Host PrivateBin without installing anything
A pastebin that encrypts in the browser: the key stays in the link, and the server only ever keeps something unreadable.
Starting at €2.99/month
Introduction
PrivateBin installed, updated and backed up by us, on a machine in France. You install nothing and configure no server: the application is online a few minutes after you order, under your own name.
The plan that suits it is App Découverte at €2.99/month incl. VAT — 1 GB of memory. PrivateBin is frugal by design: encryption happens in the browser of whoever pastes, and the server merely writes an encrypted blob and hands it back later. No index to maintain, no thumbnails to generate, not even a mandatory database. The memory therefore goes to PHP, to the web server and to the attachments dropped alongside the notes.
It is the direct replacement for Pastebin and its cousins, except that no account is asked for and the host sees nothing go past. The decryption key is written after the hash sign in the address — the part a browser never sends to the server. In practice that means the full link is the secret: it deserves as much care as what it protects, and an extra password can be required to open it.
What managed hosting changes
Encrypted in the browser, never on the server
The text is encrypted with AES-256 before it is sent, and the key travels in the part of the link after the hash sign, which browsers do not transmit. We therefore host content we are technically unable to read.
Your choice of expiry, or burn after reading
Five minutes, an hour, a day, a month or never: the lifetime is picked as you paste. The "burn after reading" option deletes the note the first time it is opened.
No account, no sign-up
Open the page, paste, share the link. Nothing to create, nothing to confirm by email. A password can be added so that the link alone is not enough.
QR code, Markdown and syntax highlighting
The link is shown as a QR code to move from a screen to a phone, and the content renders as plain text, as Markdown, or with syntax highlighting for a snippet of code.
Why hand it over rather than install it
Handing credentials to a new colleague
The password does not stay in the company chat or in a text message: the link opens once, and the note is gone afterwards.
A developer sending a log extract
Fifty lines of log or a configuration file, with syntax highlighting, without pasting them into a public ticket that anyone can reread two years later.
A practice sending a login to a client
The note expires after twenty-four hours. If the message resurfaces in a mailbox later, it no longer leads anywhere.
An IT contractor out on a job
Machine credentials are far too often dictated over the phone. Here, a single-use link with a ten-minute lifetime does the job.
Receiving a sensitive document from someone else
They paste their text on your instance and send you nothing but a link. The server hosting it never held the content in clear, so it cannot produce it.
Hosted in France
In our own infrastructure in Nouvelle-Aquitaine, which we operate ourselves. Your encrypted notes do not leave the country, and the person on the phone speaks your language.
Frequently asked questions
No. Encryption happens in your browser and the key sits after the hash sign in the address — a browser never sends that part to the server. The trade-off is that there is no recovery: whoever holds the full link holds the content, and nobody else does.
It works, but it counts the first opening, whoever performs it. Some messaging platforms and antivirus gateways automatically visit links to build a preview, which can consume the note before your recipient clicks. For an email, a short expiry combined with a password is the safer choice.
No, and that is deliberate: no account, no history, no internal search. Without the link the content is unreachable, including for us. PrivateBin is made for handing something over, not for archiving it.
Nothing. You choose the application, fill in the fields it asks for — often an email address and a name — and it goes online. Access arrives by email with the address and the credentials.
Yes, they are part of the service. On an application whose whole value rests on browser-side encryption, following releases is not optional: it is what keeps the cryptography library it relies on current.