We’re as neutral as one can be with these anonymous offshore hosting reviews, but then there are certain companies which we liked more than others for their services or features, Cyber Bunker is one such company and the reasons will be pretty evident throughout this Cyber Bunker review.
Considering how the world’s most popular Torrent Search Engine – ThePirateBay is hosted on CyberBunker; it’s only fair we gave the company the courtesy of a fair and transparent review in the least.
Factors this Review is Based Upon
Keeping our personal experiences and opinions aside, here are the factors we’ve based this review upon, which can also be transparently verified by you to be true:
- Offshore Locations: The location makes any company offshore to begin with, and the location impacts its privacy laws, content liberty and everything else.
- Anonymity: Anonymity provided during registration, payments, or even the information stored on the server otherwise.
- Speed: The page load-time as well as Server Response Time of the company is measured in depth and can be verified transparently.
- Security: Security features provided for the content uploaded, backups as well as the physical security firewalls installed for the datacenter.
- Acceptable Use Policy: The list of content allowed or not allowed on the servers.
- Support: Number of ways they can be contacted, as well as the average response time.
- Pricing Plans and Packages
- Payment Methods accepted.
The above list should encompass everything that a hosting company is comprised of, let’s get along with this Cyber Bunker review then?
CyberBunker Quick Overview
This overview here should help you form an idea of the company’s potential before getting into the finer details of this Cyber Bunker review:
Now CyberBunker Shutdown by Dutch Authorities, You May Try Other Hosting Services , like https://bpw.sc/ (BuletProofWeb)
- Primary URL:
http://www.cyberbunker.com - Servers in: Netherlands
- Payment methods: Crypto+Fiats
- Cheapest Plan: EUR 50.00/month.
- Servers: VPS/Dedicated/Shared.
- DMCA Compliant: No
- Content Not Allowed: Listed in the AUP sections.
- Uptime: 99.9%
Offshore Location
Where the company is based off is what decides how liberal the company can be with its content, how secure it is from censorship laws and so on.
CyberBunker re-defines offshore locations, not because it’s based off Netherlands but because it’s housed in an actual cold-war bunker in Netherlands.
Advanced protections such as EMP shielding, air-locked atmosphere, isolation pads, 5mtr thick concrete construction are just some of the physical features it boasts of.
Apart from the physical security that comes with a cold-war bunker, CyberBunker also proved robust against legal attacks, there were even several failed attempts by the govt. and military to enter the bunker.
They’ve published two in-depth stories along with full conversations, letters and everything else which illustrate how the City Hall and the Swat teams who tried to enter Cyber Bunker not only failed, but also had to pay a sum of EUR 24,500 and EUR 8088.00 respectively to the company for damages.
They even had a “decoy server room” for extreme situations, however the room was later made public considering how nothing ever happened demanding the need of one such room.
Anonymity
Apart from the obvious fact that the company takes a lot of pride in its security and anonymity policies, they do offer a lot of anonymity when it comes to registrations or payments.
Registrations for a start have an absolute-zero documents or information required policy, no real-name, Identity document, address-proof or any kind of verification is required while signing up.
They allow payments via Cryptocurrencies (along with fiats) which makes the payment process anonymous. No IP addresses, Cookies or any other such personally-identifiable information is stored on the server.
Also once the customer decides to change servers and leave CyberBunker all information related to the client and their server is destroyed to the core, physical HDDs in the case of Dedicated servers are shredded and in the case of VPS Server, shared servers; they are completely wiped off.
Speed
Doesn’t matter what you’re hosting, the purpose of the content will only be fulfilled if users actually visit your site and spend time with the content. That’s possible only if the speed of the website is acceptable to a 2019 Internet user (impatient, needs everything at the speed of light).
So we tested the average speed CyberBunker provides its customers by running a test on its homepage, which yielded the following results (verify here):
As is evident, the page load-time was impressive with just 404ms required for the page to be completely loaded! This is by far one of the fastest page-load times we’ve ever seen.
Server Response Time
The speed-test mentioned above was basically a “page load time” test, it conveys the time required to load all the elements on the page (text/images/html/other scripts) which will differ for each page or website depending on the elements/content of the page.
The Server Response Time which we test now is slightly different from the page load- time test, it doesn’t display the time required to load the contents of the page, rather the time required by the server to acknowledge and respond to the browser’s request to load all of those elements.
In a way, the time required for the first response from the server to the browser’s request.
As the test above shows (verify here) CyberBunker responds fast-enough for most locations, it’s fastest for London with a response time of 92ms, 132ms for U.S, 318ms for Sydney and so on.
Real-Time Speed Traffic-Spike Analysis
We’ve so far tested and talked about the load-time; as well as the Respond time of the company, but the number of visitors at the time of our test on the site was unknown, so maybe the server performed well because it wasn’t under enough pressure?
So, we’ll apply a bit of pressure in the form of “Virtual Users” to the site and see how the site will react and respond when the number of visitors on it isn’t so low.
The image seen above is data of the server’s response time when we sent as many as 25 Virtual Users to the site, not at once but gradually for a duration of 3 minute, 1 second.
The Blue line denotes the server response time, being honest this was one of the most stable and constant response time we ever recorded in our history of testing anonymous offshore hosting companies.
The server responded back in 92ms when 1 V.U was active on the site, and it only increased to 96ms even with 25 active V.Us.
Security Features
The most powerful weapon in the arsenal of CyberBunker is its “Bunker”; hence it guarantees unprecedented physical security.
Their “Stay Online” policy states they’ll keep your servers online “No matter what”, which includes Hurricanes, Earthquakes, floods, and even NUCLEAR BOMBS! This also is the reason why the company offers 99.99% uptime regardless of any physical or technical obstacles which may show up along the way.
They also have additional backup services which offer RSA Encryption, Mirror backups at frozen locations and a number of such extreme security features.
Acceptable Use Policy (AUP)
This is one of the prime attractions which can be listed in this CyberBunker; they do not have an AUP, meaning they literally have nothing which isn’t allowed to be hosted on their servers, except:
- Child Porn
- Terrorism
Because of all the physical and legal security discussed above, they can allow the hosting of just about everything on their servers (including copyrighted material!)
Support
Support isn’t as impressive as some other aspects mentioned throughout this Cyber Bunker review ; which is understandable pertaining to their hardcore approach to security and privacy hence support is offered only via a Contact form, or E-mail.
No live-chat, social media platform or any such third-party tool can be used to get in touch with the company as is pretty evident from the “NO” banner at the bottom of the site.
Pricing Plans and Packages
As an offshore anonymous hosting provider they provide Shared, VPS as well as Dedicated servers.
Shared servers start from EUR 50.00/month and go upto EUR 100.00/month. The yearly plans however have reduced prices. There also is an extra setup fee associated with each plan.
VPS plans start at EUR 100.00/month and go upto EUR 200.00/month, while Dedicated servers have a starting package of EUR 200.00/month while the most expensive plan may cost as high as EUR 400.00/month.
Payment Methods
Keeping anonymity in mind, CyberBunker accepts not only fiat payments but also Cryptocurrencies as a mode of payment.
Although only Bitcoin is the accepted Cryptocurrency, other fiat methods include Wire transfers, Western Union or cash-drops at the Bunker gate!
Final Words:
So that’s us sliding off the keyboard as far as this Cyber Bunker review is concerned. In our personal opinion Cyber Bunker is one of the best anonymous offshore hosting companies when you need extreme anonymity or liberty with your content.
With the pros, the one con I can think of is server-management. There isn’t a ton of support, hence managing VPS or Dedicated servers may not be as easy for every user on the platform.
Anyway that’s just what we think of Cyber Bunker, do drop your two cents about this Cyber Bunker review as well as the company in general in the comments.
