LibertyVPS Review: Buy Offshore Hosting With Bitcoin

Author: JP Buntinx

The Bottom Line

LibertyVPS is not a cheap provider, but they do respect privacy and accept Bitcoin payments. For more professional users, this service is definitely worth the money.

A virtual private server can be used for a wide variety of things, ranging from hosting a website or project to running a complete Bitcoin Node. But not all of the VPS providers in the world offer the same type of functionality, as some are focusing more on anonymity and privacy than others. The important part, in the world of digital currency, at least, is whether or not users can pay with Bitcoin. LibertyVPS seems to check the right boxes in that regard.

LibertyVPS Is on the Right Track

After dabbling with the LibertyVPS website and service for a little while, it becomes clear that this company offers the service as advertised, but do not expect anything fancy. Then again, not everybody is looking for bells and whistles when it comes to VPS providers, and a tight interface makes it a bit easier to find the information one needs.

However, for those people who have never used a VPS before – or have little experience in doing so, like me – it can be quite confusing at first. Using Windows Remote Desktop for the connection will not work by default, as users need to enable that setting first on the server (assuming it is running Windows). This means there will be some trial and error with various VNC solutions at first, although there are some free solutions available.

One of the main reasons people will flock to LibertyVPS is due to their offshore hosting. Although the company has a very strict policy against illegal use cases of their VPS service, people using it for legitimate purposes might not want others to find out information about their server either. Privacy-centric solutions always do well in the Bitcoin world, which explains the success of this service so far.

That does not mean users can skip out on providing the company with some personal details, although it remains to be seen how much “tweaking” one can do during this step. For traditional payment options, it is important to provide information that matches your billing address, but for Bitcoin, there might be a way to pass on fake information. But keep in mind that doing so might cause a problem when having to deal with customer support to restore account access for whatever reason.

Bitcoin is the payment method most people will be interested in, though, and all payments are processed by BitPay, the world’s leading digital currency payment processor. This adds another level of privacy protection to every order placed, as there is no sensitive information broadcast when making a Bitcoin payment.

The Service Itself Runs Smoothly

The VPS I was testing – which is not mine, mind you – was running CentOS 6.3 64-bit, which is not the easiest or most straightforward version of Linux. For those LibertyVPS users thinking about getting a VPS with Linux installed, make sure to check the distro you are most familiar with. Besides CentOS, there are options for Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, and OpenSUSE.

There are various plans available as well, ranging from $19.99 to $79.99 per month for Linux users, and $24.99 to $99.99 per month for Windows. The cheapest plan – which was graciously offered to me by a BitcoinTalk user for this review – gets users 25GB of space, 2TB of monthly bandwidth, a one-core CPU, and 1GB of memory. Every server is capable of reaching Internet speeds of up to 1 Gbps.

All in all, I have to say LibertyVPS is providing their service just as advertised, as everything runs incredibly smoothly. Performing a full system update takes a few minutes, which is what one would expect from such a provider. It can be well worth the money, depending on how one plans to use the server.

In the end, it all comes down to customer preferences. Sure, LibertyVPS is not the cheapest solution out there, but a quality service is subject to a higher price. Some people might prefer to see more information or guides on the website for novice users, but a quick Google search should answer most questions. Privacy-centric offshore VPS hosting and the Bitcoin payment option make LibertyVPS a service well worth considering.