Which green hosting to choose?

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We waited a long time to do this article and, after reading a piece of Open For Future For Fridays For Future Italy called Positive energy data centers, we finally decided to do it. Also thanks to your enthusiasm when we asked you if you were interested in an article like this. So we'll talk about Which Hosting green choose.

Let's try to understand better, as always, what we are talking about. L'Hosting it is a service that is offered by some sites (providers) to host your website or anything else. A provider may decide to use a large shared data center, such as that of Aruba, or you can decide to build and manage one yourself.

A data center is a structure, more or less large, with the servers inside to make everything work. These servers and this structure, as you can well imagine, require an enormous amount of energy and adequate air conditioning is also necessary to prevent the temperature from rising excessively.

What we wanted to do with this article is a collection of Hosting that they use Alone renewable energy data centers. We have decided to give priority, in the order of advice, to Hosting Italians. In the second part of the article you will also find Hosting Europeans. However, we will not go beyond the European Union except for Swiss and some other nations which are still part of geographical Europe and which have agreements withEU.

Which Hosting green choose for privacy?

Talking about privacy in this context is, in our opinion, very complex. Who offers a greater privacy protection service? In fact, providers are not above the law, we have tried to make balanced and sensible choices without falling into conspiracy theories. One of the decisions taken to draft this article was to exclude all the Nations that are part of the Five Eyes. THE Five Eyes, for those who don't know, are the intelligence alliance that encompasses United States, Australia, Canada, New Zeland And Great Britain ¹. Then, if you want to delve deeper, there are also the Nine Eyes hey Fourteen Eyes ².

By seeking compromises and trying not to generate excessive anxiety in those who follow us, we believe it is important to stay away mainly from Five Eyes. L'NSA in fact it has already proven itself decisively casual and active in mass surveillance programs and, thanks to the revelations of Snowden, we know enough to think it is necessary to try to stay away from it as much as possible ³. To the extent possible for an average user, obviously.

This is the reason why all have been excluded from this list Hosting that use data centers in those five countries.

Data centers

We also thought it was necessary to prioritize the Hosting which manage data centers independently and which do not rely on third parties for reasons of greater transparency and security. Having the ability to manage your network internally and independently is not simple but in our opinion it is important: it means not delegating security to third parties. It doesn't mean that doing so is necessarily bad but if we're talking about privacy fewer actors are on the field the better.

We personally contacted the companies we had concerns about. For obvious reasons we were unable to personally try all of them Hosting below. The only one we know very well is Infomaniak of which we have been customers since 2020 and for now we are very happy. We got an idea of the others based on what they wrote on their sites, based on the responses they gave us via email and also according to the various articles and reviews found online.

The domain

In addition to theHosting, if we talk about privacy or anonymity, there is also the domain to purchase to consider. In this case, green has little to do with it, but it is important to remember the difference between privacy and anonymity: a provider, even if it defends your privacy, will always know who you are because in order to purchase the majority of domains and Hosting you must use a real identity.

When choosing a domain, you may opt to have your data obscured in public searches. For example, if you are looking for information on our domain: whois.ws/whois/lealternative.net you will see that the registrant is obscured and that the name and public email is that of Infomaniak. This is an option that we generally recommend choosing because having your name and surname, telephone number and email in the public domain can unfortunately generate spam and even phishing attempts.

Almost all providers offer domain protection. And it is often an extra paid service which, as we told you, we recommend you have anyway.

Like there you reported on Mastodon now the GDPR it should automatically obscure sensitive data. In some cases, depending on the domain chosen, emails or other information may still remain visible ⁴. Therefore, also depending on the domain you choose, you may not need it, but in some cases keep in mind that the email may be visible.

One of the ways, perhaps the only one, to remain anonymous when purchasing a domain is to use a service like Njalla. In this case you will have them purchase the domain and pay them for this service. Cryptocurrencies can also be used. Always take into account that their they are contractual promises, you are effectively having your domain registered by a third party ⁵. To date, however, it has always proved to be a safe and problem-free service (or almost so ⁶).

Which Hosting green to choose?

🌳 As already specified by all Hosting reported below use data centers that work only and exclusively with renewable energy at 100%;

💡 we remind you that we have decided never to accept or make any type of affiliation, therefore none of the links below will track you nor will we receive anything if you decide to use one of the providers listed;

⚠ although these solutions often offer backup and recovery services, our advice is to have them Always a personal backup copy on another server (or locally) because theaccident it's always around the corner, even in big situations.

So let's get to the point: Which Hosting green to choose? Here is our list.

Keliweb

server in Italy
owned data centers

Italian company with two owned data centers, both located in Italy ⁷. The data centers are powered by renewable energy. They deliver Hosting at modest prices, it seems like a reliable company with excellent online ratings ⁸.

• visit the site

Hosting Solutions

server in Italy
owned data centers
collaboration with Sea Shepherd to clean up Italian seas

We got to know her thanks to this research. It seemed like a nice platform, they offer Hosting at low prices and use data centers with energy entirely produced from renewable sources. They use four Italian data centers: two owned in Florence, a co-location a Rome and another a Siziano ⁹. They also have a collaboration with the NGO Sea Shepherd with which they contribute to the cleaning of the Italian seas (SISO operation) ¹⁰.

• visit the site

Aruba

server in Italy
owned data centers

Aruba it certainly needs no introduction, it is one of the most famous companies in Italy and several providers use their data centers for their services. It must also be said that for a long time Aruba is going green, all its data centers use only 100% energy from renewable sources ¹¹.
As for the Hosting shared there is some discontent and some negative comments, but they are generally recommended ¹².

• visit the site

Seeweb

servers in Italy, Switzerland and Croatia
owned data centers

Seeweb is another large Italian company with owned data centers. The data centers are located in Europe, they have four in Italy (Milan, Frosinone And Sesto San Giovanni), one in Swiss to Lugano and another in Croatia a Zagreb ¹³. They also offer services with Hosting shared at prices perhaps less competitive than others. Seeweb he is also a partner of The Green Web Foundation.

• visit the site

Infomaniak

server in Switzerland
owned data centers
Green eco-friendly paper server with shareable goals

Infomaniak it is the provider that we have chosen for our site. They use and promote free software while also offering reworked suites of Nextcloud, adaptations of Jitsi and so on. They have proprietary servers in Swiss. They take cold air directly from outside without the need for an air conditioning system ¹⁴. They have one ecological paper very interesting and all their commitments are acceptable to us.

• visit the site

Oriented

server in Switzerland
owned data centers

Agency Swiss which has existed since 2002, focused on privacy and with proprietary data centers that run only on renewable energy ¹⁵. A little more expensive than previous solutions.

• visit the site

Hetzner

servers in Germany and Finland
owned data centers

Another excellent alternative with high-performance European servers and a totally green data center ¹⁶. In fact, German data centers run on hydroelectric energy. The Finnish one with both hydroelectric energy and wind energy ¹⁷. The prices of HetznerFinally, they are definitely affordable even if you have to buy a VPS.

• visit the site

Host Europe

server in Germany
owned data centers

Host Europe is a German company with owned data centers in Cologne, Germany ¹⁸.

• visit the site

SpectraIP

servers in the Netherlands servers in the Netherlands
owned data centers

Dutch company with owned data center in Zaanstreek, in the Netherlands ¹⁹.

• visit the site

Other renewable energy providers

Which Hosting green to choose? Below we point out other very interesting companies that use 100% green data centers. These Hosting, However, They don't have their own data center but they rely on third-party-owned data centers.

• Web Hosting, an Italian company with data centers in Italy. The data centers are not their property, however they have assured us that they are powered entirely by energy produced from renewable sources, as is the electricity for their offices. They have an interesting collaboration with One Tree Planted, a non-profit organization to reforest our planet. For every purchase you make with Web Hosting a tree will be planted.

• Ergonet, an Italian company with two data centers in Italy, one a Rome and the other to Milan ²⁰. Both use exclusively renewable energy ²¹. Also thanks to the partnership with Treedom trees will be planted for each purchase made ²².

• Netsons, they also don't have their own data center but rely on those of Seeweb and of Irideos ²³ which have recently gone green ²⁴. Consequently, Netsons can also be a valid eco-sustainable alternative.

• Virtual Hosting, also Italian and with three data centers. Two Italians owned by Aruba and one in Germany, to Frankfurt. All three run on renewable energy.

• Tophost, is also famous for having prices accessible to all. Use the servers of Seeweb, which we talked about above.

• VHosting, they also use several data centers that all run on renewable energy at 100%. Data centers are both in Italy that in Germany.

• FlokiNET, a company focused on privacy and security. You can choose which of the data centers to place your data in, they have servers in Iceland, in Romania and in Finland. They are all green at 100%.

• OrangeWebsite, Iceland is another of those places, like Switzerland, frowned upon by lovers of privacy. In fact, it has good laws that protect citizens' privacy ²⁵. OrangeWebsite uses only green energy ²⁶ and uses the company's data centers Advania. He is one of the very few Hosting which he also accepts Bitcoin as payment.

• 1984 Web Hosting, other Hosting Icelandic.

• Webo.Hosting, an excellent service Hosting which we have also suggested in the past to use Nextcloud. Their servers are all European (two in Germany and one in Finland) and green at 100%.

• SupportHost, another good provider with attractive prices. They only use one data center and it's in Germany ²⁷.

Which Hosting green to choose? The conclusions

We therefore hope that we have given you an idea and that we have managed to guide you on theHosting to choose for your website.

1. Five Eyes on Wikipedia[↩]
2. Five Eyes, Nine Eyes, 14 Eyes – Explained[↩]
3. NSA mass surveillance programs[↩]
4. Change to Whois Privacy for domains[↩]
5. Njalla – What separates Njalla from traditional domain name registration services?[↩]
6. Njalla Takes 'Pirate' Site Domains Offline Following Legal Pressure[↩]
7. Keliweb – Data center[↩]
8. Keliweb – Reviews[↩]
9. Hosting Solutions – Data centers[↩]
10. Hosting Solutions for the environment[↩]
11. Aruba – Eco-sustainability[↩]
12. Aruba – Reviews[↩]
13. Seeweb – Data center[↩]
14. Infomaniak – Choose heat-resistant servers and prioritize air conditioning-free ventilation techniques[↩]
15. Oriented – data center[↩]
16. Hetzner – Data center[↩]
17. Hetzner – Finnish data center[↩]
18. Host Europe – Data center[↩]
19. SpectraIP – Data center[↩]
20. Ergonet – Data centers[↩]
21. Ergonet – Data center[↩]
22. Ergonet – Treedom[↩]
23. Administrative headquarters data location[↩]
24. Hosting and sustainability: Netsons is increasingly green[↩]
25. OrangeWebsite – About Iceland[↩]
26. OrangeWebiste – Green Web Hosting Providers[↩]
27. SupportHost – Data center[↩]

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