All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
What would make you switch VPS providers?
Hello LET,
I'll keep this short and to the point. My name is Matteo, I am the owner and developer of Servury, an anonymous VPS provider based in Canada. I am dead set on making Servury into the #1 privacy cloud for the people, and I will genuinely go to stupid lengths to make it happen. I think a lot of other "privacy" providers suck really hard and only use privacy as a marketing gimmick.
I want to ask you guys :
- What features/characteristics do you currently/would appreciate on your preferred hosting provider(s)?
- What do you dislike about your current hosting provider(s)?
In March I posted a similar thread :
https://lowendtalk.com/discussion/215138/what-features-would-you-like-to-see-the-most-on-your-server-provider/p1
From that thread, I implemented the following suggestions :
- BYOIP/BYOASN/BGP
- True unlimited bandwidth via throttling after main limit reached
- SEV-SNP/encrypted memory plans -> kinda went overboard here and created the first zero-knowledge VPS (Blackbox). Special thanks to @forest for the SEV-SNP suggestion and various other hardening stuff.
Separately, from other user's suggestions, I added these features :
- Self hosted crypto payments using our own nodes and backend
- Whole site working without Javascript/Tor Browser safest security setting
- Custom ISO/UKI/Disk image on Blackbox
- Measured boot on Blackbox
What I'm on right now:
- More Blackbox capacity in Montreal. The queue has been full since launch and new metal lands this month.
- A second Blackbox location in the Netherlands.
Same deal as last time: every suggestion gets a reply from me, the ones we build get credited to you in this thread, and nothing is too small or too paranoid. If you think something we do is dumb, say it too.
Comments
I'd love the ability to see the host SSH key fingerprint before the first login so I know I'm not getting MITMed. Currently the only workaround is to connect to VNC, run
ssh-keygen -lf /etc/ssh/ssh_host_ed25519_key.pub, then SSH in and visually compare the fingerprint before accepting it. TOFU is better than nothing but it's not enough, especially when using Tor.There are soooo many providers in the Netherlands. I'd much rather see smaller, niche locations.
Kim Jong-un: VPS hosting must be stable
@Yuki_ ^^^
https://lowendtalk.com/discussion/222131/fake-unlimited-bandwidth-hall-of-limitation#latest
We already have that! and I think you'll like how it works.
On a Blackbox with measured boot, the SSH host key is generated inside the
initramfs on every boot and its SHA-256 goes into the SEV-SNP attestation
report's REPORT_DATA. The CPU signs the report. blackbox-verify (python, in
the downloads) verifies the signature chain back to AMD's root, checks the
measurement against the published firmware/kernel/initrd, keyscans the VM,
confirms the key on the wire is the one in the report, and prints you the
known_hosts line. So you get the fingerprint before you trust anything, and
it's bound to the hardware, not to what a console shows you. The VNC method
you describe still trusts the host, since the host owns the VNC.
Stability is the most important.
Can we have Blackbox Singapura next?
@averagedatahoarder We clearly state our bandwidth limits, I don't think it's fair to have us listed on there. We did change from "unmetered" to having clear limits (with throttle after limit reached) on the Blackbox plans, and gave a grace period, but we're never going to do predatory practices like saying we sell plans with unmetered when there is clearly a limit we just don't want to state. I think it's only fair what we did. We added limits after some users (probably you lol) used insane amounts of bandwidth in an insanely short amount of time.
Yes, Singapore will come after Amsterdam.
Is it this user who posted it? I did not see the original poster’s ID.
But frankly, using privacy as a selling point is not an effective way to attract a large number of orders.
It is. Thank you for bringing that post to my attention by the way.
False.
Promoting privacy alone only attracts criminals.
That's bullshit.
Even Tor, which is free, private, anonymous, censorship-resistant, and extremely difficult for even law enforcement to break, has significantly more legal traffic than illegal traffic overall.
Ah yes, the good old "cryptocurrency is only used by criminals" logic.
Fixed that for you.
But I'm everywhere. I'm even in the background of your profile pic.
I might have overstated it. Privacy protection is good, but it can also shield criminals.
That's true. Just like smooth roads with few potholes: They're good, but they can also make it easier for a bank robber to get away, and for kidnappers to move farther distances in a short time.
Yeah, just like how cash can be used to pay for hookers and cocaine.
Great minds think alike.
.... When the other option is Berohost
Usually, addon pricing practices. I don't tend to chase $7/year, but if adding an extra +4GB RAM costs literally more than taking my workload to AWS, we have a problem.
I wish I was being hyperbolic but I'm not. Let's pick on BuyVM. I like them, they are a really good provider, but their prices are only reasonable at the entry-tier. Afterwards? Cop a look at this fella:
It is literally cheaper to go to an Oracle Cloud datacenter in my home city.
Funnily enough, BinaryLane's pricing is identical to BuyVM's - but at least BinaryLane can claim to have that expensive APAC bandwidth.
Australia's hosting market is honestly cooked. To rent a non-OVH dedi, here's the price and specs:
That is just nasty. But I digress.
The problem with addon pricing is not just with VPS providers, either. Take Psychz. I mostly like Psychz. But heaven forbid you want an extra 1tb SATA SSD. I could ship one to them for $80 bucks (at lest I could until recently), but no they wanted to charge me $10/month instead.
I get it, I get it, from the hosting provider's side, addons is how you make money on otherwise low-margin products. But the questions I always ask myself are:
Now, if I'm being honest, I don't know how what I say will help you develop products for servury, but you asked what I don't like about my current providers, so I just had to get it off my chest.
The price point where I seriously start thinking about switching from VPS to dedicated is $30/month. Because I know that with a bit of careful waiting (and AI agents are going to make that so much easier now) I can usually get really good servers at that price point. This is a general comment not specifically directed at blackbox plans - I am not going to pretend that I can get an EPYC 7B33 for $30/month, but you asked about my gripes with my providers so.....
So, what would make me switch VPS providers? Locations I don't have, at prices that are at least as good as getting a dedicated server / big cloud provider in that location, with features I don't have.
Now, looking at your specific TOS, I note:
Now I get not being a piracy heaven, but immediate suspension without refund for accusations of copyright infringement seems a bit extreme in light of relative ease with which that system can be abused. Someone can submit bogus copyright complaints or, if say there are open comments on someone's blog, a malicious actor could submit copyrighted content in said comments and then file a takedown request.
I would recommend revisiting this policy.
Something else I noticed is that there doesn't seem to be any documentation about purchasing additional IP space. I know that this is one of forest's main asks with Tor exit nodes - a second IP to run a resolver on. And since you advertise that you are happy for people to run Tor exits, I might suggest either allowing people to purchase additional address space or to run your own resolvers.
if the one I have is to cheap and to stable I change to a new one, more expensive and more unstable so I contribute the the worlds economy.
New here. For me the deciding factors would be stable routing to Asia and transparent pricing with no surprise renewals. Do you have any plans for Asia locations (HK/Tokyo/Singapore)? Most budget providers I see are US/EU only.
Frankly for an anonymous VPS the provider being in a 14-eyes country for me is a no-go.
FULL ACK, Netherlands has become boring due to everyone and their dog having a presence there.
That said though there is a very major BUT: NL is about the only country I know to have at least some protection against the state eavesdropping, MITMing, and the like.
AFAIK pretty much ALL western countries have bent over to get fucked deep in the ass by fbi, cia, nsa, and friends and NONE *really cares about their citizens.
But as I'm not interested in doing or supporting criminal things, I do not need NL as a location (or "bullet proof", or TOR, or somesuch).