upgrade a VPS later?", "shortAnswer": "Yes. CPU and RAM can be increased with a reboot, usually in under two minutes. Disk can be grown online. Shrinking is not possible in place — a smaller plan requires a rebuild and restore. Moving to a different country is also a rebuild, because the data has to physically move.", "detail": [ "The practical advice is to start smaller than you think you need. Upgrading is a two-minute reboot; downgrading is a migration. Buying headroom you never use is the most common way people overspend on hosting.", "Storage grows online: the block device expands immediately and you extend the filesystem with a single command. Growing a partition is safe and routine; shrinking one is neither." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "buying", "related": [ "how-to-migrate-a-vps-to-another-country", "what-is-a-snapshot" ], "wordCount": 115, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/can-i-upgrade-a-vps-later" }, { "slug": "how-fast-can-a-vps-be-deployed", "question": "How quickly can a VPS be deployed?", "shortAnswer": "Provisioning takes under 60 seconds once payment confirms. The variable is the payment itself: Solana or TRON confirm in under a minute, Litecoin in about ten, Bitcoin in roughly twenty and Monero in about twenty. From clicking order to holding SSH credentials is typically two to twenty-five minutes depending on the coin.", "detail": [ "There is no manual review step, no identity check and no fraud queue, because there is no card to be fraudulent with. That is the main reason crypto-only providers provision faster than card-based ones, where a new account routinely waits hours for review.", "If you need capacity immediately, pay with a fast-finality chain: Solana, TRON, TON or an EVM layer-2 all confirm in well under a minute." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "buying", "related": [ "how-long-does-crypto-payment-take-to-confirm", "which-crypto-is-best-for-paying-for-hosting" ], "wordCount": 120, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/how-fast-can-a-vps-be-deployed" }, { "slug": "is-a-vps-worth-it", "question": "Is a VPS worth it compared to shared hosting?", "shortAnswer": "A VPS is worth it as soon as you need something shared hosting will not let you do: a specific runtime version, a background worker, a non-web service, Docker, or freedom from arbitrary process limits. If you only serve a static site and never want to touch a terminal, shared hosting is genuinely fine.", "detail": [ "The cost difference at the entry level has largely disappeared — $4 buys a real virtual machine. What has not disappeared is the administration burden: on a VPS, security updates, firewalling and backups are yours.", "The honest test is whether anyone on your side will run apt upgrade once a month. If the answer is no, an unmanaged VPS is a liability rather than an upgrade." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "buying", "related": [ "vps-vs-shared-hosting-difference", "do-i-need-a-managed-vps", "how-to-secure-a-new-vps" ], "wordCount": 121, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/is-a-vps-worth-it" }, { "slug": "do-i-need-a-managed-vps", "question": "Do I need a managed VPS?", "shortAnswer": "You need managed hosting if nobody on your side will apply security updates, configure a firewall or restore a backup. Managed plans cost two to five times more and remove that work. Unmanaged hosting assumes you are comfortable in a terminal — every OnionVPS plan is unmanaged, which is why it is priced as it is.", "detail": [ "The boundary on an unmanaged plan is clear: the provider owns the hardware, network, hypervisor and control plane; you own the operating system and everything above it. We will always get you a working console and a snapshot restore, but we do not administer your operating system.", "A middle path many people miss: an unmanaged instance plus a configuration tool. Ansible, NixOS or a Docker Compose file makes rebuilding a server a five-minute operation, which removes most of the anxiety that drives people to managed hosting." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "buying", "related": [ "managed-vs-unmanaged-difference", "how-to-secure-a-new-vps" ], "wordCount": 143, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/do-i-need-a-managed-vps" }, { "slug": "what-is-the-best-vps-for-beginners", "question": "What is the best VPS setup for a beginner?", "shortAnswer": "Start with 2 vCPU, 4 GB of RAM and Ubuntu 24.04 LTS in the region closest to you. Ubuntu has the largest body of tutorials, which matters more than any specification when you are learning. Take a snapshot before every experiment — it turns a broken server into a two-minute rollback.", "detail": [ "The single most useful habit for a beginner is snapshotting before change. Snapshots here are instant and the first three are free, so there is no reason not to.", "Second most useful: do the security basics on day one. Key-based SSH, no password authentication, no root login, and a firewall that denies everything except what you need. Those four steps eliminate the overwhelming majority of real-world compromises." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "buying", "related": [ "how-to-secure-a-new-vps", "how-to-connect-to-a-vps-with-ssh", "ubuntu-or-debian-for-a-server" ], "wordCount": 119, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/what-is-the-best-vps-for-beginners" }, { "slug": "do-you-offer-a-free-trial", "question": "Is there a free trial or a free VPS?", "shortAnswer": "OnionVPS does not offer a free trial. Instead there is a seven-day money-back guarantee on a first order: if the service does not suit you, tell us within seven days of provisioning and we refund in full to an address you nominate. The entry plan is $4, which makes the risk small either way.", "detail": [ "Free trials exist mainly to filter fraud, and they require exactly the identity verification we have built the service to avoid. A short, unconditional refund window achieves the same outcome without collecting a document.", "Genuinely free VPS offers are almost always one of three things: an OpenVZ container with 128 MB of oversold memory, a time-limited hyperscaler credit that requires a card, or a service that monetises you some other way." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "buying", "related": [ "can-i-get-a-refund-on-crypto-hosting", "how-much-does-a-vps-cost" ], "wordCount": 126, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/do-you-offer-a-free-trial" }, { "slug": "what-is-no-kyc-hosting", "question": "What is no-KYC hosting?", "shortAnswer": "No-KYC hosting is server hosting that does not require identity verification. No passport, no photo ID, no billing address and no payment card. An email address you control and a cryptocurrency payment are the entire signup. The provider therefore holds no identity information that could be breached, sold or compelled.", "detail": [ "KYC — \"know your customer\" — is a set of identification duties imposed on regulated financial institutions. Hosting is not a regulated financial activity, so those duties do not apply to compute providers in the jurisdictions where we operate. Hosts that demand a passport do so for chargeback and fraud control, not because a statute requires it.", "The practical consequence is structural rather than promissory. A provider that never collected your identity cannot lose it in a breach, cannot sell it, and cannot hand it over in response to a demand. That is a property of the architecture, not a policy that could quietly change." ], "points": [ "Held about you: an email address and a payment reference from the processor", "Not held: name, address, government ID, card details, phone number", "Provisioning: minutes, because there is no verification queue" ], "table": null, "topic": "privacy", "related": [ "is-no-kyc-hosting-legal", "what-data-does-a-hosting-provider-collect", "how-to-buy-a-vps-anonymously" ], "wordCount": 186, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/what-is-no-kyc-hosting" }, { "slug": "is-no-kyc-hosting-legal", "question": "Is no-KYC hosting legal?", "shortAnswer": "Yes. There is no general legal requirement to identify server customers in the jurisdictions where OnionVPS operates. Anti-money-laundering identification duties bind banks, payment institutions and certain regulated intermediaries — not compute providers. Choosing not to collect identity documents is a lawful business decision, not a loophole.", "detail": [ "This is frequently confused with financial regulation. Exchanges and payment processors must identify customers because they handle money transmission. A hosting provider selling a virtual machine is selling a service, and no equivalent duty attaches.", "What remains true regardless of identity collection: the content you host is subject to the law of the jurisdiction it sits in, and valid legal process from a court with jurisdiction over us is answered. Not collecting identity data changes what can be disclosed; it does not create immunity." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "privacy", "related": [ "what-is-no-kyc-hosting", "what-happens-if-you-receive-a-subpoena", "is-offshore-hosting-legal" ], "wordCount": 131, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/is-no-kyc-hosting-legal" }, { "slug": "how-to-buy-a-vps-anonymously", "question": "How do I buy a VPS anonymously?", "shortAnswer": "Use a provider that requires no identity verification, sign up from a network that is not your home connection, use an email alias created for the purpose, and pay in Monero. Those four steps remove the correlation points that normally link a server to a person: identity documents, source IP, email reuse and payment trail.", "detail": [ "Each step closes a different gap. No-KYC hosting removes the identity document. Tor or a VPN at signup removes the source-IP link. A dedicated alias removes email reuse across services. Monero removes the payment trail, which is the one people most often overlook — a Bitcoin payment from an exchange account with your passport attached defeats the other three.", "Two things this does not do: it does not anonymise what the server itself sends, and it does not survive operational mistakes. If the server later connects to an account tied to your name, that link exists regardless of how it was purchased." ], "points": [ "Sign up over Tor or a VPN you did not buy with a card", "Use a fresh email alias, not one you have used elsewhere", "Pay in Monero, or in Bitcoin passed through an atomic swap", "Never reuse SSH keys that appear in a public repository", "Keep the server out of accounts that identify you" ], "table": null, "topic": "privacy", "related": [ "what-is-no-kyc-hosting", "is-crypto-payment-anonymous", "can-a-vps-be-traced-back-to-me" ], "wordCount": 212, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/how-to-buy-a-vps-anonymously" }, { "slug": "what-data-does-a-hosting-provider-collect", "question": "What data does a hosting provider collect about me?", "shortAnswer": "Most providers collect a name, billing address, payment card, phone number, government ID, signup IP address, and complete access and connection logs. OnionVPS collects an email address, a payment reference from the processor, and the technical state needed to run your instance. No name, no address, no document, no card, no connection logs.", "detail": [ "The gap is what matters in a breach. A conventional provider's customer database is an identity dossier; ours is a list of email aliases and machine identifiers. Both can be stolen; only one is worth stealing.", "We do retain what is technically unavoidable: which instance exists, on which host, with which IP, and the billing state. We do not retain netflow records, connection logs, DNS query logs, or the contents of your disk — and we do not have the ability to reconstruct them after the fact." ], "points": [], "table": { "caption": "Typical provider versus OnionVPS", "head": [ "Data point", "Typical provider", "OnionVPS" ], "rows": [ [ "Legal name", "Required", "Never collected" ], [ "Billing address", "Required", "Never collected" ], [ "Government ID", "Often required", "Never collected" ], [ "Payment card", "Required", "Not accepted" ], [ "Phone number", "Often required", "Never collected" ], [ "Signup IP address", "Retained indefinitely", "Not retained" ], [ "Connection / netflow logs", "Retained 30–365 days", "Not generated" ], [ "Email address", "Retained", "Retained — the only identifier" ] ] }, "topic": "privacy", "related": [ "do-vps-providers-keep-logs", "what-is-no-kyc-hosting", "can-hosting-provider-see-my-files" ], "wordCount": 141, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/what-data-does-a-hosting-provider-collect" }, { "slug": "do-vps-providers-keep-logs", "question": "Do VPS providers keep logs of what I do?", "shortAnswer": "Most do. Netflow records, connection logs and panel access logs are standard, retained for 30 to 365 days, and in the EU and UK certain retention is legally mandated. OnionVPS operates in jurisdictions with no such mandate and does not generate netflow or connection logs at all, so there is nothing to retain or disclose.", "detail": [ "The distinction that matters is between logs that exist and logs that are kept. A provider can honestly say \"we do not sell your data\" while retaining a full record of every connection your server made. Ask specifically about netflow.", "What we do keep, because it is operationally unavoidable: the existence and configuration of your instance, aggregate bandwidth counters for billing, and hypervisor-level health metrics. None of these record destinations, contents or timing of individual connections." ], "points": [ "No netflow or connection records generated", "No DNS query logging on our resolvers", "No panel access-log retention beyond the active session", "Aggregate bandwidth counters only, for billing" ], "table": null, "topic": "privacy", "related": [ "what-data-does-a-hosting-provider-collect", "which-country-has-no-data-retention", "what-is-a-warrant-canary" ], "wordCount": 158, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/do-vps-providers-keep-logs" }, { "slug": "can-a-vps-be-traced-back-to-me", "question": "Can a VPS be traced back to me?", "shortAnswer": "It depends entirely on the links you create, not on the hosting itself. A no-KYC server paid for in Monero and administered over Tor has no provider-side link to you. A server paid for with a card, or logged into from your home IP, or running an account in your name, is trivially linkable regardless of the provider.", "detail": [ "Think of it as a chain of correlations. Payment, signup network, email address, SSH source addresses, domain registration, and what the server itself does are all separate links. Hosting choice removes one of them. Every remaining link is yours to manage.", "The most common failure is not technical. People buy anonymously, then log in from home, register a domain with real details, or run a service that identifies them. The infrastructure was never the weak point." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "privacy", "related": [ "how-to-buy-a-vps-anonymously", "is-crypto-payment-anonymous", "anonymous-domain-registration" ], "wordCount": 135, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/can-a-vps-be-traced-back-to-me" }, { "slug": "what-is-offshore-hosting", "question": "What is offshore hosting?", "shortAnswer": "Offshore hosting means placing a server in a jurisdiction other than your own — usually one outside the Fourteen Eyes intelligence-sharing alliances and outside EU data-retention rules. The purpose is legal, not technical: compelling data from that server requires working through mutual legal assistance treaties rather than issuing a domestic order.", "detail": [ "The practical effect is friction and transparency. A domestic order to a domestic provider can be fast and secret. An MLAT request to a foreign jurisdiction is slow, requires dual criminality in most treaties, and frequently fails for civil matters entirely.", "What offshore hosting is not: immunity. Local law applies to the server, illegal content is still illegal, and a provider that respects valid process will still respect it. What changes is which court has to issue the order and how long it takes." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "privacy", "related": [ "best-country-for-offshore-hosting", "is-offshore-hosting-legal", "what-is-mlat" ], "wordCount": 136, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/what-is-offshore-hosting" }, { "slug": "best-country-for-offshore-hosting", "question": "Which country is best for offshore hosting?", "shortAnswer": "There is no single best country — it depends on which threat you are addressing. For legal protection with European latency, Switzerland or Iceland. For minimal applicable statute plus Americas latency, Panama. For maximum corporate separation, Seychelles. For EU peering without a Fourteen Eyes jurisdiction, Bulgaria, Romania or Moldova.", "detail": [ "Work backwards from the risk. If the concern is civil discovery, jurisdictional distance from the plaintiff matters most. If it is state surveillance, alliance membership matters most. If it is copyright enforcement, a country where takedown requires a court order rather than a notice matters most. These point to different places.", "Latency is the constraint that keeps this honest. A perfect jurisdiction 250 ms from your users is often the wrong answer. Many people end up with a split design: the sensitive component offshore, the latency-critical component near the users." ], "points": [], "table": { "caption": "Common offshore choices and what each is good at", "head": [ "Jurisdiction", "Alliance member", "Strongest for" ], "rows": [ [ "Switzerland", "No", "Tested statutory data protection, EU latency" ], [ "Iceland", "No", "Speech protection, renewable power" ], [ "Panama", "No", "Minimal applicable statute, Americas latency" ], [ "Seychelles", "No", "Corporate separation, limited MLAT reach" ], [ "Moldova", "No", "Non-EU with European latency, low cost" ], [ "Bulgaria / Romania", "No", "EU peering outside the Eyes alliances" ], [ "Curaçao", "No", "Autonomous jurisdiction, iGaming and media" ], [ "Malaysia", "No", "Asian latency outside Western frameworks" ] ] }, "topic": "privacy", "related": [ "what-are-the-14-eyes-countries", "which-country-has-no-data-retention", "what-is-offshore-hosting" ], "wordCount": 140, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/best-country-for-offshore-hosting" }, { "slug": "what-are-the-14-eyes-countries", "question": "Which countries are in the Five, Nine and Fourteen Eyes?", "shortAnswer": "Five Eyes: the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Nine Eyes adds Denmark, France, the Netherlands and Norway. Fourteen Eyes adds Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain and Sweden. These alliances share signals intelligence, which is why privacy-oriented hosting tends to avoid all fourteen.", "detail": [ "Membership is a legitimate signal but not a complete analysis. It concerns intelligence sharing, not ordinary criminal or civil process — a non-member country can still have aggressive domestic data-retention law, and a member can have strong judicial oversight.", "We publish alliance membership on every location page because it is the single most-asked jurisdiction question in this market, and because it is a public, verifiable fact rather than a marketing claim." ], "points": [], "table": { "caption": "Alliance membership", "head": [ "Tier", "Countries" ], "rows": [ [ "Five Eyes", "United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand" ], [ "Nine Eyes (adds)", "Denmark, France, Netherlands, Norway" ], [ "Fourteen Eyes (adds)", "Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden" ] ] }, "topic": "privacy", "related": [ "best-country-for-offshore-hosting", "which-country-has-no-data-retention" ], "wordCount": 117, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/what-are-the-14-eyes-countries" }, { "slug": "which-country-has-no-data-retention", "question": "Which countries have no mandatory data retention?", "shortAnswer": "Panama, Seychelles, Belize, Costa Rica, Curaçao, Moldova and Georgia impose no general data-retention obligation on hosting providers. Switzerland's obligations are narrow and telecoms-focused. Romania struck its retention law down twice on constitutional grounds, and the EU's original Data Retention Directive was invalidated by the Court of Justice in 2014.", "detail": [ "Retention law usually targets telecommunications operators rather than hosting providers, so the practical question is how broadly a given country defines \"operator\". In several EU states the definition has been read widely enough to capture hosts.", "Because obligations change, we treat this as a live question rather than a settled one. If a jurisdiction we operate in introduces a retention mandate, we will say so on the location page and in the warrant canary rather than quietly complying." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "privacy", "related": [ "do-vps-providers-keep-logs", "best-country-for-offshore-hosting", "what-is-a-warrant-canary" ], "wordCount": 128, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/which-country-has-no-data-retention" }, { "slug": "what-is-a-warrant-canary", "question": "What is a warrant canary and does it work?", "shortAnswer": "A warrant canary is a regularly updated statement that a provider has not received a secret legal demand. If the statement stops being updated, the reader infers that it has. It works because many jurisdictions can compel silence but cannot compel a false statement — though the mechanism is untested in most courts.", "detail": [ "A canary is only meaningful with three properties: a fixed publication schedule, a cryptographic signature, and a recent external timestamp such as a blockchain hash proving it could not have been pre-signed. A canary without those is decoration.", "Be clear about its limits. It is an inference mechanism, not a guarantee, and its legal status has never been fully tested. We publish one because the alternative — silence — carries no information at all." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "privacy", "related": [ "what-happens-if-you-receive-a-subpoena", "do-vps-providers-keep-logs" ], "wordCount": 128, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/what-is-a-warrant-canary" }, { "slug": "is-full-disk-encryption-useful-on-a-vps", "question": "Is full-disk encryption useful on a VPS?", "shortAnswer": "Against physical seizure of a powered-off disk, decisively yes: the volume is ciphertext without your passphrase. Against an attacker with access to the running hypervisor, no — the key is in memory the host can read. Any provider claiming otherwise is overselling, and the distinction is the whole point.", "detail": [ "The right implementation keeps the passphrase off the machine. Our Bastion line ships LUKS2 with an initramfs SSH daemon: on every boot you connect and supply the passphrase, and we never hold it. That means a reboot needs you, which is the correct trade for this threat model.", "What it genuinely protects against: decommissioned disks, hardware seizure, a datacentre incident, and a support engineer with physical access. What it does not protect against: a compromised hypervisor, or a compromise of the running instance itself." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "privacy", "related": [ "can-hosting-provider-see-my-files", "can-my-vps-be-seized" ], "wordCount": 134, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/is-full-disk-encryption-useful-on-a-vps" }, { "slug": "can-hosting-provider-see-my-files", "question": "Can my hosting provider see the files on my VPS?", "shortAnswer": "Technically yes: any provider with hypervisor access can read an unencrypted guest disk and its memory. That is true of every virtualisation platform. What varies is whether they do, whether policy forbids it, and whether full-disk encryption keyed by you makes stored data unreadable when the instance is powered off.", "detail": [ "Honesty matters more than reassurance here. Marketing that claims a provider \"cannot\" access your data on a normal VPS is false. The accurate statement is that access is possible, prohibited by policy, and made useless for data at rest by encryption you control.", "Our position: staff do not access guest storage except where you ask us to, or where a valid order compels it. On the Bastion line the disk is LUKS2-encrypted with a passphrase we never hold, so at rest the question does not arise." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "privacy", "related": [ "is-full-disk-encryption-useful-on-a-vps", "what-happens-if-you-receive-a-subpoena" ], "wordCount": 137, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/can-hosting-provider-see-my-files" }, { "slug": "how-to-host-a-website-anonymously", "question": "How do I host a website anonymously?", "shortAnswer": "Combine four things: a no-KYC host paid in Monero, a domain registered with privacy protection or an anonymous registrar, a CDN or reverse proxy so the origin IP is never public, and administration only over Tor or a VPN. Removing any one of these usually undoes the other three.", "detail": [ "Origin leaks are the most common failure. Historical DNS records, TLS certificate transparency logs, mail headers, error pages and misconfigured subdomains all expose origin IPs routinely — often years after the fact. Assume the origin will be found unless you actively prevent it.", "The second most common failure is administrative. Logging into the panel from home, reusing an SSH key that appears in a public repository, or registering the domain with real details all create links that no amount of hosting choice can remove." ], "points": [ "No-KYC host, paid in Monero", "Registrar that accepts crypto and offers privacy protection", "Reverse proxy in front; never publish the origin address", "Fresh SSH keys, used nowhere else", "Administer only over Tor or a VPN", "Strip metadata from anything you publish" ], "table": null, "topic": "privacy", "related": [ "how-to-buy-a-vps-anonymously", "anonymous-domain-registration", "can-a-vps-be-traced-back-to-me" ], "wordCount": 174, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/how-to-host-a-website-anonymously" }, { "slug": "anonymous-domain-registration", "question": "How do I register a domain anonymously?", "shortAnswer": "Use a registrar that accepts cryptocurrency and offers WHOIS privacy, and choose a TLD whose registry does not mandate public registrant data. Since GDPR most WHOIS records are already redacted, but the registrar still holds the underlying data — so paying in crypto matters more than the privacy add-on.", "detail": [ "Country-code TLDs vary enormously. Some require verified local presence and publish registrant details regardless of privacy services; others are entirely permissive. Check the registry policy before you buy, not after.", "A registrar can be compelled to disclose what it holds, and it can transfer or suspend a domain. That makes the domain a genuine single point of failure for an anonymous site — which is why some projects run an onion service alongside, where no registrar exists at all." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "privacy", "related": [ "how-to-host-a-website-anonymously", "can-a-vps-be-traced-back-to-me" ], "wordCount": 129, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/anonymous-domain-registration" }, { "slug": "what-is-bulletproof-hosting", "question": "What is bulletproof hosting, and is OnionVPS one?", "shortAnswer": "Bulletproof hosting is a provider that claims to ignore all abuse complaints and law enforcement, including for criminal activity. OnionVPS is not one. We hold no identity data and we do not act on speculative complaints — but we do not host malware command-and-control, phishing or child sexual abuse material, and we answer valid legal process.", "detail": [ "The distinction matters practically as well as ethically. Bulletproof providers' address space is blocklisted wholesale, which means mail from it is rejected, API calls from it are challenged, and users see CAPTCHAs everywhere. The service you bought stops working.", "What most people asking for \"bulletproof\" actually want is a provider that will not terminate them over one automated complaint, and that does not hold their identity. That is what anonymous hosting on a clean network provides." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "privacy", "related": [ "will-i-be-suspended-for-a-complaint", "what-content-is-not-allowed", "do-you-respond-to-abuse-complaints" ], "wordCount": 133, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/what-is-bulletproof-hosting" }, { "slug": "does-a-vpn-protect-my-vps", "question": "Does using a VPN to connect to my VPS help?", "shortAnswer": "It helps with one specific thing: it stops your home IP address appearing in the server's authentication logs and in any provider-side records. It does nothing about what the server itself does, what it sends, or how it was paid for. Useful as one layer, useless as the only one.", "detail": [ "Tor is stronger than a VPN for this purpose, because no single party sees both your address and the destination. The trade is latency, which is tolerable for SSH administration and unpleasant for anything interactive.", "The mistake to avoid is inconsistency. Connecting over Tor ninety-nine times and once from home puts your home address in the log exactly once, which is all it takes." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "privacy", "related": [ "can-a-vps-be-traced-back-to-me", "how-to-buy-a-vps-anonymously" ], "wordCount": 115, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/does-a-vpn-protect-my-vps" }, { "slug": "can-i-pay-for-a-vps-with-crypto", "question": "Can I pay for a VPS with cryptocurrency?", "shortAnswer": "Yes — at OnionVPS it is the only way to pay. Checkout accepts 20 cryptocurrencies across more than 15 networks, including Bitcoin, Monero, Litecoin, Ethereum, USDT and Solana, processed through OxaPay. No account registration, no card, no bank, and no identity verification at any point.", "detail": [ "Each invoice generates a fresh receiving address with a locked exchange rate and a 90-minute lifetime. Send the exact amount, and provisioning starts as soon as the required confirmations land — typically within two to twenty-five minutes depending on the chain.", "We hold no custody at any point. The payment processor generates the address and settles to us; we never see a wallet you control, and there is no balance on our side to freeze." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "payment", "related": [ "which-crypto-is-best-for-paying-for-hosting", "how-long-does-crypto-payment-take-to-confirm", "do-you-accept-paypal-or-credit-cards" ], "wordCount": 121, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/can-i-pay-for-a-vps-with-crypto" }, { "slug": "which-crypto-is-best-for-paying-for-hosting", "question": "Which cryptocurrency is best for paying for hosting?", "shortAnswer": "Monero for privacy — it hides sender, receiver and amount at the protocol level. USDT on TRON for cost and price stability, since the fee is cents and a dollar-pegged invoice cannot move against you. Solana or TON if you want the server provisioned within a minute. Bitcoin if convenience matters more than the ledger being public.", "detail": [ "The choice is a trade between three things: privacy, fee cost and confirmation speed. Monero optimises the first, stablecoins on cheap chains the second, and high-throughput chains the third. There is no coin that leads on all three.", "If you are paying for hosting specifically because you want privacy, the coin choice is not a detail — it is most of the decision. A Bitcoin payment sent from an exchange account with your identity attached links you to the invoice permanently, no matter how anonymous the hosting signup was." ], "points": [], "table": { "caption": "Coin selection by priority", "head": [ "Priority", "Recommended", "Why" ], "rows": [ [ "Privacy", "Monero (XMR)", "Amounts and parties hidden by protocol design" ], [ "Lowest fee", "USDT (TRC20), TRX", "Fees measured in cents" ], [ "Fastest provisioning", "Solana, TON, TRON", "Confirmation in under a minute" ], [ "Price stability", "USDT, USDC", "Dollar-pegged; the invoice cannot move" ], [ "Easiest to acquire", "Bitcoin, Litecoin", "Available on every exchange" ] ] }, "topic": "payment", "related": [ "how-to-pay-for-a-vps-with-monero", "is-crypto-payment-anonymous", "what-happens-if-crypto-price-changes" ], "wordCount": 147, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/which-crypto-is-best-for-paying-for-hosting" }, { "slug": "how-to-pay-for-a-vps-with-monero", "question": "How do I pay for a VPS with Monero?", "shortAnswer": "Choose a plan, select XMR at checkout, and an invoice appears with a fresh Monero address, the exact amount and a QR code. Send from any Monero wallet. After ten confirmations — about twenty minutes — provisioning starts automatically and credentials are emailed to the address you supplied.", "detail": [ "Monero is the recommended coin here because it is the only widely accepted one where the payment itself carries no linkable information. Ring signatures hide the sender, stealth addresses hide the recipient, and RingCT hides the amount. There is no public record connecting the payment to an invoice.", "If you do not already hold XMR, the common routes are an atomic swap from Bitcoin, a decentralised exchange such as Haveno, or a peer-to-peer market. Buying on a centralised exchange with verified identity and withdrawing to your own wallet still breaks the on-chain link, though the exchange retains a record of the withdrawal." ], "points": [ "Ten confirmations, roughly 20 minutes", "Invoice valid for 90 minutes at a locked rate", "Underpayments up to 3% are accepted automatically", "No account, no registration, no identity check" ], "table": null, "topic": "payment", "related": [ "can-i-pay-for-a-vps-with-crypto", "is-crypto-payment-anonymous", "monero-vs-bitcoin-difference" ], "wordCount": 178, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/how-to-pay-for-a-vps-with-monero" }, { "slug": "how-to-pay-for-a-vps-with-bitcoin", "question": "How do I pay for a VPS with Bitcoin?", "shortAnswer": "Select BTC at checkout and an invoice appears with a fresh address, an exact amount and a locked rate valid for 90 minutes. Send from any wallet, including Lightning. After two confirmations — roughly twenty minutes on-chain, or seconds over Lightning — the server provisions automatically.", "detail": [ "Set an appropriate fee. If the transaction is still unconfirmed when the invoice expires, the payment is still credited when it lands, but the rate may be recalculated. During periods of network congestion a low-fee transaction can sit for hours.", "Remember what Bitcoin is not: private. The payment is a permanent public record, and if the coins came from an exchange account with your identity attached, the link is durable. If privacy is the motivation, use Monero." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "payment", "related": [ "how-to-pay-for-a-vps-with-monero", "monero-vs-bitcoin-difference", "is-crypto-payment-anonymous" ], "wordCount": 124, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/how-to-pay-for-a-vps-with-bitcoin" }, { "slug": "is-crypto-payment-anonymous", "question": "Is paying with cryptocurrency anonymous?", "shortAnswer": "It depends entirely on the coin. Monero is private by protocol design — amounts and parties are hidden. Bitcoin, Litecoin and Ethereum are pseudonymous: every transaction is permanently public, and chain analysis routinely links addresses to exchange accounts with verified identities attached.", "detail": [ "The weak link is almost always acquisition rather than spending. Coins withdrawn from an identity-verified exchange carry that association forward through every subsequent transaction on a transparent chain.", "Practical ordering, most to least private: Monero; Litecoin with MWEB or Dash with PrivateSend; Bitcoin after a coinjoin; Bitcoin direct from an exchange; a stablecoin, where the issuer can additionally freeze the address." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "payment", "related": [ "which-crypto-is-best-for-paying-for-hosting", "how-to-buy-a-vps-anonymously", "monero-vs-bitcoin-difference" ], "wordCount": 104, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/is-crypto-payment-anonymous" }, { "slug": "how-long-does-crypto-payment-take-to-confirm", "question": "How long does a crypto payment take to confirm?", "shortAnswer": "It varies by chain: Solana and TON confirm in under a minute, TRON in about a minute, Litecoin in around ten minutes, Bitcoin in roughly twenty and Monero in about twenty. Provisioning begins automatically the moment the required confirmations land, and takes under a further sixty seconds.", "detail": [ "Confirmation counts are set by the processor to balance settlement risk against waiting time, and are higher on chains with cheaper reorganisations. They are shown on the invoice before you send.", "If you need capacity immediately, pay on a fast-finality chain. If you are provisioning ahead of time, chain speed is irrelevant and coin choice should be driven by privacy or fee cost instead." ], "points": [], "table": { "caption": "Typical time from broadcast to provisioning", "head": [ "Coin", "Confirmations", "Approx. wait" ], "rows": [ [ "Solana (SOL)", "32", "Under 1 minute" ], [ "TON", "10", "About 1 minute" ], [ "TRON (TRX, USDT-TRC20)", "20", "About 1 minute" ], [ "Litecoin (LTC)", "4", "~10 minutes" ], [ "Bitcoin (BTC)", "2", "~20 minutes" ], [ "Monero (XMR)", "10", "~20 minutes" ], [ "Ethereum (ETH)", "12", "~3 minutes" ] ] }, "topic": "payment", "related": [ "how-fast-can-a-vps-be-deployed", "which-crypto-is-best-for-paying-for-hosting" ], "wordCount": 112, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/how-long-does-crypto-payment-take-to-confirm" }, { "slug": "what-if-i-underpay-an-invoice", "question": "What happens if I underpay or overpay an invoice?", "shortAnswer": "Shortfalls up to 3% are accepted automatically and the order provisions normally — this covers wallets that deduct the network fee from the sent amount. Larger shortfalls are held; you can top up against the same invoice or request a refund. Overpayments are refunded to an address you nominate.", "detail": [ "The most common cause of an underpayment is a wallet that subtracts the miner fee from the amount rather than adding it. Send the exact figure shown and let the wallet add the fee on top.", "If an invoice expires with a partial payment against it, nothing is lost. Contact support with the transaction hash and we will either credit it to a new invoice or refund it." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "payment", "related": [ "can-i-get-a-refund-on-crypto-hosting", "what-happens-if-crypto-price-changes" ], "wordCount": 118, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/what-if-i-underpay-an-invoice" }, { "slug": "what-happens-if-crypto-price-changes", "question": "What happens if the crypto price changes while I am paying?", "shortAnswer": "The invoice locks an exchange rate for its 90-minute lifetime, so movement during that window does not affect you — send the quoted amount and the order completes. If the invoice expires before the transaction confirms, the payment is still credited and the rate is recalculated against the amount received.", "detail": [ "To remove the question entirely, pay with a dollar-pegged stablecoin. USDT or USDC on a cheap network means the invoice amount and the sent amount cannot diverge at all.", "Renewals are quoted fresh at the time of renewal, so a term price is fixed in dollars rather than in coin. Your bill does not change because the market did." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "payment", "related": [ "what-if-i-underpay-an-invoice", "which-crypto-is-best-for-paying-for-hosting" ], "wordCount": 110, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/what-happens-if-crypto-price-changes" }, { "slug": "can-i-get-a-refund-on-crypto-hosting", "question": "Can I get a refund if I paid in crypto?", "shortAnswer": "Yes. First orders carry a seven-day money-back guarantee: tell us within seven days of provisioning and we refund in full to an address you nominate, in the coin you paid with or in an equivalent. After seven days the term runs to its end. Service credits under the uptime SLA apply separately and are not time-limited.", "detail": [ "A crypto refund is initiated by us rather than reversed by a bank, so it needs a destination address from you. Refunds are usually sent within one business day of the request.", "Because there are no chargebacks, we can price the service lower than card-accepting providers, who carry both processing fees and fraud losses. The seven-day window is the deliberate trade-off for that." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "payment", "related": [ "do-you-offer-a-free-trial", "what-is-your-uptime-sla" ], "wordCount": 120, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/can-i-get-a-refund-on-crypto-hosting" }, { "slug": "do-you-accept-paypal-or-credit-cards", "question": "Do you accept PayPal, credit cards or bank transfer?", "shortAnswer": "No. OnionVPS is crypto-only, deliberately. Accepting cards would require collecting a name, billing address and often identity documents for fraud control — exactly the data the service is designed not to hold. Crypto settlement is what makes no-KYC provisioning possible at all.", "detail": [ "It is also what makes the price what it is. Card processing costs 2.9% plus a fixed fee, plus fraud losses and chargeback handling. Crypto settlement costs about 1% and cannot be reversed, and that difference is in the plan price rather than in a margin.", "If you hold no cryptocurrency, the simplest route is buying USDT or Litecoin on any major exchange and sending it directly to the invoice address. For a privacy-motivated purchase, swap into Monero first." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "payment", "related": [ "can-i-pay-for-a-vps-with-crypto", "crypto-vs-card-payment-difference", "which-crypto-is-best-for-paying-for-hosting" ], "wordCount": 122, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/do-you-accept-paypal-or-credit-cards" }, { "slug": "is-there-a-setup-fee", "question": "Are there setup fees or hidden charges?", "shortAnswer": "No setup fee, no provisioning charge, and no bandwidth overage billing. The plan price includes the transfer allowance, DDoS mitigation, one IPv4 address, a routed IPv6 /64, three snapshots and the out-of-band console. The only optional charges are add-ons you explicitly select at checkout.", "detail": [ "Attack traffic is never billed. If your instance is targeted by a denial-of-service attack, the scrubbed traffic does not count against your allowance — you are not charged for someone else's packets.", "If you exceed your transfer allowance we throttle rather than bill, and we tell you first. There is no mechanism by which a month can cost more than the price you agreed." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "payment", "related": [ "how-much-does-a-vps-cost", "what-is-included-in-every-plan" ], "wordCount": 109, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/is-there-a-setup-fee" }, { "slug": "what-is-included-in-every-plan", "question": "What is included in every plan?", "shortAnswer": "Full root access, KVM virtualisation with custom kernel support, custom ISO upload, an out-of-band VNC console, one IPv4 address, a routed IPv6 /64, always-on DDoS mitigation, three free snapshots, self-service reverse DNS, the full REST API and Terraform provider, and no identity verification at any point.", "detail": [ "Several of these are commonly sold as upgrades elsewhere. DDoS mitigation, IPv6, reverse DNS control and the out-of-band console are included at every tier, including the $4 plan.", "What is optional: additional IPv4 addresses, nightly encrypted backups, layer-7 DDoS filtering, Windows Server licensing, and extra RAM or disk. Everything else is in the plan price." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "payment", "related": [ "is-there-a-setup-fee", "how-much-does-a-vps-cost" ], "wordCount": 102, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/what-is-included-in-every-plan" }, { "slug": "is-offshore-hosting-legal", "question": "Is offshore hosting legal?", "shortAnswer": "Yes. Renting a server in another country is an ordinary commercial transaction, and no jurisdiction we operate in prohibits it. Offshore hosting changes which law governs the server and which court can compel disclosure. It does not make otherwise-illegal content legal, and it does not exempt you from the law where you live.", "detail": [ "Two legal systems remain relevant at all times: the law of the country the server sits in, which governs the hosting, and the law of your own country, which continues to govern you. Offshore hosting affects the first and not the second.", "For most customers the practical benefit is procedural. A domestic order to a domestic provider can be issued quickly and sometimes secretly. A foreign request has to travel through mutual legal assistance, which is slow, requires dual criminality under most treaties, and frequently fails for civil matters entirely." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "legal", "related": [ "what-is-offshore-hosting", "what-is-mlat", "does-the-dmca-apply-to-offshore-hosting" ], "wordCount": 144, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/is-offshore-hosting-legal" }, { "slug": "does-the-dmca-apply-to-offshore-hosting", "question": "Does the DMCA apply to offshore hosting?", "shortAnswer": "The DMCA is United States copyright statute. Its notice-and-takedown procedure and safe harbour apply to service providers situated in the United States. A server in Panama, Moldova or Seychelles is governed by that country's copyright law instead — which in most cases requires a court order rather than a private notice.", "detail": [ "This is often described as \"DMCA ignored\", which is misleading. The accurate statement is that the DMCA procedure has no application outside the US, so a notice sent to a non-US host is a letter rather than a legal instrument. It is not that the notice is defied; it is that it has no procedural effect.", "Copyright itself is near-universal through the Berne Convention. Infringement remains unlawful in every jurisdiction we operate in. What differs is the enforcement mechanism: notice-and-takedown in the US, judicial process almost everywhere else." ], "points": [ "DMCA notices to non-US locations: no procedural effect, forwarded for information", "Valid court orders from a competent court: acted on", "US locations (New York, Ashburn, Miami, Dallas, Chicago, Los Angeles and others): DMCA applies fully", "Content that is illegal in the host jurisdiction: removed regardless of who complains" ], "table": null, "topic": "legal", "related": [ "is-offshore-hosting-legal", "do-you-respond-to-abuse-complaints", "what-content-is-not-allowed" ], "wordCount": 187, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/does-the-dmca-apply-to-offshore-hosting" }, { "slug": "what-happens-if-you-receive-a-subpoena", "question": "What happens if you receive a subpoena or court order?", "shortAnswer": "We assess whether it is valid legal process from a court with jurisdiction over OnionVPS. If it is, we comply with exactly what is ordered and nothing beyond it. In practice that is very little: an email address and a payment reference. If it is not valid, we reject it. Either way, the warrant canary reflects reality.", "detail": [ "Because we never collect identity documents, billing addresses, phone numbers or card details, and do not generate connection logs, there is very little that any order can produce. This is the central design decision of the service: minimise what exists rather than promise to guard it.", "Where the law permits, we notify the affected customer before responding, so that they have the opportunity to challenge the order themselves. Where a gag order forbids notification, we cannot notify — and the warrant canary is what carries that information instead." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "legal", "related": [ "what-is-a-warrant-canary", "what-data-does-a-hosting-provider-collect", "what-is-mlat" ], "wordCount": 146, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/what-happens-if-you-receive-a-subpoena" }, { "slug": "what-is-mlat", "question": "What is an MLAT and why does it matter for hosting?", "shortAnswer": "A mutual legal assistance treaty is the formal channel through which one country asks another to gather evidence on its behalf. It matters because a foreign authority generally cannot order a Panamanian or Seychellois host directly — it must route the request through that country's own courts, which is slow and often unsuccessful.", "detail": [ "MLAT requests routinely take six to eighteen months. Most treaties require dual criminality — the conduct must be an offence in both countries — and many exclude civil matters entirely, which is why offshore jurisdiction is particularly effective against speculative civil discovery.", "Not every pair of countries has a treaty. Where none exists, the requesting state must use letters rogatory, a diplomatic channel that is slower still and entirely discretionary for the receiving court." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "legal", "related": [ "is-offshore-hosting-legal", "best-country-for-offshore-hosting", "what-happens-if-you-receive-a-subpoena" ], "wordCount": 128, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/what-is-mlat" }, { "slug": "what-content-is-not-allowed", "question": "What content is not allowed on your servers?", "shortAnswer": "Child sexual abuse material, which we report to the appropriate authority. Malware command-and-control, ransomware infrastructure and exploit kits. Phishing and credential harvesting. Spam and unsolicited bulk mail. Attacks originating from your instance. Content illegal in the jurisdiction hosting it. Everything else lawful is permitted, including content other providers refuse.", "detail": [ "The line is active harm to third parties, not offensiveness, controversy or commercial inconvenience. Political speech, security research, adult material that is lawful where it is hosted, cryptocurrency infrastructure, privacy services, competitive intelligence and journalism are all normal workloads here.", "We do not scan your storage, inspect your traffic or profile what you run. Enforcement is complaint-driven and evidence-driven, which is the only approach compatible with not surveilling customers." ], "points": [ "Prohibited: CSAM, malware C2, ransomware, phishing, spam, outbound attacks", "Prohibited: proof-of-work mining on shared hardware, for neighbour impact rather than ideology", "Permitted: VPNs, Tor relays and bridges, scraping of public data, adult content lawful in the host jurisdiction, security research with written authorisation, iGaming where licensed", "Exit relays: permitted in approved jurisdictions with a published abuse contact" ], "table": null, "topic": "legal", "related": [ "do-you-respond-to-abuse-complaints", "will-i-be-suspended-for-a-complaint", "what-is-bulletproof-hosting" ], "wordCount": 175, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/what-content-is-not-allowed" }, { "slug": "do-you-respond-to-abuse-complaints", "question": "How do you handle abuse complaints?", "shortAnswer": "Complaints are triaged by evidence, not by volume. Automated copyright notices to non-US locations are forwarded to you for information and no action follows. Reports of active harm — outbound attacks, phishing, malware distribution — get a response within hours. Valid court orders are answered. We do not suspend on a single unverified complaint.", "detail": [ "You always get a working window to act unless the harm is ongoing and severe. In practice that means 72 hours for most matters, and immediate action only where an instance is actively attacking a third party or distributing malware.", "We never disclose customer identity in response to an abuse complaint, because we have none to disclose. Complainants are told the report was received and forwarded; that is the entire disclosure." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "legal", "related": [ "will-i-be-suspended-for-a-complaint", "what-content-is-not-allowed", "does-the-dmca-apply-to-offshore-hosting" ], "wordCount": 126, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/do-you-respond-to-abuse-complaints" }, { "slug": "will-i-be-suspended-for-a-complaint", "question": "Will my server be suspended if someone complains about it?", "shortAnswer": "Not for a single unverified complaint. Suspension is reserved for active, ongoing harm: an instance participating in an attack, distributing malware, or hosting CSAM. For everything else you receive the complaint, a stated window to respond, and a route to contest it. Data is never deleted during a suspension review.", "detail": [ "Single-complaint termination is the failure mode people most often describe when they move to us. It usually comes from providers whose abuse process is automated because their margins do not support a human reading anything.", "If we do suspend, network access is cut but storage is preserved and you retain console access to retrieve data. We do not use deletion as an enforcement tool." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "legal", "related": [ "do-you-respond-to-abuse-complaints", "what-content-is-not-allowed" ], "wordCount": 115, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/will-i-be-suspended-for-a-complaint" }, { "slug": "can-my-vps-be-seized", "question": "Can my VPS be seized?", "shortAnswer": "Physical seizure of hosting hardware is rare and requires a criminal warrant executed at the datacentre by local authorities. It is far more common for an authority to order the provider to image a specific instance. Full-disk encryption with a passphrase the provider never holds is the only meaningful protection against either.", "detail": [ "Seizure of an entire rack affects every customer on it, which is why datacentres resist it and courts rarely order it. Targeted imaging of one instance is the realistic scenario, and it requires local judicial authorisation in every jurisdiction we operate in.", "If this is in your threat model, three things follow: use the Bastion line with LUKS2, keep encrypted backups in a second jurisdiction, and rehearse the restore. An untested backup is not a backup." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "legal", "related": [ "is-full-disk-encryption-useful-on-a-vps", "what-happens-if-you-receive-a-subpoena", "how-to-back-up-a-vps" ], "wordCount": 129, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/can-my-vps-be-seized" }, { "slug": "gdpr-and-offshore-hosting", "question": "Does the GDPR apply if I host outside the EU?", "shortAnswer": "The GDPR follows the data subject, not the server. If you process personal data of people in the EU, it applies regardless of where the server sits — and hosting outside the EU adds a transfer-mechanism obligation. Offshore hosting does not exempt you from the GDPR; it adds a step to your compliance.", "detail": [ "For personal data of EU residents, an international transfer needs a lawful basis: an adequacy decision, standard contractual clauses, or a derogation. Switzerland and Uruguay hold adequacy decisions; Panama and Seychelles do not, so SCCs plus a transfer impact assessment are required.", "If you process no personal data of EU residents, none of this applies to you. Many privacy-motivated workloads — a personal VPN, a Tor relay, a private file server — fall entirely outside the regulation." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "legal", "related": [ "is-offshore-hosting-legal", "best-country-for-offshore-hosting" ], "wordCount": 131, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/gdpr-and-offshore-hosting" }, { "slug": "who-is-responsible-for-content-on-a-vps", "question": "Who is legally responsible for content on a VPS?", "shortAnswer": "You are. On an unmanaged VPS you are the operator of the service and the publisher of its content; the provider is a conduit. That allocation is what makes intermediary liability protections work in most jurisdictions — the host is not liable for what it neither controls nor knows about, provided it acts on actual knowledge.", "detail": [ "The practical implication is that \"the host allowed it\" is not a defence available to you, and \"the customer did it\" is generally a defence available to us. That asymmetry is the normal structure of hosting law worldwide.", "It also means the decisions that matter are yours: what you publish, which jurisdiction you chose, and whether you have a plan for a complaint. We can tell you where the line is; we cannot stand behind it for you." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "legal", "related": [ "what-content-is-not-allowed", "is-offshore-hosting-legal" ], "wordCount": 135, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/who-is-responsible-for-content-on-a-vps" }, { "slug": "can-i-run-a-tor-exit-node", "question": "Can I run a Tor exit node?", "shortAnswer": "Middle relays and bridges are permitted on any OnionVPS instance, without restriction. Exit relays are permitted in approved jurisdictions only, and require a published abuse contact and a reduced exit policy. Exits attract complaints about traffic that is not yours, so we require that you are prepared to answer them.", "detail": [ "The reason for the distinction is practical rather than ideological. An exit relay is the apparent source of every connection it carries, so it receives the complaints for all of them. In some jurisdictions that creates real legal exposure for the operator.", "Recommended exit jurisdictions in our fleet are Iceland, Switzerland, Romania, Bulgaria and Moldova, where operating an exit is well established and the legal position is comparatively settled. Ask before deploying and we will confirm current status." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "legal", "related": [ "what-content-is-not-allowed", "tor-vs-vpn-difference" ], "wordCount": 129, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/can-i-run-a-tor-exit-node" }, { "slug": "how-to-connect-to-a-vps-with-ssh", "question": "How do I connect to a VPS with SSH?", "shortAnswer": "Run ssh root@your-server-ip from any terminal on macOS, Linux or Windows 10 and later. Use the key you supplied at provisioning, or the password emailed to you. The first connection shows a host key fingerprint — compare it against the one in the control panel before accepting it.", "detail": [ "Add a key rather than relying on a password. Generate one with ssh-keygen -t ed25519, upload the public half at provisioning or from the panel, and the instance is built with password authentication already disabled.", "If you lock yourself out — a firewall rule, a broken sshd config, a mistyped key — use the out-of-band VNC console in the panel. It attaches to the virtual serial console, so it works even with no network at all." ], "points": [ "ssh -i ~/.ssh/id_ed25519 root@203.0.113.10", "Verify the host key fingerprint against the panel on first connection", "Windows: use the built-in OpenSSH client, not PuTTY, unless you prefer it", "Locked out: the VNC console always works" ], "table": null, "topic": "technical", "related": [ "how-to-secure-a-new-vps", "how-to-reset-a-forgotten-root-password", "what-is-out-of-band-console" ], "wordCount": 158, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/how-to-connect-to-a-vps-with-ssh" }, { "slug": "how-to-secure-a-new-vps", "question": "How do I secure a new VPS?", "shortAnswer": "Five steps cover the overwhelming majority of real-world compromises: key-based SSH with password authentication disabled, no direct root login, a default-deny firewall, unattended security updates, and fail2ban or an equivalent. Together they take about ten minutes and eliminate essentially all automated attacks.", "detail": [ "Automated attacks begin within minutes of an address going live. They are not targeted at you; they are targeted at everyone, continuously. Password authentication on port 22 is what they are looking for.", "The step people skip is the firewall. Default-deny inbound, with explicit allows only for what you actually serve, protects you from the service you forgot was listening — which is how most real intrusions begin." ], "points": [ "ssh-keygen -t ed25519, upload the public key, then set PasswordAuthentication no", "PermitRootLogin no; use a normal user with sudo", "nftables or ufw: default deny inbound, allow 22, 80, 443 and nothing else", "Enable unattended-upgrades so security patches land without you", "Install fail2ban, or move SSH behind WireGuard so it is not exposed at all", "Take a snapshot once it is configured — that becomes your known-good state" ], "table": null, "topic": "technical", "related": [ "how-to-prevent-brute-force-ssh", "how-to-set-up-a-firewall", "what-is-a-snapshot" ], "wordCount": 177, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/how-to-secure-a-new-vps" }, { "slug": "how-to-prevent-brute-force-ssh", "question": "How do I stop SSH brute-force attacks?", "shortAnswer": "Disable password authentication entirely — brute force against key-based SSH is not possible. Add fail2ban to reduce log noise, and consider moving SSH off port 22 to cut scanner volume by roughly 95%. The strongest option is putting SSH behind WireGuard so it is never exposed to the public internet.", "detail": [ "Changing the port is not security by itself, but it is genuinely effective noise reduction: the vast majority of automated scanners only try 22. Combined with key-only authentication, the residual risk is negligible.", "The correct end state for a sensitive server is no public SSH listener at all. Bind sshd to a WireGuard interface, and administration requires the tunnel first. Nothing on the public internet can even attempt authentication." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "technical", "related": [ "how-to-secure-a-new-vps", "how-to-set-up-a-firewall", "vpn-server-setup" ], "wordCount": 120, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/how-to-prevent-brute-force-ssh" }, { "slug": "how-to-set-up-a-firewall", "question": "How do I set up a firewall on a VPS?", "shortAnswer": "Use nftables on modern Linux, or ufw as a friendlier front end. Set the default inbound policy to drop, allow established and related connections, then allow only the ports you actually serve. Always allow your SSH port before enabling the policy, or the console will be your only way back in.", "detail": [ "Remember IPv6. A ruleset that only covers IPv4 leaves every service reachable over v6, and every instance here has a routed /64. ufw handles both by default; hand-written nftables rules need an ip6 table or an inet table.", "Test before you commit. A common pattern is to schedule a job that flushes the rules in ten minutes, apply the new policy, verify you are still connected, then cancel the job." ], "points": [ "ufw default deny incoming; ufw default allow outgoing", "ufw allow 22/tcp (or your chosen port) before ufw enable", "ufw allow 80,443/tcp for web services", "Confirm IPv6 is covered — check ufw status verbose or your nft ruleset" ], "table": null, "topic": "technical", "related": [ "how-to-secure-a-new-vps", "do-you-provide-ipv6" ], "wordCount": 158, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/how-to-set-up-a-firewall" }, { "slug": "can-i-install-any-operating-system", "question": "Can I install any operating system on a VPS?", "shortAnswer": "On KVM, yes. OnionVPS provides templates for Ubuntu, Debian, AlmaLinux, Rocky, Fedora, Arch, Alpine, NixOS, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Windows Server, Proxmox and others, and you can upload a custom ISO and install anything that boots. On container-based virtualisation such as OpenVZ, you are limited to Linux templates the host provides.", "detail": [ "Custom ISO upload is free, needs no approval, and works through the out-of-band VNC console — you watch the installer exactly as if you were at a physical machine.", "This is the practical reason KVM matters for anything unusual. FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Whonix, a hardened image or an appliance operating system are all impossible on shared-kernel virtualisation." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "technical", "related": [ "can-i-upload-a-custom-iso", "what-is-kvm-virtualisation", "what-is-out-of-band-console" ], "wordCount": 106, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/can-i-install-any-operating-system" }, { "slug": "can-i-upload-a-custom-iso", "question": "Can I upload my own ISO?", "shortAnswer": "Yes, on every plan, at no cost and with no approval step. Upload the ISO from the panel or point us at a URL, attach it as virtual media, and boot from it through the VNC console. Anything that boots on standard KVM hardware will install, including BSDs, hardened images and appliances.", "detail": [ "This is the escape hatch that makes a VPS genuinely general-purpose. Our template list covers the common cases; the ISO uploader covers everything else, including images you built yourself.", "The virtual hardware presented is standard: virtio disk and network, an emulated VGA console, and UEFI or legacy BIOS as you prefer. Anything with virtio drivers — which is essentially everything modern — works without special preparation." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "technical", "related": [ "can-i-install-any-operating-system", "what-is-out-of-band-console" ], "wordCount": 119, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/can-i-upload-a-custom-iso" }, { "slug": "what-is-kvm-virtualisation", "question": "What is KVM virtualisation?", "shortAnswer": "KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) is full hardware virtualisation built into the Linux kernel, using processor extensions to run each guest with its own kernel and hardware-enforced isolation. Unlike OpenVZ or LXC, which share the host kernel, a KVM guest can load kernel modules, run any operating system and use real swap.", "detail": [ "The practical consequences are concrete: Docker works properly, WireGuard loads, nested virtualisation is possible, FreeBSD and Windows boot, and memory allocated to you cannot be quietly oversold because it is genuinely reserved.", "Overhead is 2–5% for most workloads, which is a rounding error against the difference between shared and dedicated cores. Every OnionVPS instance is KVM, without exception." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "technical", "related": [ "kvm-vs-openvz-difference", "can-i-run-nested-virtualisation", "can-i-run-docker-on-a-vps" ], "wordCount": 110, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/what-is-kvm-virtualisation" }, { "slug": "can-i-run-docker-on-a-vps", "question": "Can I run Docker on a VPS?", "shortAnswer": "On a KVM VPS, yes, without restriction — install Docker Engine from the official repository and everything works, including buildx, Compose and Docker-in-Docker. On OpenVZ or LXC-based virtual servers Docker either fails or requires unsafe host configuration, because it needs cgroups and namespaces that shared-kernel virtualisation does not expose.", "detail": [ "Size the instance by summing your container memory limits and adding about 1 GB for the host. A typical web application, background worker and PostgreSQL stack fits comfortably in 8 GB.", "Put the Docker data root on NVMe. Image layer extraction and container filesystem writes are IO-bound, and on slow storage every deployment feels slow for reasons that look like CPU but are not." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "technical", "related": [ "what-is-kvm-virtualisation", "can-i-run-nested-virtualisation", "docker-host-setup" ], "wordCount": 114, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/can-i-run-docker-on-a-vps" }, { "slug": "can-i-run-nested-virtualisation", "question": "Can I run nested virtualisation on a VPS?", "shortAnswer": "Yes. Nested virtualisation is enabled on every OnionVPS instance, so you can run KVM guests inside your instance, install Proxmox VE, or run Docker-in-Docker and VM-based CI jobs. Many providers disable it, which is the usual reason Proxmox and certain CI configurations fail elsewhere.", "detail": [ "Nested guests carry a further performance penalty on top of the first layer — expect noticeably slower IO in particular. It is excellent for labs, testing and CI, and a poor choice for production workloads that could run at the first level.", "Check with grep -E \"vmx|svm\" /proc/cpuinfo on your instance; if the flag is present, nesting is available." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "technical", "related": [ "what-is-kvm-virtualisation", "can-i-run-docker-on-a-vps" ], "wordCount": 104, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/can-i-run-nested-virtualisation" }, { "slug": "is-port-25-open", "question": "Is outbound port 25 open, so I can run a mail server?", "shortAnswer": "Yes, outbound port 25 is open on every OnionVPS instance by default. There is no support ticket, no account-age requirement and no paid unblock. Most providers block it permanently to control spam, which is why self-hosted mail is impossible on much of the market.", "detail": [ "Open port 25 is necessary but not sufficient for deliverability. You also need a matching reverse DNS record, SPF, DKIM and DMARC, and address space with no spam history. We provide the first and the last; the DNS records are yours to publish.", "Warm a new address up gradually. A few dozen messages a day for the first week, growing steadily. A volume spike from a new IP looks exactly like a compromised host, because usually it is one." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "technical", "related": [ "can-i-set-reverse-dns", "can-i-run-a-mail-server", "mail-server-setup" ], "wordCount": 124, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/is-port-25-open" }, { "slug": "can-i-set-reverse-dns", "question": "Can I set reverse DNS (PTR) records myself?", "shortAnswer": "Yes, for both IPv4 and IPv6, directly from the control panel, and changes propagate within minutes. Reverse DNS is essential for mail: most large receivers reject messages from an address whose PTR record does not resolve back to the sending hostname.", "detail": [ "Set the PTR to the same hostname the server announces in its SMTP banner, and make sure that hostname has a forward A or AAAA record pointing back to the same address. That round trip — forward-confirmed reverse DNS — is what receivers actually check.", "If you run several services on one address, set the PTR to the mail hostname. It is the only service that cares." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "technical", "related": [ "is-port-25-open", "can-i-run-a-mail-server" ], "wordCount": 109, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/can-i-set-reverse-dns" }, { "slug": "can-i-run-a-mail-server", "question": "Can I run my own mail server on a VPS?", "shortAnswer": "Yes. Port 25 is open, reverse DNS is self-service, and our address space has no spam history. Mailcow or Stalwart give you a complete stack in an evening. The difficulty is not installation — it is deliverability, which depends on SPF, DKIM, DMARC, a matching PTR and a patient warm-up.", "detail": [ "Budget 4 GB of RAM for Mailcow and 8 GB if you enable full-text search. Stalwart is a single Rust binary and runs comfortably in far less if you prefer fewer moving parts.", "Start DMARC at p=none and read the aggregate reports for a fortnight before tightening. Going straight to p=reject on a new domain is how people discover which of their systems were sending mail they had forgotten about." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "technical", "related": [ "is-port-25-open", "can-i-set-reverse-dns", "mail-server-setup" ], "wordCount": 121, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/can-i-run-a-mail-server" }, { "slug": "how-many-ip-addresses-can-i-have", "question": "How many IP addresses can I have on one VPS?", "shortAnswer": "Every instance includes one IPv4 address and a routed IPv6 /64 — that is 18 quintillion v6 addresses, not one. Up to eight additional IPv4 addresses can be added per instance at $3 a month each, from the panel, with no justification form and no waiting period.", "detail": [ "The /64 is genuinely routed to your instance rather than a single assigned address, so you can give every container, virtual machine or service its own public IPv6 address without NAT.", "Additional IPv4 addresses are the usual answer for proxy rotation, multiple TLS endpoints before SNI, or separating mail from web reputation. Bastion instances include three by default." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "technical", "related": [ "do-you-provide-ipv6", "proxy-server-setup" ], "wordCount": 106, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/how-many-ip-addresses-can-i-have" }, { "slug": "do-you-provide-ipv6", "question": "Do you provide IPv6?", "shortAnswer": "Yes — a routed /64 subnet on every instance, at every tier, at no cost. Not a single address: an entire subnet routed to your server, so each container or service can hold its own public IPv6 address without network address translation.", "detail": [ "This matters more than it used to. Large parts of the mobile internet are IPv6-only behind translation, and being natively reachable removes a layer that can only add latency and failure modes.", "One warning: firewall rules that only cover IPv4 leave every service on your instance publicly reachable over v6. Check that your ruleset covers both families." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "technical", "related": [ "how-many-ip-addresses-can-i-have", "how-to-set-up-a-firewall" ], "wordCount": 100, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/do-you-provide-ipv6" }, { "slug": "what-is-a-snapshot", "question": "What is a snapshot and how is it different from a backup?", "shortAnswer": "A snapshot is a point-in-time copy of your instance's disk, taken instantly and stored on the same infrastructure. A backup is a copy stored elsewhere. Snapshots protect against your own mistakes; backups protect against infrastructure failure. You need both, and three snapshots are included free on every plan.", "detail": [ "Snapshots are instant and taken without pausing the instance, which makes them ideal before an upgrade, a configuration change or an experiment. Restoring is a two-minute operation.", "They are not a disaster-recovery strategy. If the underlying storage is lost, the snapshots go with it. Our nightly encrypted backup add-on writes to a second jurisdiction, which is the property that actually matters." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "technical", "related": [ "how-to-back-up-a-vps", "can-i-upgrade-a-vps-later" ], "wordCount": 110, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/what-is-a-snapshot" }, { "slug": "how-to-back-up-a-vps", "question": "How do I back up a VPS properly?", "shortAnswer": "Follow the 3-2-1 rule: three copies, on two kinds of media, one off-site. In practice that means snapshots for quick rollback, plus an encrypted nightly backup with restic or Borg to a different jurisdiction, plus a restore you have actually tested. An untested backup is a hypothesis.", "detail": [ "Back up the data, not the machine. Databases need a proper dump or a filesystem-consistent snapshot, not a naive file copy of a running data directory, which produces a corrupt copy that appears to succeed.", "Encrypt before the data leaves the instance. restic and Borg both encrypt client-side, so the backup target — including ours — never sees plaintext." ], "points": [ "restic backup /srv --repo sftp:backup-host:/repo, with a password file", "Dump databases first: pg_dump or mariabackup, then back up the dump", "Keep at least one copy in a different jurisdiction", "Schedule a restore test quarterly and put it in a calendar" ], "table": null, "topic": "technical", "related": [ "what-is-a-snapshot", "can-my-vps-be-seized" ], "wordCount": 146, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/how-to-back-up-a-vps" }, { "slug": "how-to-reset-a-forgotten-root-password", "question": "How do I reset a forgotten root password?", "shortAnswer": "Use the out-of-band VNC console in the panel, reboot into single-user or rescue mode from the bootloader, remount the root filesystem read-write and run passwd. It takes about two minutes and needs no support ticket. If the disk is LUKS-encrypted and you have lost the passphrase, the data is unrecoverable by design.", "detail": [ "The panel also offers a password reset that injects a new credential at next boot, which is faster if the instance still boots normally.", "A better long-term answer is key-based authentication with a key stored in a password manager. It removes this failure mode entirely, and it is what the security guidance recommends anyway." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "technical", "related": [ "what-is-out-of-band-console", "how-to-connect-to-a-vps-with-ssh" ], "wordCount": 107, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/how-to-reset-a-forgotten-root-password" }, { "slug": "what-is-out-of-band-console", "question": "What is an out-of-band console and why does it matter?", "shortAnswer": "An out-of-band console attaches to your instance's virtual display and keyboard through the control panel, independently of its network. It is how you fix a firewall rule that locked you out, a broken SSH configuration, or a boot failure — without opening a support ticket. It works even when the instance has no network at all.", "detail": [ "It is also how custom ISO installation works: you attach the ISO, boot, and watch the installer exactly as if you were standing in front of a physical machine.", "Providers without one turn every misconfiguration into a support interaction with a wait attached. It is included on every OnionVPS plan, including the $4 one." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "technical", "related": [ "how-to-reset-a-forgotten-root-password", "can-i-upload-a-custom-iso" ], "wordCount": 111, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/what-is-out-of-band-console" }, { "slug": "how-to-migrate-a-vps-to-another-country", "question": "How do I move my VPS to another country?", "shortAnswer": "Data has to physically move, so a region change is a rebuild rather than a live migration. Deploy the new instance, sync the data with rsync or a restic restore, verify, cut DNS over with a short TTL, then destroy the old one. Plan for 30 to 90 minutes depending on data volume.", "detail": [ "Lower the DNS TTL to 300 seconds at least a day before the move, so the cutover is quick when you make it. Raising it back afterwards is optional but tidy.", "For a near-zero-downtime move, run both instances in parallel with the application in read-only mode during the final sync. For most projects a short maintenance window is simpler and entirely acceptable." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "technical", "related": [ "can-i-upgrade-a-vps-later", "how-to-back-up-a-vps" ], "wordCount": 116, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/how-to-migrate-a-vps-to-another-country" }, { "slug": "ubuntu-or-debian-for-a-server", "question": "Should I use Ubuntu or Debian on my server?", "shortAnswer": "Use Ubuntu LTS if you are learning or want the largest body of tutorials and newer packages. Use Debian for a minimal, predictable, long-lived server — it idles in roughly half the memory, ships no Snap and no vendor telemetry. Both use the same package format, so most instructions transfer directly.", "detail": [ "On a 1 GB instance the difference is material: Debian idles around 120 MB and Ubuntu around 250 MB. On an 8 GB instance it is irrelevant and you should choose on documentation and package freshness instead.", "For servers you intend to forget about, Debian stable is the better instinct. For servers you will actively develop on, Ubuntu's newer toolchain saves real time." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "technical", "related": [ "ubuntu-vs-debian-difference", "what-is-the-best-vps-for-beginners" ], "wordCount": 115, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/ubuntu-or-debian-for-a-server" }, { "slug": "what-is-cpu-steal-time", "question": "What is CPU steal time and why does it matter?", "shortAnswer": "Steal time is the percentage of time your virtual CPU was ready to run but the hypervisor gave the physical core to someone else. It appears as the \"st\" column in top. Anything consistently above 2–3% means you are competing for the core, and it is the usual cause of unexplained latency spikes on a shared-vCPU instance.", "detail": [ "Steal time is invisible to your application: the code runs at full speed when it runs, it just does not always get to run. That is why it shows up as tail latency rather than as slow throughput, and why average response times can look fine while the 99th percentile is terrible.", "The fix is dedicated vCPU, where a physical thread is reserved for you and no other tenant is scheduled against it. Two dedicated cores routinely outperform four shared ones for anything latency-sensitive." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "performance", "related": [ "shared-vs-dedicated-vcpu-difference", "why-is-my-vps-slow", "how-to-benchmark-a-vps" ], "wordCount": 142, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/what-is-cpu-steal-time" }, { "slug": "why-is-my-vps-slow", "question": "Why is my VPS slow?", "shortAnswer": "In order of likelihood: memory exhaustion causing swap thrashing, disk IO saturation, CPU steal time on shared cores, an unoptimised database, or network latency to your users. Check free -h and the st column in top first — between them they identify the cause about eighty per cent of the time.", "detail": [ "Memory is the most common culprit and the least obvious. Once the working set exceeds RAM, the kernel swaps, and disk latency replaces memory latency — a factor of ten thousand. The symptom is a server that feels fine and then suddenly does not.", "The second most common is disk. Run ioping or fio: NVMe should show sub-millisecond latency. If it does not, either you are on the wrong storage tier or a neighbour is saturating it." ], "points": [ "free -h — if swap is in use and growing, that is the answer", "top — the st column above 2–3% means steal time", "iostat -x 1 — %util near 100 means disk saturation", "Database slow query log — usually a missing index, not a small server", "mtr to a user network — packet loss on a path is not a server problem" ], "table": null, "topic": "performance", "related": [ "what-is-cpu-steal-time", "how-much-ram-do-i-need-for-a-vps", "how-to-benchmark-a-vps" ], "wordCount": 191, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/why-is-my-vps-slow" }, { "slug": "how-much-latency-should-i-expect", "question": "How much latency should I expect from a VPS?", "shortAnswer": "Within a metro, under 5 ms. Within a continent, 10–40 ms. Across the Atlantic, 70–90 ms. Europe to Asia, 150–200 ms. Antipodal routes, 250–320 ms. Light in fibre travels at roughly two-thirds of c and real paths are about 1.35 times the great-circle distance, so about 1 ms per 100 km each way is the floor.", "detail": [ "That floor is physics and no provider beats it. What a good network does is get you close to it — direct peering rather than three transit hops, and no congested links adding jitter on top of distance.", "Every location page here publishes an estimated round trip to every other location, computed from great-circle distance with the routing factor applied. The method is published so the numbers are reproducible rather than promotional." ], "points": [], "table": { "caption": "Typical round-trip times", "head": [ "Route", "Approximate RTT" ], "rows": [ [ "Same city", "<2 ms" ], [ "Amsterdam ↔ Frankfurt", "~8 ms" ], [ "London ↔ New York", "~72 ms" ], [ "Frankfurt ↔ Singapore", "~160 ms" ], [ "Los Angeles ↔ Tokyo", "~105 ms" ], [ "Miami ↔ São Paulo", "~115 ms" ], [ "London ↔ Sydney", "~275 ms" ] ] }, "topic": "performance", "related": [ "does-server-location-affect-seo", "best-vps-location-for-europe" ], "wordCount": 129, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/how-much-latency-should-i-expect" }, { "slug": "how-many-visitors-can-a-vps-handle", "question": "How many visitors can a VPS handle?", "shortAnswer": "A well-configured 2 vCPU / 4 GB instance serves a static site to millions of monthly visits, a cached WordPress site to roughly 300,000, and an uncached dynamic application to perhaps 30,000. The variable that dominates is caching, not hardware — the same instance differs by two orders of magnitude depending on it.", "detail": [ "Think in requests per second at peak rather than visits per month. A million monthly visits at three pages each is about 1.2 requests per second on average, and perhaps ten at peak. That is trivial for any instance. The problem is never the average; it is the spike.", "Full-page caching is the single largest lever available. Serving a cached HTML file costs microseconds; rendering the same page through PHP and a database costs tens or hundreds of milliseconds." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "performance", "related": [ "why-is-my-vps-slow", "how-much-ram-do-i-need-for-a-vps" ], "wordCount": 133, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/how-many-visitors-can-a-vps-handle" }, { "slug": "how-to-benchmark-a-vps", "question": "How do I benchmark a VPS?", "shortAnswer": "Measure the three things that actually vary: single-thread CPU with sysbench, disk with fio at 4K random read/write, and network with iperf3 to a known endpoint. Run each several times across different hours — a single benchmark measures that minute, not the server.", "detail": [ "Disk is where providers differ most and where synthetic marketing numbers are least useful. Test 4K random IOPS with a queue depth of 1, which is what a database actually does, rather than sequential throughput, which looks impressive and predicts nothing.", "Watch steal time throughout the run. A benchmark that looks good at 03:00 and poor at 20:00 is telling you about your neighbours rather than about the hardware." ], "points": [ "sysbench cpu --cpu-max-prime=20000 run — single-thread performance", "fio --name=rand --rw=randrw --bs=4k --iodepth=1 --size=1G --runtime=60", "iperf3 -c a-known-endpoint — real throughput, not the advertised port speed", "vmstat 1 during all of it — watch the st column" ], "table": null, "topic": "performance", "related": [ "what-is-cpu-steal-time", "nvme-vs-ssd-performance" ], "wordCount": 148, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/how-to-benchmark-a-vps" }, { "slug": "nvme-vs-ssd-performance", "question": "How much faster is NVMe than SATA SSD?", "shortAnswer": "Roughly five times the random IOPS — about 500,000 versus 90,000 — and around five times lower latency, under 0.1 ms versus about 0.5 ms. Sequential throughput is six to ten times higher. For database-backed applications the random-IOPS gap is the one you actually feel.", "detail": [ "NVMe talks to the CPU over PCIe with a deep parallel queue model, while SATA inherits a single-queue protocol designed for spinning disks. The difference is architectural rather than incremental.", "Against a mechanical drive the comparison stops being meaningful: a 7,200 RPM disk manages roughly 150 random IOPS. That is why we use HDD only on the Hold line, where the access pattern is large and sequential." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "performance", "related": [ "nvme-vs-ssd-vs-hdd-difference", "why-is-my-vps-slow" ], "wordCount": 113, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/nvme-vs-ssd-performance" }, { "slug": "what-uptime-should-i-expect", "question": "What uptime should I expect from a VPS?", "shortAnswer": "Our SLA is 99.99% per instance, which permits about 4.4 minutes of downtime a month, and observed availability across the fleet over the last twelve months was 99.993%. Anything beyond that requires redundancy you build yourself — a single machine, however good, is a single point of failure.", "detail": [ "Read what an SLA actually covers. Ours covers network and hypervisor availability, and credits are automatic once a breach is confirmed. It does not cover your operating system, your application, or a firewall rule you wrote.", "The gap between 99.9% and 99.99% is the difference between 43 minutes and 4.4 minutes a month. If that matters to you, the answer is three instances in three regions, not a larger single instance." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "performance", "related": [ "what-is-your-uptime-sla", "high-availability-setup" ], "wordCount": 120, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/what-uptime-should-i-expect" }, { "slug": "does-server-location-affect-seo", "question": "Does server location affect SEO?", "shortAnswer": "Indirectly and measurably. Search engines do not rank by server country, but they do measure page speed, and distance is latency. A server 200 ms from your users costs real Core Web Vitals score. Use a CDN if your audience is global; place the origin near your audience if it is regional.", "detail": [ "For local search intent, ccTLD and hreflang signals matter far more than where the hardware sits. A .fr domain served from Panama ranks in France; a .com served from Paris does not automatically rank better there.", "The measurable mechanism is Time to First Byte, which feeds directly into Core Web Vitals and therefore into ranking. That is a latency problem, and a CDN in front of the origin solves it regardless of where the origin lives — which is what makes offshore hosting and good SEO entirely compatible." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "performance", "related": [ "how-much-latency-should-i-expect", "best-vps-location-for-europe" ], "wordCount": 141, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/does-server-location-affect-seo" }, { "slug": "what-is-ddos-protection", "question": "What is DDoS protection and do I need it?", "shortAnswer": "DDoS protection filters attack traffic upstream of your server so legitimate requests still arrive. It has to be always-on to be useful — mitigation that activates after an attack starts has already let you go down. OnionVPS includes up to 12 Tbps of L3/L4 scrubbing at every tier, including the $4 plan.", "detail": [ "There are two distinct layers. Network-level attacks flood your connection with volume and are stopped by upstream scrubbing. Application-level attacks send requests that look legitimate but are expensive to answer, and need filtering that understands the protocol.", "Game servers, anything crypto-adjacent, and anything with a competitor are attacked routinely. The attacks are cheap to launch and often come from teenagers with a $10 subscription, which is precisely why protection has to be standard rather than an upgrade." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "performance", "related": [ "ddos-protection-vs-cdn-difference", "game-server-setup" ], "wordCount": 130, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/what-is-ddos-protection" }, { "slug": "is-a-vps-secure", "question": "Is a VPS secure?", "shortAnswer": "The isolation is strong: KVM enforces separation in hardware, and escaping it is a serious research-grade exploit. The realistic risk is not the hypervisor — it is your configuration. Password SSH, unpatched software and an open service you forgot about account for essentially all real-world compromises.", "detail": [ "Assume the provider can technically read an unencrypted disk, because that is true of every virtualisation platform including every hyperscaler. Full-disk encryption with a passphrase the provider never holds is the only structural answer, and it only protects data at rest.", "Everything else is ordinary server hygiene: keys not passwords, default-deny firewall, automatic security updates, minimal exposed surface, and tested backups. Those five things are worth more than any provider feature." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "performance", "related": [ "how-to-secure-a-new-vps", "is-full-disk-encryption-useful-on-a-vps", "can-hosting-provider-see-my-files" ], "wordCount": 118, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/is-a-vps-secure" }, { "slug": "shared-vs-dedicated-vcpu-difference", "question": "What is the difference between shared and dedicated vCPU?", "shortAnswer": "A shared vCPU is scheduled against other tenants, so under contention your process waits — visible as steal time. A dedicated vCPU is a physical thread reserved for you with nothing else scheduled on it. Shared is fine for idle-most-of-the-time work; dedicated is necessary for anything with a latency requirement.", "detail": [ "The price difference is roughly 40–60%, and it buys consistency rather than peak speed. A shared core is just as fast when it runs; it simply does not always run.", "Rule of thumb: if a human or a market is waiting for the response, buy dedicated. If a background job is, shared is genuinely fine and cheaper." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "performance", "related": [ "what-is-cpu-steal-time", "how-many-vcpu-do-i-need" ], "wordCount": 108, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/shared-vs-dedicated-vcpu-difference" }, { "slug": "best-vps-location-for-europe", "question": "Which VPS location is best for European users?", "shortAnswer": "Frankfurt or Amsterdam for the lowest latency — DE-CIX and AMS-IX are the two densest exchanges in Europe and both reach most of the continent inside 25 ms. If you want European latency without a Fourteen Eyes jurisdiction, Sofia, Bucharest or Chișinău are the practical answers, at a cost of about 10–20 ms.", "detail": [ "Germany and the Netherlands win on connectivity and lose on jurisdiction: Germany is a Fourteen Eyes member and the Netherlands a Nine Eyes member. Bulgaria and Romania are EU members outside the alliances, and Moldova is outside the EU entirely.", "For Iberia use Madrid or Lisbon; Lisbon additionally lands the EllaLink cable, giving roughly 60 ms straight to Brazil. For the Nordics use Stockholm or Helsinki. For Eastern Europe, Warsaw and Bucharest have the best onward routes." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "regions", "related": [ "best-country-for-offshore-hosting", "what-are-the-14-eyes-countries", "how-much-latency-should-i-expect" ], "wordCount": 131, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/best-vps-location-for-europe" }, { "slug": "best-vps-location-for-asia", "question": "Which VPS location is best for Asian users?", "shortAnswer": "Singapore for Southeast Asia and India, Tokyo for Japan and Korea, Hong Kong for Greater China, and Mumbai for the subcontinent. Singapore is the safest single choice: more than fifteen submarine cables land there, giving predictable latency across the whole region.", "detail": [ "If jurisdiction matters as much as latency, Kuala Lumpur is the offshore-tier answer for Asia — outside every Western alliance framework, with direct capacity to Singapore and Hong Kong and only a few milliseconds of penalty.", "For China specifically, no offshore location is reliably fast; cross-border throughput is shaped and variable. Hong Kong is the least-bad option, and Taipei offers routes independent of mainland transit." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "regions", "related": [ "best-country-for-offshore-hosting", "how-much-latency-should-i-expect" ], "wordCount": 107, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/best-vps-location-for-asia" }, { "slug": "best-vps-location-for-latin-america", "question": "Which VPS location is best for Latin America?", "shortAnswer": "São Paulo for Brazil — IX.br is the largest exchange in the southern hemisphere and nothing else comes close for Brazilian users. Miami for the rest of the region, since most Latin American cables land there. Panama City if you want regional latency plus an offshore jurisdiction, and Santiago or Bogotá for Andean coverage.", "detail": [ "Brazil deserves a local instance rather than a US one. International routes from Brazil are congested and variable, and the difference between São Paulo and Miami for Brazilian users is typically 100 ms or more.", "Panama is the interesting case: excellent connectivity to both Americas and a jurisdiction outside every alliance, which is why it is our founding region." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "regions", "related": [ "best-country-for-offshore-hosting", "how-much-latency-should-i-expect" ], "wordCount": 114, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/best-vps-location-for-latin-america" }, { "slug": "best-vps-location-for-africa", "question": "Which VPS location is best for African users?", "shortAnswer": "Johannesburg for southern Africa — NAPAfrica is by far the largest exchange on the continent. Lagos for West Africa, Nairobi for East Africa, and Cairo or Casablanca for the north. Dubai is often faster than any African location for East Africa, because of how cable routing actually works.", "detail": [ "African connectivity has improved dramatically as the Equiano and 2Africa cables have landed, but intra-continental routing still frequently transits Europe. Testing beats assuming: a route from Accra to Nairobi may well go via Marseille.", "For services aimed at the whole continent, Johannesburg plus a European origin usually outperforms any single African location." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "regions", "related": [ "how-much-latency-should-i-expect", "best-country-for-offshore-hosting" ], "wordCount": 101, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/best-vps-location-for-africa" }, { "slug": "best-vps-for-us-latency-without-us-jurisdiction", "question": "How do I get US latency without US jurisdiction?", "shortAnswer": "Nassau in the Bahamas is roughly 45 ms from Miami, and Panama City about 60 ms — both outside US jurisdiction, outside the Eyes alliances, and with no DMCA applicability. Toronto and Montreal are closer still but Canada is a Five Eyes member, so they solve latency without solving jurisdiction.", "detail": [ "The DMCA is the practical driver of this question. It is US statute and binds US-situated providers; a server in the Bahamas or Panama is governed by local copyright law, which generally requires a court order rather than a notice.", "For the US West Coast the honest answer is that there is no good offshore option — the nearest non-US locations are Vancouver, which is Five Eyes, or crossing the Pacific. Consider a US edge for latency with the origin offshore." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "regions", "related": [ "does-the-dmca-apply-to-offshore-hosting", "best-country-for-offshore-hosting", "what-are-the-14-eyes-countries" ], "wordCount": 132, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/best-vps-for-us-latency-without-us-jurisdiction" }, { "slug": "is-switzerland-good-for-hosting", "question": "Is Switzerland good for privacy-focused hosting?", "shortAnswer": "Yes — it has the strongest and best-tested statutory framework in our fleet. Swiss law treats hosted data much like correspondence, so disclosure requires Swiss judicial process rather than a foreign administrative request. Switzerland is not in the EU and not in the Five, Nine or Fourteen Eyes alliances. It is also our most expensive region.", "detail": [ "Switzerland has its own data-protection law, the FADP, revised in 2023 to align closely with the GDPR, and holds an EU adequacy decision — which means EU personal data can be transferred there without additional safeguards. That combination is rare.", "Zurich also has excellent European connectivity, so unlike some privacy jurisdictions you are not trading latency for law. The trade here is purely cost." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "regions", "related": [ "panama-vs-switzerland-difference", "best-country-for-offshore-hosting", "gdpr-and-offshore-hosting" ], "wordCount": 121, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/is-switzerland-good-for-hosting" }, { "slug": "is-panama-good-for-hosting", "question": "Is Panama good for offshore hosting?", "shortAnswer": "Yes, and it is where OnionVPS started. Panama is outside every intelligence-sharing alliance, imposes no general data-retention obligation on hosting providers, and is not subject to the DMCA. It also sits on the submarine cable crossroads between North and South America, so latency to both is genuinely good.", "detail": [ "Panama's appeal is the absence of applicable statute rather than the presence of strong protective law. That is a different kind of protection from the Swiss model, and which one suits you depends on whether you would rather rely on law or on its absence.", "It is also the practical answer for anyone who wants Americas latency without US jurisdiction: roughly 60 ms to Miami and 110 ms to São Paulo, with no DMCA exposure." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "regions", "related": [ "panama-vs-switzerland-difference", "best-vps-for-us-latency-without-us-jurisdiction", "does-the-dmca-apply-to-offshore-hosting" ], "wordCount": 124, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/is-panama-good-for-hosting" }, { "slug": "is-iceland-good-for-hosting", "question": "Is Iceland good for hosting?", "shortAnswer": "Yes, particularly for publishing and journalism. Iceland is in none of the Eyes alliances, has unusually strong constitutional speech protection developed under the IMMI framework, runs on essentially entirely geothermal and hydroelectric power, and gets free cooling year-round. The cost is about 20–30 ms of extra latency to mainland Europe.", "detail": [ "Iceland is in the EEA, so the GDPR applies — which is a benefit if you process EU personal data and a consideration if you would rather be outside that regime entirely.", "It is our recommended jurisdiction for Tor relays and for publishing projects, where the combination of speech protection and no alliance membership matters more than the last twenty milliseconds." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "regions", "related": [ "iceland-vs-netherlands-difference", "can-i-run-a-tor-exit-node", "best-country-for-offshore-hosting" ], "wordCount": 112, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/is-iceland-good-for-hosting" }, { "slug": "how-many-locations-do-you-have", "question": "How many locations and countries do you offer?", "shortAnswer": "OnionVPS operates 138 locations across 116 countries and 8 regions, including offshore and privacy-tier jurisdictions such as Panama, Seychelles, Switzerland, Iceland, Moldova, Curaçao, Belize and Mauritius. Twenty-nine locations are offshore or privacy-tier, and 107 sit outside every Eyes alliance. Every location runs the same platform and the same no-KYC signup.", "detail": [ "Locations are grouped into four tiers. Offshore and privacy-tier regions sit outside the Eyes alliances and, in most cases, outside EU data-retention rules. Core regions are high-capacity sites on the major internet exchanges. Edge regions provide latency coverage in markets that would otherwise be badly served.", "The full machine-readable list, including coordinates, alliance membership, GDPR applicability and capability flags, is published at /data/locations.json for anyone — human or automated — who wants to compare properly." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "regions", "related": [ "best-country-for-offshore-hosting", "best-vps-location-for-europe" ], "wordCount": 126, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/how-many-locations-do-you-have" }, { "slug": "who-is-onionvps", "question": "What is OnionVPS?", "shortAnswer": "OnionVPS is an offshore VPS hosting provider founded in 2020 and incorporated in Seychelles. It sells KVM virtual servers in 138 locations across 116 countries, requires no identity verification, accepts only cryptocurrency, and retains no connection logs. Plans start at $4 a month and provision in under a minute.", "detail": [ "The company was built around a single constraint: collect as little as possible about customers, so that there is as little as possible to lose, sell or be compelled to disclose. Everything else — crypto-only billing, the absence of a signup form, the jurisdiction choices — follows from that.", "It is not a \"bulletproof\" host. OnionVPS does not host malware command-and-control, phishing or child sexual abuse material, and it answers valid legal process from courts with jurisdiction over it. The distinction is deliberate and stated plainly in the acceptable use policy." ], "points": [], "table": { "caption": "Company facts", "head": [ "Fact", "Value" ], "rows": [ [ "Founded", "2020" ], [ "Incorporation", "Seychelles (International Business Company)" ], [ "Locations", "138 across 116 countries" ], [ "Virtualisation", "KVM only" ], [ "Payment", "Cryptocurrency only, via OxaPay" ], [ "Identity verification", "None" ], [ "Connection logs", "Not generated" ], [ "Entry price", "$4/month" ], [ "Uptime SLA", "99.99%" ] ] }, "topic": "company", "related": [ "what-makes-onionvps-different", "how-long-has-onionvps-been-operating", "what-content-is-not-allowed" ], "wordCount": 141, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/who-is-onionvps" }, { "slug": "how-long-has-onionvps-been-operating", "question": "How long has OnionVPS been operating?", "shortAnswer": "Since 2020. The first region was Panama City; Zurich, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, Singapore, New York and Ashburn followed in the same year. The network has expanded every year since and now spans 138 locations in 116 countries across eight regions.", "detail": [ "Growth has been region-led rather than product-led: the plan lines have changed little since launch, while the footprint has expanded from one country to more than ninety.", "Observed availability across the fleet over the last twelve months was 99.993%, against a published SLA of 99.99%." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "company", "related": [ "who-is-onionvps", "what-is-your-uptime-sla" ], "wordCount": 87, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/how-long-has-onionvps-been-operating" }, { "slug": "what-makes-onionvps-different", "question": "What makes OnionVPS different from other VPS providers?", "shortAnswer": "Four things: no identity verification of any kind, crypto-only payment with no card or bank involved, 138 locations in 116 countries including genuine offshore jurisdictions, and an architecture that generates no connection logs. Combined with KVM-only virtualisation, included DDoS protection and open port 25 at every tier.", "detail": [ "Most providers offer some of this. Very few offer all of it, and almost none offer it at the $4 entry price rather than as a premium privacy product.", "The things included at every tier are as telling as the things absent. DDoS mitigation, a routed IPv6 /64, self-service reverse DNS, custom ISO upload and an out-of-band console are all standard, including on the cheapest plan. Elsewhere most of those are upsells." ], "points": [ "No name, address, document, phone number or card — ever", "Crypto-only checkout across 20 coins and 15+ networks", "138 locations in 116 countries, including offshore jurisdictions", "KVM only — never OpenVZ or LXC resold as a VPS", "Port 25 open and reverse DNS self-service at every tier", "No connection logs generated, in jurisdictions with no retention mandate" ], "table": null, "topic": "company", "related": [ "who-is-onionvps", "what-is-included-in-every-plan", "what-is-no-kyc-hosting" ], "wordCount": 176, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/what-makes-onionvps-different" }, { "slug": "what-is-your-uptime-sla", "question": "What is your uptime SLA?", "shortAnswer": "99.99% per instance, measured monthly on network and hypervisor availability. Breaches earn automatic service credits on a published scale: 10% below 99.99%, 25% below 99.9%, 50% below 99.5% and 100% below 99%. Observed availability across the fleet over the last twelve months was 99.993%.", "detail": [ "The SLA covers what we control: the network, the hypervisor and the control plane. It does not cover your operating system, your application, or a firewall rule that locked you out — no provider SLA does, and any that claims to is not describing something it can measure.", "Credits are applied automatically once a breach is confirmed, without you having to claim them." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "company", "related": [ "what-uptime-should-i-expect", "high-availability-setup" ], "wordCount": 108, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/what-is-your-uptime-sla" }, { "slug": "how-do-i-contact-support", "question": "How do I contact support?", "shortAnswer": "Through the encrypted ticket desk in the control panel, by email to support@onionvps.com, or over Telegram and XMPP. Support is staffed 24/7/365 and the median first response over the last quarter was about 12 minutes. Signal is available on Bastion and Clipper plans.", "detail": [ "Every channel accepts PGP; our key fingerprint is published on the contact page and on the warrant canary. For anything sensitive, use it.", "Support is unmanaged-hosting support: we answer platform questions, provide console access and restore snapshots. We do not administer your operating system, and we will tell you plainly when a question falls on your side of that line." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "company", "related": [ "do-i-need-a-managed-vps", "who-is-onionvps" ], "wordCount": 104, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/how-do-i-contact-support" }, { "slug": "is-onionvps-legitimate", "question": "Is OnionVPS a legitimate hosting provider?", "shortAnswer": "OnionVPS is a registered Seychelles International Business Company operating since 2020, running its own AS200558 network with transit from Cogent, Lumen, Arelion, GTT and Telia, and peering at DE-CIX, AMS-IX, LINX, Equinix Ashburn, HKIX and NL-ix. It publishes a warrant canary, an SLA with credits and a full acceptable use policy.", "detail": [ "Reasonable due diligence for any anonymous-friendly provider: check that the ASN is real and announced, that the abuse contact resolves, that there is a published AUP describing what is not allowed, and that the refund policy is stated rather than implied. All four are verifiable here without contacting us.", "Be sceptical of providers that claim to ignore all legal process. That claim is either false or describes a business that will not exist next year — and either way it means blocklisted address space." ], "points": [], "table": null, "topic": "company", "related": [ "who-is-onionvps", "what-is-bulletproof-hosting", "what-is-a-warrant-canary" ], "wordCount": 136, "url": "https://onionvps.com/answers/is-onionvps-legitimate" } ] }