Could you search for the best anonymous offshore hosting companies? This PRQ Hosting Review should get you at least one more option.
Note that this isn’t just a PRQ Hosting Review but a review of PRQ from an “anonymity” perspective. Even though we’d test all of its features as a hosting company, the level of anonymity it can provide would be the shadowing factor.
Why so? Well, the prime reason we search for offshore servers is to host content that’s not legal or ethical in our own countries. Hence, even though the offshore servers make it legal or acceptable to host such content, keeping our identities safe and anonymous still is an important requirement.
PRQ Hosting Quick Overview
Before detailing each feature of the company and carving out its Pros and Cons, let’s outline the primary features the company bestows us with:
- Primary URL: https://prq.se/
- Servers in: Sweden
- Payment methods: Crypto + Fiats (No PayPal).
- Cheapest Plan: EUR 10.00/month.
- Servers: RPi, Dedicated Server, Web Hosting, Split Tunnelling.
- Content not allowed: Listed in the AUP section.
PRQ’s website is fundamental and lacks fancy images, promotions, sliders, banners, etc. It’s a text-only site that only focuses on getting the job done.
Server Location
You’re looking for something offshore. Hence, we’d pay attention to the location of the servers.
The PRQ servers are located in Sweden. Sweden is universally known as one of the safest, most liberal nations regarding financial or digital laws.
This affects PRQ’s AUP policy, as will be clear in the AUP section.
Anonymity
As mentioned above, Anonymity is one of the prime factors I look for in these companies.
It mentions its “Discreet Customer Relations Policy,” which states that even the company has no idea who a customer is. Hence, the company wouldn’t ask for personal data at registration or later.
And, in case they do get information on a user’s real idea, it’s clearly stated that it would be kept strictly confidential. Hence as far as the “identity” of a user or registrations go, it’s pretty anonymous. They clearly state, “We defend your integrity to the end.”.
And when it comes to Payments, it has a unique policy that promotes anonymity (More details in the Payments section).
Acceptable Use Policy (AUP)
This is PRQ’s most appealing feature. Most other companies we generally go with have a long list of content that is or isn’t allowed on their servers.
Not PRQ. It clearly states that “If it’s legal in Sweden,” they’ll host it. Even though it doesn’t make it as liberal as Shinjiru Hosting, WebCare360, Mivocloud or LolekHosted, it’s still quite acceptable.
It has termed itself “Refugee Hosting,” indicating users who’ve been banned or restricted from other companies may use it as a refuge.
They also state that they’ll keep the content online without external pressure. This is unique considering how most companies have a “govt-compliance” policy and give way under govt. Pressure.
Then it also markets itself as a “Free Speech Heaven.” Hence, political/controversial content is also allowed, which isn’t an everyday encounter.
Content like Child Porn, Terrorism, and other extremities is banned. They also have stated a “Zero tolerance policy against Spam and other related services.” PRQ can’t be used for Military purposes either.
Additionally, the following content can’t be hosted on its SHELL service:
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Payment Methods
The next aspect we look into is the Payment Methods that can be used to purchase service(s) from PRQ.
As mentioned in the earlier sections of this PRQ Hosting Review, it has a unique payment policy. It doesn’t accept PayPal payments for anonymity reasons!
Fiat payments, in general, however, are supported, along with Cryptocurrencies. The entire list of payment methods includes:
Bitcoin, Cash, Visa /Master Cards, Wires, Bankgiro
While Bitcoin would seal your anonymity, fiat modes allow for easier and simpler options; the choice is yours.
Page Load Time Test
The policies above may sound like sweet candies, but the technical performance of a company controlled by its Software and Hardware finally affects website owners and visitors.
So we’d start with the server’s Page Load-time test. This is how long a website takes to load, plain and simple. A website comprises many elements. The HTML is the primary in most cases, then the scripts (CSS, Java, etc.)., third-party plugins, and whatnot.
The time taken to load it all up and display the complete page is what the page load-time test is.
The fastest page load-time we got from PRQ was 307 ms from Europe-London (Verify Result). Even from Germany, it only required 314ms of load time!
The speed got slower as we moved out of European regions. It went up to1.53ms for North America and 2.71ms for Japan.
Although note that this test only establishes the load time for the individual website we tested, which was PRQ’s homepage.
As you may have noticed, the homepage is fundamental; hence, it only weighed 11Kb!
This isn’t a suitable size for most normal websites. So we’d move on to another test less dependent on the individual page’s contents and more on the server quality.
Server Response Time (SRT) Test
The above test can’t be trusted to get us a fair and universal insight into a hosting company’s performance as it’s dependent on each website.
The server response time test, however, measures the time a server needs to respond to a browser’s request to load the HTML of a page.
Here are the test results from PRQ’s SRT test (Verify Results):
This test was pretty enlightening. As is evident, the SRT result isn’t impressive and is rather barely average from my perspective.
The servers have a combined response time average of over 200ms, while we’ve seen quite a few companies with lower than 50ms response times.
This establishes that the page load-time test above was impressive only because PRQ’s website is lightweight.
SRT with Traffic-Surge
The above SRT, even though it wasn’t impressive by itself, was monitored on a stable, no-traffic website.
This test aims to put the website through a traffic surge, nothing major, just a 25-user traffic swarm to the website.
If the SRT doesn’t fluctuate much or skyrocket through the roof, it would indicate an acceptable performance. Otherwise, not so much.
Here are the results (Verify):
This is arguably the straightest graph I’ve ever seen in all my tests. The SRT-line starts with a response time of 104 ms with one active user on the site and finishes at 102 ms required for 24 active users.
This tells us that the SRT doesn’t spike with a traffic surge and also backs up the above test results (SRT test) to be true.
Servers, Pricing Plans, and Special T&C
The company offers 3 Primary types of servers – Raspberry Pi, Web Servers, and Dedicated Servers.
There is just one Web server package, priced at 0.00242 BTC. It provides 1GB space, Unlimited domains, and 30 GB/month transfer.
Raspberry Pi servers have two packages, RPI Dedicated starts at 0.00354 BTC, and RPI Co-location is sold for 0.00335 BTC/month.
Dedicated servers start at 0.02866 BTC/month, up to 0.14756 BTC/month.
The company doesn’t have an automated order/dispatch process. So users must manually E-mail the company at the provided E-mail address with the product required to make the purchases.
Special Terms and Conditions
PRQ has several special T & C, which warrant a mention in this PRQ Hosting review.
- More than 750 concurrent visitors aren’t allowed on regular servers; a Dedicated server is required in such a case.
- 20% discount is provided on all plans if paid for 12 months in advance.
- 10% off on all 6-month advance payments.
- Dedicated servers must be paid for at least one month in advance.
Final Words
I am signing off this PRQ Hosting review, all I can only say the company is entirely anonymous and extensively liberal with its AUP. The plans may however aren’t precisely pocket-friendly.
As for security, the claim has anti-DDOS servers. Backups, too are claimed to be taken automatically; however, they aren’t guaranteed.
The bottom line, it’s for smaller websites whose prime focus is identity protection and quality servers and when the budget isn’t a significant issue.
Although do let us know what you think of this PRQ Hosting review and about the company in general.
