Startpage.com Reviews 

Decent but not as powerful as google. The email is nice and private but you have to pay for it and their rates have steadily increased over the years due to inflation.

This search engine is very private and it's nice. The other reviewer that left a one star doesn't understand how it works. It's designed for complete security so other devices can't look up your searches. You know it's 100% private.

When i first heard about the project, i got all hyped up. Webpage that stores no cookies. But when i tryed to use it from now 4 different devices on differents networks, always the same time-wasting page!! Some security questions and captcha. I AM NOT DOING THAT FOR A SINGLE SEARCH. Your project is fail and is doomed to fail with such a way to aproach things...

I am truly sorry to have to write this, I only hope it can be a wake up call.

This is now an impossible search engine to use. It used to be the best alternative to Google, then it started effectively blocking searches through VPNs or Tor with it's overly aggressive DDoS protection.
Finally, now, I am getting the DDoS protection block page on my home connection. That's right, my home, ISP provided IP address from which I do not have any WAN facing services.
I am not a stupid consumer, there is no botnet in my things, I built and update my router with free and open source software, I don't use IoT unless I made it. There was NO good reason for that detection to occur.
If this isn't intentional (i.e. sabotage by competitors, self-sabotage because of external financial interests), and it's seeming increasingly more so, it's staggering incompetence. Regardless, something is going very wrong.
Everyone knows about the issue, Startpage surely knows about the issue. The issue is getting worse and not better. It is a simply unusable search engine as of now.
Brave search is my recommendation for now.

Genuinely sad, and confusing, to see this search engine kill itself.

I am tired of StartPage's team lying about how they use CAPTCHA for "abusers". It is absolute horsedung. They are just hiding the fact StartPage is too financially poor to afford a high amount of users searching for things on it. Or they are working with Big Brother to spy on users by making them not use V.P.Ns. Either way, StartPage is no longer a search engine business that cares about people's privacy. Because StartPage's team is lying about "abusers". Which those "abusers" are people using V.P.Ns, TOR, and proxies to keep their Orwellian internet service providers from tracking their online activities to dystopian governments.

Security is fine and dandy
Protection is handy
BUT Why OH Why
Has startpage made me cry
Settings is no more
It's out of the door
Save the link
oops there's a kink
Neither way saves setting
I think it's off to DuckDuckgo I go

StartPage continues to demonstrate a committment to privacy and provides a level of service far beyond what anyone should expect from a no cost service. I'd really like to know how I can help support their program financially. It is certainly worthy of being a paid service.

Startpage used to be a great and hassle free search engine. The "We apologize for the inconvenience..." pop-up page with CAPTCHA is appearing with unacceptable frequency. Actually, any frequency is unacceptable. Aggravating to say the least. It's really too bad, Startpage was a functional and less invasive alternative to Google that I set as my default browser years ago. The mostly canned and sometimes cynical and sarcastic responses from Startpage reps on this very forum are indicative of a company culture I want nothing to do with. No more Startpage for my family's home or work computers. Get your act together Startpage, until then, good riddance.

Love Startpage, think it is really different compared to the other browsers and just really love the philosophy and values of the company.

I think in a few years, lots of us will regret not protecting our online privacy more!

For me data privacy it´s very important that´s why I love Startpage.

I started to use Startpage recently because I am sick of getting targeted ads even after talking about something. I like that I get google search results without having my data shared with any third parties.

I use this search engine instead of Google.

Easy to use private search engine that doesn't save my search history or target me with ads.

Results: Great, very much like Google results
Layout: Clean, not too busy or overwhelming like Google
Privacy: No tracking

Time for another search engine. Tired of their Captcha. I'ts almost impossible to use with a Vpn. It Dissruptive.

Service has become as sh1tty as the rest of search engines out there. Regularly "internal server error", "follower access not allowed", "server time out" whatever. No website surfing without regular refreshing even with simple pages like wikipedia.
Since a few months after few searches this appears for hours: "
Just checking ...

Settings Support Mail

We apologize for the inconvenience: to prevent possible abuse of the Startpage.com service, your Internet connection has been prevented from accessing it at this time.

This happens when a large number of search requests are received from one's Internet connection in a short amount of time -- for example, if you are using "screen-scraping" software, or if you are sharing a connection with many people, perhaps through a proxy service.

Otherwise, if you have received this message in error, please help us in investigation by providing following information:

- Are you using TOR or other anonymous proxies?
- Do you have special browser configuration or extensions?
- Are you using VPN?
- Are you using a company network?

We will seek to refine and correct this whenever possible. Thank you for your patience.

Email (optional) Description"

The people at startpage are acting like Je*ks using the dang CAPTCHA thing, any spam is their problem not our problem and they shouldn't force uses to deal with something they can fix with far more user friendly methods.

Quote"
Search for the website site
boagworld then search: why captcha sucks to find the referenced article

"We switched to the audio version in the hopes that would help. It didn’t. It is beyond me how anybody with a visual impairment could decipher that noise! CAPTCHA is in no way accessible.

To make matters worse my wife was trying to complete this task on a mobile device. Refreshing the CAPTCHA was fiddly. Each time she had to reselect the field to make another guess. She also had to wait for the page to reload over the poor 3G connection.

It is not that my wife is an outlier. 38% of people fail to complete a CAPTCHA first time. From there, things get even worse. 80% of second attempts fail, 70% of third attempts and 90% of fourth. Few are willing to try more than five times and who can blame them. And that was on a desktop. Imagine what the failure rate is on a mobile device. A device where the CAPTCHA picture is smaller and even harder to read.

But CAPTCHA isn’t just frustrating for the user. It is also bad for business. When Reddit removed CAPTCHA from its signup process they saw an 8% increase. That means CAPTCHA was driving away almost 10% of people.

The ridiculous thing is that CAPTCHA is unnecessary.

When it comes to SPAM there are alternatives to CAPTCHA. Alternatives such as solving basic puzzles or using pictures. But these alternatives miss the point. They are still making spam the users problem. Why should the user be inconvenienced because we have a problem with spam?

What is more there is no reason why the user needs to ever know about our spam problem. Spam filters have become sophisticated and can remove the majority of attempts.

The Honeypot technique is another excellent solution. A solution that doesn’t need the user to do anything. This involves creating a hidden field invisible to users but visible to bots. The developer labels the field in such a way to encourage bots to spam it. If the field has content in it then we can presume it is spam.

In fact there are no end of alternatives to CAPTCHA. You have to wonder why it is still so popular. In fact I have read comments that justify CAPTCHA on the basis that it is widely used. This is of course circular logic.

The truth is CAPTCHA is easier and cheaper. It is easier to make our problems with security and spam the users problem. Easier than tackling the problem on our end. The flaw in this logic is that in doing so we are driving those users away and that is costing us (businesses) money."

Get rid of the damn CAPTICHA I can't read it' it's hard and and I'm too deaf to use the auto version, not to mention it's so annoying that I'm now using Bing search fix this or watch as less people use your search. I'm not switching browsers just to use your search I love brave and refuse to compromise my security.

Much better / more relevant UK search results than DuckDuck Go. Seems fast. Seems to work fine with my VPN. Can't configure as default search engine in Safari, but can do in Firefox. Very happy so far.

Startpage became UNUSEFUL !!!

I am NOT using a proxy or VPN but do access the Internet via a huge Internetprovider. Neveretheless in 80 % of the search requests I receive

"We apologize for the inconvenience: to prevent possible abuse of the Startpage.com service, your Internet connection has been prevented from accessing it at this time."

IT IS ENOUGH NOW - I will remove Startpage as standard search engine from my browser

I have switched from StartPage to Qwant because I am tired of seeing this pop-up:

"We apologize for the inconvenience: to prevent possible abuse of the Startpage.com service, your Internet connection has been prevented from accessing it at this time.

This happens when a large number of search requests are received from one's Internet connection in a short amount of time -- for example, if you are using "screen-scraping" software, or if you are sharing a connection with many people, perhaps through a proxy service.

Otherwise, if you have received this message in error, please help us in investigation by providing following information:

- Are you using TOR or other anonymous proxies?
- Do you have special browser configuration or extensions?
- Are you using VPN?
- Are you using a company network?

We will seek to refine and correct this whenever possible. Thank you for your patience."

I don't have patience for a dishonest company like StartPage. Claiming to care about privacy and making it hard for people to use a search engine when they use a proxy or V.P.N. are two different things. Which is why I got tired of StartPage's petty excuses, especially since StartPage has stooped to very low level in regards to quality service.

StartPage used to have a better quality search engine before that pop-up started showing that I mentioned earlier. I think that pop-up started showing after StartPage was using a captcha system. Unfortunately, it just makes StartPage look like a petty shadow that can't hold a candle to its former glory anymore. Even Google and Qwant have more search results than StartPage does. It's saddening, but I already cried a river long ago. So, I'm just here "eating popcorn" and mocking StartPage instead of taking it seriously, which is why I call it FartPage because it's nasty like a fart with nasty quality of service.