Ecatel is another company we think fits the bill as one of the best anonymous hosting companies. It may or may not tick all the boxes, but some it sure does and based on those we decided to get on with this Ecatel Review.
Although note that if you’re just starting out with servers and website building, Ecatel may not be the best option for you. (Why? Refer to the “Services and Pricing Plans” section for details).
Also, as always we tried verifying Ecatel’s own host, and failed to do so. The DNS seems to be redirecting to some other third-parties, as a results we weren’t able to conduct our usual tests. No use testing the server if we know the results aren’t related or accurate, is there?
Anyway, let’s get on with this Ecatel Review. The traditional questions we’d be answering throughout this piece are:
- Is Ecatel Hosting Anonymous?
- Is Ecatel an Offshore Hosting Company?
- What is Ecatel’s Acceptable Use Policy?
- Which Payment Methods can you use to Pay on ECatel?
- Does Ecatel Offer Refunds?
- What are the Services and their Prices on Ecatel?
- How to Contact Ecatel Support?
Disclaimer: This Ecatel review is subject to our Disclaimer. It also is completely unbiased and is portrayed “as is” without any prejudice, or direct gains.
Ecatel Hosting Quick Overview
This right here is a complete overview of the company helping you understand its potential better:
- Primary URL: http://ecatel.co.uk
- Servers Location: Netherlands
- Payment methods: Bitcoin.
- Cheapest Plan: EUR 29.00/month.
- Servers: Dedicated only.
- DMCA Ignored: Yes (Probably).
- Content not allowed: Listed in the AUP section.
Is Ecatel Hosting Anonymous?
To answer the same, we look into questions like- does it require users to share personal information with the company when procuring services from them. If so, what information does it require.
Then, how does it use the information, does it share it with third-parties? Is there an auto or manual deletion procedure for the data?
And finally, can the data provided be false/random/untrue? If yes, the company is generally considered to be anonymous.
Answers to the above questions are generally found in a company’s T&C page, and/or its Privacy Policy. Ecatel is surprisingly void of both of those pages! And as they say, “lack of information is absence of information”.
In other words, there is no clause or “Term” on the website forcing users to reveal or share personal information while registering or purchasing services.
In addition, the company offers arguably the most anonymous mode of payment for making payments. All of this point towards the fact that the company probably is an anonymous hosting company.
Is Ecatel an Offshore Hosting Company?
Talking purely based on the surface-level information provided, the company does mention “Offshore Servers” at its footer as well as has a special product-category going by the same name.
Although a more direct proof of the company being “offshore” is the fact that its servers are from Netherlands.
Also, Netherlands is one of the few offshore hosting locations which is legally capable of offering the digital liberty that we seek in these companies.
What is Ecatel’s Acceptable Use Policy?
The most important benefit we as users reap off a company being offshore is its content-liberty. In other words, the freedom of being able to upload and share content which might not have been possible with servers in our native countries.
Ecatel has a pretty brief and extremely liberal AUP policy. The only listed items which it officially says are banned include content related to:
- Child Porn, Spam, Malware, Phishing, DDoS
Pertaining to the fact that no other direct restrictions have been mentioned, it probably means that everything else is allowed.
As far as applicable laws go, taking into account that it’s marketing itself as an offshore hosting company, only the laws of Netherlands would probably apply and not Global laws.
There does seem to be a NTD page on the site using which users can report Copyright issues and other problems to the company.
As for Copyrighted content, DMCA is not applicable in the Netherlands. The “Auteurswet” law governs copyrights in the Netherlands, which probably is ignored considering how “Copyrighted content” isn’t mentioned in its restricted-content list.
There does however seem to be a NTD page on the site using which users can report Copyright issues and other problems to the company.
No other clause or statement mentioning that all uploaded content must be legal could be found.
And finally, we did a research on the company and found that it has been liberal with its copyright-policies in the past, and seems to ignore related complaints.
From all the evidence and data mentioned above, it’s safe to conclude that the company isn’t conservative with what can or can’t be uploaded on its servers. In fact, it seems to be way more liberal than the companies we encountered in our Webcare360 Review or BlueAngelHost Review.
Which Payment Methods can you use to Pay on Ecatel?
We did mention earlier in this Ecatel review that the company accepts anonymous payments, right? Well, it accepts “only” anonymous payments.
Payments can only be made using Bitcoins. No other Cryptocurrency or Fiat method seems to be accepted for now. one thing you need to put in mind when you will creating your account with any website, you need to create an account with anonymous details like a fake address, name and phone number also anonymous email. These things can help you to make your identity anonymous.
Does Ecatel Offer Refunds?
The company has a very strict and conservative refund policy. If they deliver the services (servers), in no case is a refund ordered after the delivery.
The only possibility of a refund is in a case when the servers haven’t been delivered yet. So in other words if you wish to test the servers out before making a longer commitment, that won’t be a possibility.
What are the Services and their Prices on Ecatel?
Ecatel is a “Dedicated Servers only” offshore anonymous hosting company. So you can’t purchase Shared or VPS servers on Ecatel. This is why we said it’s not beginner-friendly.
A total of 12 Packages can be seen on the homepage. The lowest plan seems to start from EUR 29.00/month, the highest priced as high as EUR 499.00/month.
Note that even though the company has “Streaming Servers” as an additional service under its “Dedicated Servers” option, the links redirect to a 404 page.
How to Contact Ecatel Support?
The company doesn’t seem to be a big fan of fast and easy communications, and hence no live-chat option is available.
The “Contact Us” page provides users with multiple E-mail addresses, A post-address, and a ICQ ID to get in touch with the team. We did try their ICQ thinking it was the fastest mode of communication, it has been over 24 hours and we still haven’t received a reply.
Infact, the “last seen” for the ICQ account was nearly 4 months ago so there’s that. In a nutshell, if you need frequent customer support Ecatel may not be the best option to go with.
Final Verdict:
Let’s wrap this Ecatel review up. It’s totally an option to peek at when searching for the best Anonymous offshore webhosting companies. Starting with the fact that it’s anonymous to quite an extent, and accepts equally anonymous payments.
The AUP and its previous history too speak for its liberalism. Obviously the offshore benefits of Netherlands are all there.
Sure the Support and refund policies could use some improvement. But the bottomline for this Ecatel review is that it does satisfy the general user’s offshore needs. Do let us know if you’re on the same page or think differently?
