What should I know before renting a Basalthold storage server?

Four holds, each for 30 days: Hold 24 $110.99, Hold 40 $201.09, Hold 100 $377.05, Hold 160 $561.39. Every hold costs the same in Amsterdam, Bucharest and Chisinau. No setup fee is charged, neither on the first order nor on a renewal. There is no free trial; Hold 24, the smallest hold, costs $110.99 for 30 days. Drives, processors and traffic per hold are on the Basalthold pricing page.

Each hold is priced 25% under a named like-for-like server from a host that takes crypto without ID, read on 2 November 2026: Hold 160 costs $561.39 against $748.52 at OffshoreDedi. We do not claim to be the cheapest at every capacity. Hosts outside that pool list less: NetDynamics24 shows $1.30 per TB, without crypto confirmed. See the price per TB of a rented storage server.

Yes. Rent a hold for 30 days, 3 months (91 days, 10% off), 6 months (182 days, 20% off) or 12 months (365 days, 30% off): a longer term costs the 30-day price times 3, 6 or 12, minus the discount, rounded down to the cent (Hold 24: $299.67 for 3 months, $532.75 for 6, $932.31 for 12). A renewal keeps your term and your starting price unless you choose another term for the next renewal in the dashboard. The term is chosen at checkout, and the dashboard lets you set a different length for the next renewal.

The operating system sits on its own SSD (two mirrored SSDs on the larger holds); the data drives arrive blank and unpartitioned, so you can build ZFS, an mdadm array or a set of independent disks. If you want the team to prepare a RAID 6 or RAID 10 array before delivery, say so to support before the server is handed over. A two-drive hold suits a mirror; the ten-drive holds suit RAIDZ2 or RAID 6, which keep eight drives of data and survive two failures.

When a drive fails, open a ticket: the team has it replaced at no cost, and rebuilding the array on the new drive is up to your setup. Send the drive's serial number and the server's IP address with your ticket. With parity, the server keeps running during the swap; how long a rebuild takes depends on drive size and load.

No. A storage server is not a backup of itself: we keep no copy of your data anywhere else, so a second copy in another place stays your job. A hold works best as the offsite copy of data you already keep at home or at work; see the best offsite backup for a NAS.

Yes, and you hold them. You can encrypt every data drive with LUKS or ZFS native encryption; the keys stay with you and nobody on the team ever asks for them. Since there is no console, a reboot needs a way to enter the passphrase: unlocking LUKS remotely covers the usual method with Dropbear. Backup tools such as restic and Borg also encrypt on your side before upload.

BTC, USDT, USDC, ETH, SOL, LTC. The smallest top-up is $25. The top-up lands on your balance, and each hold is paid from it for its term. Credit on your balance does not expire and renews any of your servers. When a top-up is only made to reach the minimum, the unspent part comes back on request within 30 days of payment, in USDT or USDC. The rest of a balance is not paid out unless the law requires it. Monero and Lightning are not accepted.

No. No KYC: no ID, no selfie, no documents, no card and no phone number, at any point. Signing in takes only an account number; an email address is optional. Of 23 storage-server sellers Basalthold checked on 2 November 2026, only 3 state that they never ask for ID. Keep your account number safe: Keep your account number safe, since it opens your account. With an email on file the number can be recovered; without one, a lost number cannot be replaced.

In the cases the policy lists. If we fail to deliver a server, or it breaks and support cannot repair it, the days it was down go back to your balance. A balance never expires. Top-ups are not paid out unless the law requires it; the part paid only to reach the minimum top-up can be returned on request within 30 days of payment, in USDT or USDC, if it has not been spent. The worked examples are in the refund policy.

A person on the team prepares the machine after your payment is confirmed, within 72 hours, so it is not instant; the dashboard shows its progress until the IP address appears. Your paid days start when the server is handed over, not when you pay. Surveyed sellers that state a setup time give a median of 24 hours.

Amsterdam (Netherlands), Bucharest (Romania) and Chisinau (Moldova): every hold in every city, at the same price. Two cities sit inside the EU (Amsterdam, Bucharest) and one outside it (Chisinau). Systems: Debian 13, Debian 12, Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, AlmaLinux 10, Rocky Linux 10, Proxmox VE 9 and Proxmox Backup Server 4. Proxmox Backup Server gives you a ready backup target for Proxmox VE hosts.

Each server is paid in advance from your crypto balance, for 30 days, 3 months, 6 months or 12 months as chosen at checkout. Auto-renew charges the same length again at the price you started with, unless you set another length for the next renewal in the dashboard; when the balance falls short, the server stops at the end of its term, its drives are held for 7 days and then wiped. Cancelling in the dashboard hands the machine back and wipes every drive, and unused days are lost. Copy your data off first, then destroy your encryption keys. What happens to my data when I cancel gives the checklist.

Not allowed: spam or bulk email, phishing, malware or botnet control, DDoS or other attacks, scanning or brute-forcing systems that are not yours, booter or stresser services, carding or fraud, child sexual abuse material, cryptocurrency mining (Chia and other proof-of-space included), seedboxes, IPTV, public distribution of films, series, music, games or software you hold no rights to, and any service to sanctioned people or companies. Outgoing mail on port 25 is blocked on every server for good, against spam; ports 465 and 587 to mail providers are open. Your own media library, kept for yourself, is fine. Every rule, with examples, is in the acceptable use policy.