We move forward on our quest of Anonymous web hosting companies, and this Netengi review is another gem we dug out of it!
As is our tradition, we aren’t saying if Netengi is a company you should or shouldn’t go with. Rather, we’ll review it in detail, comparing and contrasting almost all of its features which may be of interest to you. And then at the end leave you to make an educated decision.
Note that throughout this Netengi anonymous offshore webhosting company review, our focus remains on highlighting its anonymity, privacy and anti-censorship features.
Netengi Overview
This overview should give you an idea if the company is worth investing your next couple minutes on this Netengi review:
- Primary URL: https://netengi.com/
- Servers in : Ukraine, Russia, Poland, USA.
- Payment methods: Cryptocurrencies + Fiats
- Cheapest Plan: $2.99/month.
- Servers: Shared, Dedicated, VPS.
- DMCA Ignored: Yes
- Content not allowed – Listed in the AUP section.
- Uptime: 99.9%.
Where is Netengi Based out of?
Considering how you’re searching for “offshore” hosting companies, the country they’re based out of is of utmost importance.
Another reason is, the country a company operates out of decides what kind of content can be allowed by the company, what rules customers need to adhere to, what level of anonymity can the company provide and everything else.
Netengi is based out of Ukraine. Ukraine may not be as liberal as Switzerland or Panama with its Digital Laws, yet is comparatively much more flexible when compared to USA, UK, or most other first-world countries.
In addition to providing servers from Ukraine, it also lets users purchase servers from Russia, Poland, as well as the U.S.A.
User Anonymity
The second most important aspect of an anonymous offshore webhosting company, is its anonymity obviously, isn’t it?
By anonymity, we mean the type or level of personal details the company needs before users can purchase servers.
Or in other words, how much data does the company retain which can later be used to trace and track the real-life identity of the user.
For starters Netengi doesn’t need users to register with real-life, true details. This is rare as most other similar companies do have that requirement.
I personally confirmed over live-chat with one of their representatives that the identification details don’t have to be real and can be anything random.
Then there are the payments, these are generally the most easily traceable element in any modern day trade scenario.
Fortunately, users can pay using Cryptocurrencies, in addition to fiats. And Cryptocurrencies as we know are largely untraceable or atleast anonymous.
The company does however store the IP address of users, for a limited period of time for “statistical purposes”. This loophole can be bypassed if you use a VPN.
Speed Tests
A website, any website, needs to be fast, period. No other features matter if the site takes decades to load. Simply because no user would visit the site in the first place.
For the purpose of this Netengi review, we will subject the company to various tests:
- Page load time test.
- Server load time test.
- Download speed test.
- Real-time traffic-spike server load time test.
Page Load-time Test
Page load-time test is the most basic, simplest to understand and measure test out there for a web hosting company.
It’s the time required by a server to load any given webpage in its entirety. The time required for all the elements of a webpage to be loaded, including the HTML, background scripts, images and what not.
This is what the user directly notices. We tested the load-time test for Netengi using their homepage- https://netengi.com, and here are the results.
The above result is for Germany, Frankfurt. (Verify here). While 1.30Seconds is acceptable, it’s not impressive. Also the test results from other locations such as Japan, or even Australia were too slow (5 seconds+).
Bottomline, so far the speed only seems acceptable and that too only for specific locations.
Server Response Time Test
The Server Response Time test primarily takes into account the “HTML” of the page. If this HTML loads slow, the webpage wouldn’t be able to load the other elements on the page.
And hence, the overall page load-time of the site gets effected. It’s measured as the “time to first byte” and is directly dependent upon a server’s (hosting company’s) performance.
So here are the test result for Netengi’s SRT test (verify):
As is evident, it’s fastest for Germany with a SRT of just 44 ms, and is slowest for Sydney with 344 ms. The average for all other locations is 100ms+.
In our experience, it’s a happy number but still not impressive.
Traffic-Spike Scenario SRT Test
Both the tests above were conducted when we had no other known visitor to the site except us.
Will the server still perform similarly when traffic spikes? That’s what we will test in this scenario.
We will be sending around 25 Virtual users to the website who require the same resources as real human beings, and monitor the server’s performance.
Here are the test results (verify)
The highest SRT recorded even with 24 active VUs on the site was 104ms which is impressive.
Download Speed Test
Finally, how fast will the speeds be for downloadable content hosted on Netengi? We tested that too!
They provided us with 3 download files, 10 Mb, 100 Mb and 1000 Mb respectively. Here’s the download test results from the 100Mb file:
Even from the fastest servers (e.g. Google Drive), 2.5-3 Mbps is the fastest speed I’ve ever got on my connection so compared to that I’d say the download speed is impressive.
Acceptable Use Policy
This is the only thing more important than the anonymity provided by hosting companies. The AUP is what dictates what can or can’t be hosted on Netengi.
Netengi has a very specific and short “not allowed content” list, which includes and is limited to:
- Porn
- Packet flood scripts.
- Terror-promoting content.
- Spam
- Any kind of Hacking/Phishing
- SIP Scanners.
- Viruses / Trojans etc.
- Brute Force.
- Scam/Fraud.
- IP Spoofing attacks.
The best part is, anything else not listed in this list is allowed. Also the users only need to follow “Ukranian” laws and not Global regulations!
It’s a DMCA Ignored hosting, meaning they won’t pay attention to DMCA notices, or content removal requests unless they’re issued by the Ukrainian court.
Payment Methods
Payment methods are another aspect which effect the anonymity of users. If you use traditional methods such as Bank transfers and PayPal to pay, they can be traced back to you directly.
While if paid using Cryptocurrencies, you’d get a lot more anonymity.
Fortunately, Netengi supports both the types of payments. If you’d like to pay using Cryptocurrencies you can pay using:
- Bitcoin
- And Litecoin.
Although if you don’t really care a lot about anonymity and would rather go with fiat methods, they accept payments via:
- Credit/Debit cards.
- PayPal
- PerfectMoney
- And WebMoney.
Pricing Plans and Services
The company sells everything from Domains, Shared, VPS to Dedicated servers. Its shared plans start at USD $2.99/month, and go upto USD $25.99/month.
Users get to select their location for VPS servers. The price varies based on these locations, however the lowest starting price is USD $7.00/month for Ukraine, the highest being USD $42.00/month again for Ukraine.
Dedicated servers too are available. The cheapest being USD $70.00/month for Poland servers, while the highest being USD $410.00/month for Ukrainian servers.
Its worth noting that even its cheapest plans offer some free add-ons which are commendable. For e.g. there’s free backups, free SSL certificates, virus-removal help etc.
Support
The company offers support over E-mail, Tickets or Live-chat.
The live-chat even though functional, was a tad bit slow in our personal opinion. Also they ignored questions they didn’t want to answer. And the messages get auto-deleted after some time for some reason.
Final Words on Netengi Review
So that’s a wrap as far as this Netengi review goes folks. If you ask for my verdict, I’d say its speed is acceptable, anonymity is impressive (if you use a VPN from your end) and the AUP extremely liberal.
These three factors are the decisive factors for me. The pricing plans too are pocket-friendly and adhere to industry-rates.
So if you’re looking for a good company with extensive anonymity, I’d say Netengi is worth a try. Yes it’s not perfect but things seldom are on this planet, isn’t it so?
Although do let me know what you think of this Netengi review, as well as the company in the comments.