Launched in 2017 Bitlaunch is one of the most Popular Anonymous VPS hosting providers in the world. It claims to promotes Anonymity and Privacy above all. Also they take many payment methods including various cryptocurrencies. They also offer hourly payment charges and Pay As you Go. In this blog post I will cover some of the services on offer, and deploy a VM (Virtual Machine) on Bitlaunch.
Table of contents
Set Up
In order to start you need an account. The below Link is affiliated so to help pay for the support of this website. But this doesn’t effect my review. You can go direct to the site if you like.
Email Verification
It’s important to note that this service needs you to verify your email. So if you have any ideas about making up a email address you best forget it.
I did manage to verify it via a temporary email tool but it’s better to use a permanent email address in case you need to do any password resets.
Offerings on Choice
Bitlaunch has a lot of Products on offer. It has its own native ones and some from other Cloud vendors that don’t do Anonymity. When you use one of these, for example DigitalOcean, Vultr or Linode, then Bitlaunch wraps them up in anonymity for you.
Regions
There a quit a few regions available. Even if you just select BitLaunch.
Operating Systems
The only windows offerings are “Bring your own Licence” model. Not a probelm with Linux. While there is not a huge range, for example there is no Kali Linux, ArchLinux or Ubuntu 22.04 (yet) there is still enough on offer for most use cases. The beauty of Linux is you can install anything from the repos on most modern Linux distributions or if it’s not in the repos then you can build it from the code.
Servers
Bitlaunch has a wide varieties of Virtual Servers available. If you select some of the other providers then the options grow even more.
Apps
There is a range of apps from VPN (Virtual Private Networks) to WordPress.
And if you use one of the other service providers such as DigitalOcean then this list grows much larger.
Network
The network doesn’t seem to have any limitations around the Pay As You Go servers.
Deploy a VM
What better way to show off a service than by using it. So lets create a Virtual Machine (VM).
Configure the VM
For this exercise I will create the smallest tier system which has the following specifications. The small Tier costs approx. 1.5 cents per hour so wont be breaking any banks limits.
| Host | BitLaunch |
| Image | Ubuntu 20.04 LTS |
| Region | Amsterdam |
| RAM | 1GB |
| CPU | 1 Core |
| HardDisk (SSD) | 25GB |
| Access Method | SSH Key |
| Hostname | bitlaunch-ubuntu-ams2-nibble-1024 |
Click on “Launch Server” to start the VM.
Connect to the VM
Once the VM is launched then you can find the ip address on the services page.
Using the ssh key from earlier you can connect using any ssh client. Putty, will require the ssh key is converted to its own format. But from Linux you can just run the below command
ssh -i ./key.priv root@64.190.113.112
Now that you are installed you should update it to the latest patches.
Testing Performance
To test performance I will deploy a NextCloud instance using Docker.
Deploying NextCloud
However, you will need to install a few things first though.
apt update
apt install docker docker.io python3-pip
pip3 install docker-compose
mkdir nextcloud
cd nextcloud
vi docker-compose.yml
Docker-Compose File
Below is the docker-compose.yml contents that you have to create, be sure to change the ip address to the public IP of the VM you just created and add a Email address.
version: '3'
services:
proxy:
image: jwilder/nginx-proxy:alpine
labels:
- "com.github.jrcs.letsencrypt_nginx_proxy_companion.nginx_proxy=true"
container_name: nextcloud-proxy
networks:
- nextcloud
ports:
- 80:80
- 443:443
volumes:
- ./proxy/conf.d:/etc/nginx/conf.d:rw
- ./proxy/vhost.d:/etc/nginx/vhost.d:rw
- ./proxy/html:/usr/share/nginx/html:rw
- ./proxy/certs:/etc/nginx/certs:ro
- /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
- /var/run/docker.sock:/tmp/docker.sock:ro
restart: unless-stopped
letsencrypt:
image: jrcs/letsencrypt-nginx-proxy-companion
container_name: nextcloud-letsencrypt
depends_on:
- proxy
networks:
- nextcloud
volumes:
- ./proxy/certs:/etc/nginx/certs:rw
- ./proxy/vhost.d:/etc/nginx/vhost.d:rw
- ./proxy/html:/usr/share/nginx/html:rw
- /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
- /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock:ro
restart: unless-stopped
db:
image: mariadb
container_name: nextcloud-mariadb
networks:
- nextcloud
volumes:
- db:/var/lib/mysql
- /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
environment:
- MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=toor
- MYSQL_PASSWORD=mysql
- MYSQL_DATABASE=nextcloud
- MYSQL_USER=nextcloud
restart: unless-stopped
app:
image: nextcloud:latest
container_name: nextcloud-app
networks:
- nextcloud
depends_on:
- letsencrypt
- proxy
- db
volumes:
- nextcloud:/var/www/html
- ./app/config:/var/www/html/config
- ./app/custom_apps:/var/www/html/custom_apps
- ./app/data:/var/www/html/data
- ./app/themes:/var/www/html/themes
- /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
environment:
- VIRTUAL_HOST=YOUR.SERVER.IP
- LETSENCRYPT_HOST=YOUR.SERVER.IP
- LETSENCRYPT_EMAIL=YOUR-EMAIL
restart: unless-stopped
volumes:
nextcloud:
db:
networks:
nextcloud:
Create the Network
docker network create cloudstorage_network
Start NextCloud
And run the new NextCloud system.
docker-compose up -d
At this stage you are waiting for the nextcloud system to build. It should only take a few minutes but you need to confirm it is up and running before you go to the next step. Run the below command until you see the database is up.
docker-compose logs
This didn’t take long at all. Just browse the internet to your public ip of your new VM and you should see the next cloud set up page.
Only a few minutes to download and install all the packages. That’s one of the great things about Docker.
Clean Up
Once you finished with your VM you have to delete it. Powering it off wont stop the hourly charges. Destroy it or eventually it will consume all your credit. To Destroy it go to the servers page and select “Destroy”.
You will be asked to Confirm the destruction.
And just like that, its gone. You can confirm in the billing section that you are not being charged for anything.
The VM I tested with costed me about 3 cent for a little less than an hour.
Wrap Up
If Privacy or Anonymity is important to you then BitLaunch is one of the best around and comes highly recommended.
Any comments or suggestions please leave them below.