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BuyVM vs. IncogNET for Free Speech Hosting + Other Services
@Francisco and @MannDude seem to be on good terms, so I'm obviously not trying to pit these companies against each other. I think it's nice that privacy and free speech-oriented web hosts generally respect the common goal, and I have servers with both. With that said, this post is designed to parse out the use cases for both. The content below is based on digging around in their websites, and also my personal experience.
BuyVM
If you're looking for competitive pricing and flexibility, BuyVM is my obvious pick. BuyVM is a Frantech company which offers a lot of VPS plans of different sizes, as well as block storage slabs that make servers easily expandable without too much stress on the wallet. BuyVM also has a DMCA-ignored Luxembourg location, which IncogNET thus far does not, even in the Netherlands.
You can order free software licenses through BuyVM for use on any of their servers, including the DirectAdmin control panel and Softaculous. There are also tutorials that aren't too hard to follow, even for those who generally avoid the command line.
As the larger of the two companies, BuyVM support is likely to reply to your queries more quickly than IncogNET. Also, due to the size of their team, they are more willing to go into depth to help you manage your server, such as figuring out how to mount block storage, or how to install and configure DirectAdmin.
IncogNET
IncogNET has a lot more breadth in terms of the services it provides and develops. Besides the usual VPSes, shared hosting, and dedicated servers (the last of which BuyVM does not currently offer), IncogNET sponsors other privacy projects, like frontends for Reddit and YouTube, and the upcoming IncogVPN which I'm currently beta testing.
Since BuyVM already has a lot of TOR nodes on its network, if you want to host your own TOR node, IncogNET is the better choice. (Not sure about i2p or Yggdrasil, since those are smaller.)
Unlike BuyVM, which processes crypto payments through third parties, IncogNET uses IncogPay, their own in-house payment processing platform based on BTCPayServer, which cuts out middlemen and ensures that IncogNET doesn't need to rely on anyone else's approval to receive your payments. IncogNET also has the option to pay with cash by mail, which to my knowledge, BuyVM does not offer.
Last but certainly not least, IncogNET currently offers anonymous domain registration. Soon, NameCrane, another Frantech company, will, too, but from what I can gather, they will still run KYC, so IncogNET remains the better choice for registrants who want to keep their personal details private, even from the registrar. (And once NameCrane's domain registration launches, IncogNET will resell them.)
Conclusion
I see BuyVM's VPSes as being more suitable for anyone, including beginners and hobbyists, who like the convenience and flexible plans of a medium-sized company, with the added benefits of a company that focuses on privacy and freedom of speech, and truly cares about its customers.
On the other hand, IncogNET's VPSes are better for those who are a bit more independent and advanced in their server management skills. Both their VPSes and shared plans are good for anyone who is willing to pay a little more for stricter privacy precautions, and to support a freer internet through other privacy projects.
If there's anything glaring you think I should add, let me know.
Comments
I just want to jump in early since I got notification via a tag that I myself use BuyVM for many things, including DNS clusters for IncogNET, our own website, and other things I keep off our own network for redundancy (don't keep all your eggs in one basket).
BuyVM is great, Fran is great, and you'd never go wrong by choosing them.
EDIT: Once NameCrane is live we'll be reselling them, similar to how we resell InternetBS currently.
Thanks for this info. Will add in the main post. Glad to hear you and Fran are a team, as always.
BuyVM is more reputed as its older, own most (if not all) of their stuff and overall a bigger company
but incognet is more privacy and freedom of speech company
for hosting regular stuff id go with buyvm and for things that require freedom of speech and privacy id go with incognet (you can get both from buyVM too but Icognet has more of an incentive to keep you as a client)
IncogNET has lower latency.
that reminds me, i had similar issues when i hosted a bot on buyvm (US i think) and response time was close to a second but on other servers it was much faster
I use both IncogNET US/EU and BuyVM (all locations)
We're extremely fortunate to have them. Provider diversity is scarce outside of Joe's Summerhost from the days of hudsonvalleyhosting resellers flooding the market with the same shit
Yeah, RTT of over 20 minutes is kind of a big deal for some setups.
As for "common goal," I think you're somewhat conflating "free speech" with "privacy" -- they are different (yet still related and in some cases overlapping) things. Additionally, there are a lot of nuances about different kinds of freedom of speech issues and just as many nuances with privacy issues. So to have a really good discussion about the topics, you need to get down to more granular details of what someone may actually need, and that may be very different than what you or I may need.
For example, "freedom of speech" in the sense of US First Amendment rights or even the differences with Iceland's constitutional freedom of speech and press are both very different than "freedom of speech" hosting issues with DMCA-ignore or even certain adult content. It's a huge discussion, covering legal structures and differences in jurisdiction, history, regional and global politics, even cultural issues, and so forth. And we're not even touching the nuances of things like what one jurisdiction's definition of "hate speech" is compared to another jurisdiction, or extremely important issues of libel, slander, and defamation laws around the world.
And as for "privacy," there is also a huge range of nuances from things like HIPAA-, CCPA-, GDPR-protected privacy to quasi- or fully-anonymous privacy, and everything in between, not to mention security issues, 3-letter agencies, treaties, 5/9/14 Eyes issues, etc..
It's a massive range of topics, dealing with legal, ethical, political, financial, and jurisdictional considerations, and this forum can only begin to discuss the tips of the various icebergs. Note the word "icebergs" is plural. And we're not even getting into issues of proper threat assessments.
Not trying to be negative or a drag on your thread, but the idea of BuyVM and IncogNET with regard to "free speech hosting" and/or "privacy hosting" is a bit reductive.
Having said that, both providers are overall good services in my experience, both services offer varying degrees of services for people interested in these broad issues, BUT the "best" hosting service between these two or any other "privacy" or "freedom of speech" oriented provider will depend ENTIRELY on the specific needs of the project, the users, the content, the purpose, and/or the audience of the content. And if it is sensitive or high-stakes, it will also benefit from a proper threat assessment.
Again, I don't mean to be a downer. But for anyone who stumbles on this thread in the future, if they really care about these issues, they'll have a lot of homework to do to understand the big picture. I would have appreciated that myself when I started researching years ago, so I'm kind of leaving this post here for someone who is beginning their own search for useful info. And then with regard to the OP, they can properly assess if IncogNET and/or BuyVM (and/or some other provider) might fit their project requirements. But again, both are good services that might fit a variety of different kinds of requirements.
All the best, no offense intended!
Wow, thanks for the super in-depth response! And I agree 100%, no offense taken. My intention with this thread was to compare and contrast two providers which I saw as being somewhat similar, since, when people do ask about privacy/free speech/etc, these providers are recommended among the most frequently (alongside others like iHostART, of course, but iHostART is in somewhat of a different league in my opinion). But you should always do your own research and weigh your own needs.
Don't deprive us of our drama.
No drama.
Fran and I are friends and he's helped me many times in the past, whether it be for vpsBoard back in the day or IncogNET.
BuyVM has faster support, faster disks, BGP sessions, and is my first choice when I need a production quality VM for something business related that I want to host off our own network. I'm a stickler for putting my eggs in different baskets, so things like DNS, company website mirrors, backups, monitoring, etc are all offsite and with BuyVM and/or Digital Ocean. Plus, no one is doing splintered networking. Its so cool that I have a /24 announced as four different /26s, one /26 in each of their locations for IncogVPN. No one else is offerimg that.
Only negative thing I have to say about him is he's Canadian. Gross.
Tabernac!
Francisco
Correct.
We also allow freedom of expression from whatever political side, we accept blogs, political websites without any problem and other free speech websites.
We can't play the role of police or judge and decide what is right or wrong in freedom of expression, who determines what is hate or sarcasm? Complicated, right?
Freedom of expression must be protected, we allow it and we will continue to allow it as far as we can. The limit is the sky. But freedom of expression comes at a cost, and I think we all know that when we don't like a speech or something, we can be persecuted in any country.
It's enough for an entity, organisation or group to have a legal presence in the country, freedom of expression can be limited through the introduction of new laws, jurisdiction and so on. Unfortunately, there is no way to control this.
We obey the laws of our country and where the servers are, even if we allow freedom of expression we cannot say enough, that any organisation can try to take it down or come with a court order, in these cases we have to obey if they are local orders and other types of court orders.
Freedom of expression comes at a price and the price we pay is censorship, persecution and limits by law, order, etc. That's why people should never have everything in the same bag, they should always consider plan B, C.
If there's international persecution, it's unlikely that any hosting organisation will allow it. Not because they don't want to, but because it could have consequences, among others.
Nowadays, it sometimes seems like it's the company that has to play policeman, but it's not. It's the judges who have to determine that, not us. In this Internet age, there are people who want the company that provides web hosting to play policeman and judge, something that doesn't make sense. Otherwise those same hierarchies wouldn't even exist.
Some laws are opposed to others; the fact that freedom of expression exists in the United States, for example, doesn't stop companies there from refusing to provide services. So the law itself is not very clear and clearly there are those who take advantage of it. There are laws that were sometimes just invented and created, just ‘because’ in practice they don't even work properly.
Your point is correct in some respects! We are in favour of freedom of expression.
Best regards
Alexhost
Someday I should do a review of European free speech hosts, it seems...
Europe is harder for it.
You post a picture with your arm in an unfortunate position and you're getting arrested.
Francisco
Ill wear this to work and see how it goes, will report back later
tbh though it isn't all that bad. Can't share stories public but its dank over where I work at.