[HN Gopher] Hetzner switches to new billing model
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Hetzner switches to new billing model
        
       Author : throwaway220033
       Score  : 277 points
       Date   : 2024-02-29 10:18 UTC (12 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (docs.hetzner.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (docs.hetzner.com)
        
       | lionkor wrote:
       | For anyone else who may be confused - this is already the case in
       | Cloud (obviously), but now will apply for Robot as well.
       | 
       | > This structure will be similar to our Cloud billing.
       | 
       | It says it here, but I glanced over it :)
        
         | the_common_man wrote:
         | What is the difference between cloud and robot?
        
           | sunbum wrote:
           | Cloud is VM's Robot is bare metal
        
             | koolba wrote:
             | s/'s/s,/
             | 
             | Otherwise the VM possessive reads like:
             | Cloud = VM's Robot = bare metal
        
               | jeanlucas wrote:
               | Thank you
        
               | MonkeyClub wrote:
               | Consequently cloud = bare metal; which agrees with the
               | axiom that "it's not a cloud, it's just someone else's
               | computer".
        
               | randomdata wrote:
               | Traditionally, cloud referred to an abstraction above
               | "someone else's computer", keeping the specific details
               | of those computers hidden from the user, allowing the
               | operator to do things like swap out the hardware, move
               | the data to another datacenter, etc. without the end user
               | ever noticing.
               | 
               | But tech people love to come up with new definitions for
               | the same terms all the time, so anything goes.
        
           | aaronmdjones wrote:
           | Hetzner's cloud console (https://console.hetzner.cloud/) was
           | introduced for their vServer migration (competing with the
           | likes of Linode). Robot (https://robot.your-server.de/) was
           | used for their vServers previously and is still used for
           | their dedicated servers and domain names and such.
        
       | pointlessone wrote:
       | > We will always use the hourly price when it saves you money,
       | meaning when you have used a product for less than a month, and
       | the total hourly price is less than the monthly price.
       | 
       | That's nice, I guess.
       | 
       | > we have decided to no longer send invoices to all of our
       | customers on the same day. Instead, we will spread them out
       | throughout the month. You will always receive your invoice on the
       | same day of the month. But this day will be different from
       | customer to customer.
       | 
       | It's not clear to me when the billing moth starts. Is it the day
       | the invoice is sent or is it a regular calendar month? Either way
       | it might be confusing.
        
         | throwbadubadu wrote:
         | You certainly will read that in the invoice?
        
         | nilsb wrote:
         | I'd hope that it's based on calendar months. Wouldn't invoices
         | that span multiple years make things a lot more complicated in
         | terms of accounting in general?
        
           | everfrustrated wrote:
           | According to the doc everyone will be getting a new random
           | billing date to help rebalance customer support load over the
           | month.
        
         | flexd wrote:
         | The email I got said this:
         | 
         | >What is important after the changeover? * We want to be able
         | to offer you even better customer service in the future. For
         | that reason, we want to change the date of your invoice. This
         | will make it easier for us to quickly answer questions about
         | your invoices. Starting in April, your new permanent billing
         | day will be the 12. of the month.
         | 
         | I think they have just spread the billing day out across the
         | month for all customers
        
       | voytec wrote:
       | If monthly price won't increase than this appears to be a good
       | change. But their dedicated servers have an "installation fee",
       | so it won't be cost-effective to rent them for short periods, and
       | VMs are billed on hourly basis already, to my knowledge. Not sure
       | which products this change covers.
        
         | aaronmdjones wrote:
         | Not all of their dedicated servers have a setup fee; for
         | example, the lowest spec AX model does not.
         | 
         | https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/matrix-ax/
        
           | trollied wrote:
           | Server auctions don't have a setup fee either.
           | https://www.hetzner.com/sb/
        
       | willcodeforfoo wrote:
       | Last time I checked, Hetzner doesn't have any dedicated offerings
       | in the US, only cloud, is this still the case?
        
         | CoolCold wrote:
         | Still the case, right
        
           | shortlived wrote:
           | Any recommendation for a provider with dedicated servers in
           | the US?
           | 
           | I'm with a provider now who is phasing them out.
        
             | TheNorthman wrote:
             | OVH have some in the US. I've only had good experiences
             | with them. I like Server Hunter to get a general overview:
             | 
             | https://www.serverhunter.com/#query=product_type%3Adedicate
             | d...
        
             | manishsharan wrote:
             | There are several dedicated server providers in US but not
             | much is known about their track review.
             | 
             | OVH has a datacenter in Toronto which may close enough to
             | the US for many people. They provide dedicated servers.
        
               | heffer wrote:
               | OVH's Toronto datacentre is not operational yet. But you
               | can pre-order. It's going to be interesting to see what
               | this does to pricing for the Toronto hosting and compute
               | market, as that location has always been more expensive
               | compared to other North American locations. Right now it
               | looks like OVH will not be offering their lower tier
               | offers out of the Toronto DC.
        
               | betaby wrote:
               | OVH operates data-center close to Montreal (BHS), 8ms
               | latency to NYC. Also it's 100% green hydro electricity
               | powered.
        
               | StressedDev wrote:
               | Hydro power is not green. The benefit are it's cheap (in
               | terms of cost to produce) and produces no CO2 emissions.
               | The downside is it makes it harder to fish to travel from
               | the ocean to their spawning sites. Like all power
               | sources, it has benefits and drawbacks and it absolutely
               | impacts the environment.
        
             | CoolCold wrote:
             | No suggestions from my own experience. Probably Leaseweb or
             | OVH worth checking.
        
             | sethhochberg wrote:
             | At a prior company I'd occasionally lease dedicated servers
             | from INAP (now calling that part of their business
             | HorizonIQ after bankruptcy and reorg) -
             | https://www.horizoniq.com/services/compute/bare-metal/
             | 
             | Their business was always a bit chaotic but the technical
             | side of the organization was competent. We were colo'd in
             | one of their datacenters so it was nice to be able to rent
             | additional capacity in the same facility. Servers were
             | manually provisioned, but manageable as you'd expect via
             | online portal after provisioning was complete.
             | 
             | So... not a glowing recommendation I guess, given their
             | corporate instability? But a recommendation nonetheless,
             | the corporate instability never impacted our technical
             | operations and the product was good.
        
         | isodev wrote:
         | What does it mean to have a "dedicated" offering for the US?
         | Hetzner lets you create servers in their US datacenter, isn't
         | this enough?
        
           | bravetraveler wrote:
           | Dedicated servers, the things we used before cloud or vps
        
       | roschdal wrote:
       | Hetzner ist best, kein protest.
        
         | Citizen_Lame wrote:
         | Lol. For kebab production, maybe.
        
       | mikkom wrote:
       | I have a dedicated server in Hetzner and I don't understand what
       | this means. How do they decide when the server is "used"? Based
       | on CPU allocation? SSH sessions? HTTP traffic? Power?
       | 
       | It's easy to shut down virtual servers and continue from the same
       | position. It's not that easy to do the same for servers.
       | 
       | The linked page is very unclear about this.
        
         | boredpudding wrote:
         | If you have a dedicated server, you'll just be paying the
         | monthly price. It's always in use.
         | 
         | If you decide to stop completely with the server halfway
         | through the month, you'll pay for the hours.
         | 
         | Of course, a shut down server that's yours is still yours and
         | you'll be billed for it.
        
           | dmw_ng wrote:
           | I'm not so sure about this, their description specifically
           | calls out one-time-only costs like domain registrations as
           | being the only things excluded. Cautiously optimistic in
           | addition to the recent reappearance of new GPU models being
           | offered to existing customers, Hetzner may be prepping an
           | hourly-billed bare metal GPU product at a great price
           | 
           | Hetzner bare metal already deploys in a couple of minutes
           | when renting existing hardware, and there is plenty of
           | precedent for hourly-billed bare metal services around. I
           | think they're intending to move all their bare metal over to
           | hourly billing.
        
             | sdwr wrote:
             | On the cloud product listing they make it pretty clear that
             | "in use" means "allocated" and not "consuming electricity".
             | Pretty sure their fees are staying the same, and we are
             | still paying for every hour a server exists.
        
         | pretext-1 wrote:
         | ,,Used" means as long as you rent them / as long as they're
         | assigned to your account / as long as you have access.
         | Dedicated servers are physical objects in the real world,
         | contrary to virtual servers they don't stop ,,to exist" just
         | because they're no longer yours.
         | 
         | Previously you could only rent physical servers for an entire
         | month. If you're doing this the price is still the same. But
         | going forward it will be possible to rent for a portion of the
         | month only (x amount of hours).
        
         | c0balt wrote:
         | If I understand correctly your cost will stay the same. The
         | bill for march might be a bit different but the total cost
         | should be identical. Their usage will also stay the same-ish
         | with usage = allocation for CPUS, Ram and storage.
        
         | tiffanyh wrote:
         | > How do they decide when the server is "used"?
         | 
         | If you turned on the server, it's being used.
        
           | lopkeny12ko wrote:
           | A server that is simply turned on does not necessarily mean
           | it is "in use."
        
             | corobo wrote:
             | A server that can't be sold to someone else is in use
        
             | michaelmior wrote:
             | This is true, but it still may be how Hetzner decides
             | usage. I'm not sure if this is the case, but it seems
             | pretty reasonable when you're talking about bare metal.
        
             | foofie wrote:
             | I think you're getting lost in semantic games. Cloud
             | providers sell you access to their computational resources.
             | When you pay for a server, you're paying for the right to
             | access that server and do what you wish to do with it. Much
             | like when you rent a car, you still pay for it if you keep
             | it parked.
        
           | remram wrote:
           | https://docs.hetzner.com/cloud/billing/faq/
           | 
           | > Do you bill servers that are off?
           | 
           | > Yes. Until you, the customer, delete your servers, we will
           | bill you for them, regardless of their state.
        
         | Vvector wrote:
         | "If you use a product for the whole month, we will continue to
         | invoice you for the same monthly amount as always."
        
         | EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
         | Whatever that means, you will pay more.
        
           | RobAley wrote:
           | No, you'll max pay the same. May pay less.
        
             | EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
             | Wonna bet?
        
               | tpetry wrote:
               | They've stated clearly that you pay the same. Its just
               | calculating stuff differently that you can now remove a
               | dedicated machine mid-month and get the remaining time's
               | money back. Which wasnt the case until now.
        
               | EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
               | Why would they do that and lose money? Apparently, they
               | plan to charge more and push you to cloud services, which
               | are more lucrative.
        
               | sodality2 wrote:
               | This is actually revenue-loss for them as canceling a
               | dedicated server in the middle of the month will no
               | longer result in a full month charge...
        
               | StressedDev wrote:
               | They are doing it to stay competitive. Remember, cloud
               | computing is a highly competitive market and customers
               | can and do switch providers.
        
               | jeltz wrote:
               | Sure, I could bet $1000.
        
               | EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
               | Bet accepted, term: 1 year.
        
         | devrand wrote:
         | It seems pretty clear to me:
         | 
         | > How precisely does Hetzner calculate the hourly billing?
         | 
         | > The beginning of the hourly billing starts as soon as the
         | product becomes available to you.
         | 
         | So for a dedicated server you start paying once the server has
         | been commissioned to you. You stop paying once you return it.
        
       | nottorp wrote:
       | So basically some large customers wanted to rent physical servers
       | by the hour so now everyone gets to rent physical servers by the
       | hour?
        
       | lovegrenoble wrote:
       | I've heard that Hetzner is a good provider, so I want to buy a
       | cheap unmanaged VPS server in the USA. But can not find any
       | mention about VPS. Any help, please?
       | 
       | Just need to replace this one (the same bad story $$$ as Netlify
       | recently): https://www.leaseweb.com/fr/cloud/virtual-server
        
         | mglz wrote:
         | Managed virtual servers are available here:
         | https://www.hetzner.com/managed-server/
        
         | edm0nd wrote:
         | Just use DigitalOcean. Easy setup and very cheap VPS options.
        
           | lovegrenoble wrote:
           | Thank you, Sir.
        
             | stefs wrote:
             | that said, while digital ocean is great, as far as i know
             | hetzner is somewhat cheaper. compare!
             | 
             | at digital ocean, 12$: 2GB RAM, 1vCPU, 20GB SSD, 2TB
             | transfer
             | 
             | at hetzner, 10,50$: 8GB RAM, 2vCPU, 80GB SSD, 20TB transfer
        
               | Citizen_Lame wrote:
               | Yes, but Hetzner costumer service is from another planet.
               | So in case of issues they won't be able to help, and you
               | will have issues.
        
               | radiator wrote:
               | And in case of no issues, you save quite a lot of money.
        
               | Radim wrote:
               | Care to share why?
               | 
               | I've been a Hetzner customer for nearly 10 years now. I
               | just checked - first invoice in June 2014. And during
               | that period, Hetzner's support - which I needed maybe 3
               | times since things generally just work - has always been
               | stellar.
               | 
               | I've used Linode too, and their support was comparable
               | (=also great). But Hetzner wins on pricing, hands down.
               | 
               | I actually appreciate Hetzner hasn't join the BS
               | enshittification gimmick train (yet). If that's your
               | complaint.
        
               | kosolam wrote:
               | Hetzner has good support.
        
               | huggingmouth wrote:
               | I sttongly disagree based in my interaction with them.
               | They were very rude. That said, their services are
               | reasonably priced and they have been competent throughout
               | my time with them.
               | 
               | Hetzner would be far more appealing if they ever decide
               | to muzzle their rebid support team.
        
               | rglullis wrote:
               | > They were very rude.
               | 
               | No, they were German. Knowledgeable and efficient, but
               | they won't coddle you or pretend that their life depend
               | on your miser account. If you have a problem that can not
               | be solved by their standard process, they will rather
               | drop you than try to accommodate you.
        
               | rnewme wrote:
               | This was my experience too, both with my tiny personal
               | account and my giant clients accounts
        
               | asmor wrote:
               | Their abuse team is rude. Their technical support is
               | usually professional, and the one time I talked to their
               | legal team they were superb.
        
               | reddalo wrote:
               | They're Germans, after all
        
               | remram wrote:
               | DigitalOcean has a long history of kicking out customers
               | with no warning and no explanation.
               | 
               | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11036554
               | 
               | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20064169
               | 
               | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29596138
               | 
               | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29600320
               | 
               | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38880713
               | 
               | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39127683
        
               | icetngugzer wrote:
               | Similar to the other commenters I much disagree - "but
               | this ofc. rly depends on what you expect from them..."
               | 
               | If the thing has power, network, working hardware and is
               | able to "boot into there rescue-system" that is all they
               | care about. And for that support has been stellar
               | including preventive disk swaps, moving disk into new
               | chassis and such with feedback and action within minutes
               | basically 24/7.
               | 
               |  _But the software end is ofc. entirely on you_ , down to
               | the BIOS where they roll you a network-KVM-Cart to the
               | box for some hours after requesting it with a click. They
               | wont fix your HTML errors, nor your php syntax errors, or
               | explain how to setup SSL on your apache, nor will they
               | help when you dont know how to operate ssh/putty ;) and
               | if "with such an issue" one bothers the 24/7-datacenter
               | guys (and not just "8-16/5 normal customer support") I
               | may even understand that it seems a little rude ;-)
        
           | MikusR wrote:
           | DigitalOcean is at least 2-3 times more expensive with 10-3
           | times less bandwidth
        
           | AnonHP wrote:
           | DigitalOcean, even before it had huge layoffs, blocked my new
           | account and wouldn't allow me to pay. There was absolutely no
           | support whatsoever for that. Just a template email and no
           | other way to escalate or write to a human. I can only imagine
           | how much worse it would be now with reduced staff.
        
         | Sebb767 wrote:
         | You're looking for the cloud servers:
         | https://www.hetzner.com/cloud/
        
           | lovegrenoble wrote:
           | Sorry for my silliness, so 'cloud' is a new name for 'VPS'?
        
             | CodesInChaos wrote:
             | VPS are a part of the cloud offering now. Just like EC2 is
             | part of AWS. Once change is that traditionally VPSs used
             | local disk storage, while cloud servers use network block
             | storage.
             | 
             | Usually clouds offer additional higher level features, in
             | addition to basic VMs, such as load balancers, object
             | storage and managed containers. Though Hetzner currently
             | offers very little in that regard.
        
               | skrause wrote:
               | > _Once change is that traditionally VPSs used local disk
               | storage, while cloud servers use network block storage._
               | 
               | Hetzner Cloud uses local NVMe SSD storage. They used to
               | have Ceph based network block storage, but deprecated
               | that around 2 years ago.
        
             | FooBarWidget wrote:
             | This rename has been a thing for 10 years now. All the VPS
             | providers jumped on the cloud bandwagon and call themselves
             | cloud.
        
         | treffer wrote:
         | Virtual private server == anything that is not a whole machine,
         | usually referring to small VMs.
         | 
         | In hetzner speak you want a "shared vCPU server".
         | 
         | That's roughly what others offer as VPS, just more clearly
         | spelled out (IMHO). You get fractional CPU usage that should be
         | burstable and roundabout one core.
        
           | lovegrenoble wrote:
           | Thank you, finally I understood that.
        
         | dakiol wrote:
         | Be ready to handover a copy of your national ID/passport
        
           | alwayslikethis wrote:
           | Can you elaborate? I have a VPS and a storage box on Hetzner
           | and I'm so far satisfied with it, minus the sometimes
           | confusing interface between their different products.
        
             | MikusR wrote:
             | Because they are so cheap, they are often used by spammers
             | or other shady entities. So occasionally they may ask for
             | ID. For example, if you connect from one country, use an
             | address from another country and use prepaid card from yet
             | another country.
        
           | e145bc455f1 wrote:
           | They didn't even ask me for that, straight up banned my
           | account.
        
           | fortunateregard wrote:
           | I've had a similar experience where my account was banned
           | despite providing all the info they requested (including my
           | passport).
           | 
           | Hetzner was the only provider where I was banned despite
           | providing everything I was asked for. I've deployed services
           | on plenty of providers (AWS, GCP, Digital Ocean, Vultr, etc)
           | without issue.
           | 
           | Apparently, this has been an on-going struggle for them. A
           | few weeks ago they were even called out on an episode of the
           | syntaxFM podcast for this behavior after one of the hosts had
           | his account banned [0].
           | 
           | It's still a bit of a mystery to me honestly. Is their fraud
           | detection so poor where they're forced to ban new sign-ups in
           | this manner? How can Hetzner's competition tell that these
           | accounts are legitimate (without ridiculous requirements such
           | as passport) and Hetzner can't (even when provided with full
           | home address, passport, etc)? I'm assuming Hetzner can't
           | because they've seemingly developed a reputation for banning
           | legitimate developers and the only reason I can think of
           | where they'd be fine with that is if they actually have a
           | very difficult time telling whether an account is legitimate
           | or not.
           | 
           | [0]: https://twitter.com/stolinski/status/1750226126499139665
        
             | jamesblonde wrote:
             | They are like Ryanair and Lidl brands - you get a
             | reasonable product super-cheap. Don't argue about the terms
             | and conditions, just be happy to do business with us. If
             | you don't buy, somebody else after you will. This is not
             | classic VC-funded IT. It's mass-market, low margin, low
             | risk consumer products. It's not Enterprise IT.
        
           | jeltz wrote:
           | They have never asked me for any of my three accounts. And
           | one I paid with credit card the two other with bank wire.
        
       | MathiasPius wrote:
       | This is actually great. I maintain a library[1] for interacting
       | with the Robot interface using Rust, but testing is heavily gated
       | because of the potential costs it might incur, which is why a lot
       | of the purchasing/cancellation APIs haven't been thoroughly
       | tested.
       | 
       | With this billing, I'll be able to do thorough integration
       | testing without breaking the bank.
       | 
       | And of course with hourly billing, horizontal scaling becomes
       | much more feasible.
       | 
       | [1] https://github.com/MathiasPius/hrobot-rs
        
         | joeig wrote:
         | At the moment there is still a one-time order fee for dedicated
         | servers and the docs don't clarify if it will remain.
        
           | diggan wrote:
           | > At the moment there is still a one-time order fee for
           | dedicated servers
           | 
           | For (some) dedicated servers, I think. Last time I checked
           | the lowest tiered dedicated servers didn't have any setup
           | fees. If it's not mentioned, assumed it'll remain.
        
           | MathiasPius wrote:
           | As diggan said, there's usually at least one of their
           | dedicated server offerings for which setup fees are waived,
           | so I figure my tests would use the API to find out which one
           | and use it :)
        
         | jupp0r wrote:
         | Have you reached out to Hetzner? Feels like they should waive
         | those bills in exchange for the free dev work you do for them.
        
           | MathiasPius wrote:
           | I haven't actually. I believe they do offer modest amounts of
           | credit for creating useful libraries, documentation and such
           | targeting their platform, but I never really looked into it.
        
           | sonicanatidae wrote:
           | A company, acting reasonably?
           | 
           | Are you new to Earth?
        
       | severino wrote:
       | It would be nice if cloud offerings like Hetzner would allow one
       | to set the contract duration and pay in advance, for example, one
       | year. And once that year passes, you could tell them to extend it
       | for another year, or do nothing and get your server deleted. This
       | way you have a control over your spending and avoid surprises. I
       | guess some providers (OVH?) allow you to do that, but of course
       | it requires that all costs be fixed and have no "extras" for
       | bandwidth consumption or things like that.
        
         | janus24 wrote:
         | Scalingo (a European PaaS) allows you to do this by buying
         | credit, a simple solution. I wonder why other providers don't
         | offer this.
        
         | V__ wrote:
         | You can buy credits using a bank transfer [1]. You can also set
         | E-Mail alerts in case your monthly invoice is higher then
         | expected (more traffic etc.) [2]. However, there is no auto-
         | delete as far as I can tell.
         | 
         | [1] https://docs.hetzner.com/accounts-panel/accounts/payment-
         | faq... [2] https://docs.hetzner.com/cloud/billing/faq/#how-do-
         | i-keep-my...
        
           | severino wrote:
           | Didn't know you could buy credits, but well, for me the key
           | is that no debt is generated when your credit goes to zero.
           | In this case, if you exhaust your credit but your server
           | keeps running, Hetzner will not stop it and will send you the
           | bill next month. Yes, you may have received an email warning
           | but it does not give the same peace of mind.
        
           | AnonHP wrote:
           | I've been waiting for Hetzner to allow adding credits into
           | one's account using credit cards or debit cards (or other
           | modes like PayPal). Being outside Germany (and the EU), a
           | bank transfer is not possible or is difficult and
           | prohibitively expensive.
           | 
           | Hetzner also didn't seem to support credits across all its
           | services when I checked a few years ago.
        
             | wyan wrote:
             | You can use a bank like Wise which lets you have accounts
             | in many currencies for such bank transfers. Fees between
             | their accounts are quite competitive (I used them many
             | times in the past).
        
         | groestl wrote:
         | > and avoid surprises
         | 
         | I think for most people and organizations, auto-deletion of a
         | server _is_ the surprise ;)
        
         | iforgotpassword wrote:
         | At least with the dedicated servers there are no surprises.
         | Monthly cost is fixed, if you exceed the bandwidth limit you'll
         | be throttled. Maybe their cloud offerings offer the same?
        
           | severino wrote:
           | From what I can see in their webpage, they charge something
           | like 1 eur for every extra TB but apparently there's no way
           | to set a limit (so you can be protected in the event of a
           | DDoS), only an alert.
        
         | Saris wrote:
         | As far as I known there are no surprises on Hetzner, they're a
         | solid company, not one of the shady ones that bill on usage
         | without limits.
        
           | severino wrote:
           | I agree it's not as bad as other companies (like the other
           | day Netlify story) but Hetzner doesn't allow you to set
           | limits either, so in theory you can still be charged without
           | knowing how much it'll be in advance. You can also leave
           | something on while thinking it's off and, yes, it's your
           | fault too, but it wouldn't happen if it just consumed your
           | credits and no more.
        
       | ta8903 wrote:
       | When are they allowing sign ups for third world countries?
        
         | tomas789 wrote:
         | There is no such thing as third world country anymore. That is
         | a relic or yesteryear. [1]
         | 
         | [1] https://youtu.be/hVimVzgtD6w?si=g0aCYsjo15RAyx-e
        
         | slig wrote:
         | Yes, signed up from a 3rd World Country late last year.
        
         | thijsvandien wrote:
         | Or any country for that matter? I was rejected from right next
         | door (NL).
        
           | reddalo wrote:
           | It's very strange that they rejected your account from
           | another EU country. Are you sure you created your account
           | with real data?
        
             | thijsvandien wrote:
             | One doesn't accidentally make things up, and for invoices
             | to be booked, my accountant wouldn't have it any other way.
        
         | gowthamgts12 wrote:
         | I signed up after lot of failed attempts. I think now they have
         | fixed their verification process. Please give it a try
        
       | sixhobbits wrote:
       | This overall sounds like it makes sense and brings their billing
       | into line with other providers.
       | 
       | But it's super confusingly written and presented. Why is this an
       | essay with CAPITAL LETTERS to try to simplify things. It looks
       | like they put in a ton of effort to make sure people aren't
       | confused, but this doesn't seem like the thing to give people to
       | ensure that they aren't confused.
        
         | iforgotpassword wrote:
         | Huh, to me it feels they just tried to emphasize the most
         | important things, like your bill never being higher than the
         | monthly price would be. Like, the opposite of what tech
         | companies usually do.
        
       | boplicity wrote:
       | I don't seem capable of actually setting up an account with
       | Heztner and logging in. Their security is so tight, it seems to
       | constantly lock me out. What if I were an actual customer? Yikes.
       | 
       | Does anyone else have this issue?
        
         | david_allison wrote:
         | Yep:
         | 
         | Dear Mr David Allison
         | 
         | After reviewing your updated customer information, we have
         | decided to deactivate your account because of some concerns we
         | have regarding this information. Therefore, we have cancelled
         | all your existing products and orders with us.
         | 
         | Best regards
         | 
         | Your Hetzner Online Team
        
           | slig wrote:
           | That's terrifying. Did they at least give you time to backup
           | your data?
        
             | amar0c wrote:
             | Please note that Hetzner does this only in couple cases: a)
             | fake account data ; b) previous strikes (unpaid invoices,
             | abuse etc..) with them ; c) in some cases customer is from
             | country they do not do business with. I bet gazzilion OP
             | above is within a or b
        
               | thijsvandien wrote:
               | A) No B) No C) No
        
               | e145bc455f1 wrote:
               | I got the same thing. My account was neither fake or had
               | any previous strikes, it was a new account.
        
               | Joe_Cool wrote:
               | Their ToS also classifies Crypto-Mining, farming or
               | plotting (whatever that is) as grounds for cancellation.
               | 
               | Also everything forbidden by German law results in a
               | cancellation. So if you would have for example posted
               | something before 2017 about a state leader that might
               | seem like an insult your server might be gone. (
               | https://www.loc.gov/item/global-legal-
               | monitor/2017-07-26/ger... )
               | 
               | https://cdn.hetzner.com/assets/Uploads/downloads/AGB-
               | en.pdf Section 8.3
        
               | Etherlord87 wrote:
               | d) the customer is black, romanian or a jew
               | 
               | I'm awaiting donwvotes, but honestly, if they don't give
               | you a reason, everything can be one, and refusing a
               | service on arbitrary grounds seems illegal to me :D
        
               | reddalo wrote:
               | It's a private service; private companies can choose
               | whoever they want to do business with. They're not a
               | public service.
        
               | Etherlord87 wrote:
               | Are you sure about that? I know of a precedent in Poland,
               | where a company refused to service (print some kind of
               | invitation cards) some LGBT people, and was punished for
               | it.
               | 
               | I imagine the laws in Germany are similar to the laws in
               | Poland in that regard, both countries being in the
               | European Union.
               | 
               | In USA, I really doubt any company could refuse to serve
               | black people. Or women.
               | 
               | I wonder if the downvoters of my previous message share
               | your (I'd say quite wrong) opinion or there's another
               | reason for the downvotes - I'm up for a discussion!
        
               | reddalo wrote:
               | I don't know about the downvotes, and I'm not a lawyer so
               | take this with a grain of salt, but there's a difference
               | between a service to the public (e.g. a cafe or a
               | restaurant) and a service such as Hetzner.
        
             | david_allison wrote:
             | I was evaluating them at the time. No data loss
        
           | MyFirstSass wrote:
           | What? That sounds extremely unacceptable.
           | 
           | Can we get some context please, there must be a reason.
           | 
           | Were you able to backup first?
        
             | david_allison wrote:
             | I created an account to evaluate them on Sun, 18 Jun 2023,
             | 13:25 UTC. I verified my account on Sun, 18 Jun 2023,
             | 13:29.
             | 
             | I received the above email entitled 'Rejection of Your
             | account XXXXX' on Mon, 19 Jun 2023, 09:15.
             | 
             | I didn't follow up further. No backups required as I hadn't
             | purchased anything
        
           | thijsvandien wrote:
           | Literally this. Their staff won't provide any details, nor
           | even a route towards a solution. When I asked what they
           | suggest doing in this situation, they simply stopped
           | responding.
        
         | kobalsky wrote:
         | I had the inverse experience.
         | 
         | I setup 5 x $220/month servers and I wanted to make sure my
         | payment method worked, contacted support a couple of times,
         | wanted to make a prepayment or something.
         | 
         | No dice, they didn't want to take my money until the billing
         | period closed, luckily everything worked fine.
         | 
         | It wasn't their cloud offering though, it was for the dedicated
         | servers (Hetzner Robot), I don't know if that makes a
         | difference.
        
           | EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
           | I didn't ask to "take my money", just gave it to them
           | forcibly by wire transfer, it showed up in my account all
           | right.
        
         | thenickdude wrote:
         | Yup, I bought a dedicated server because I needed a CPU with
         | AVX2 and VT-x, and it went poof some days later.
         | 
         | They didn't even do me the courtesy of emailing me to tell me
         | about it, I had to ask support:
         | 
         | > > When I try to log in to my account it tells me that my
         | credentials are invalid, and when I use forgot password it
         | tells me that my account is disabled?
         | 
         | >We recently did some routine reviews of our customer accounts.
         | We noticed some suspicious information in your account.
         | 
         | >We have some concerns regarding this information and we have
         | decided to close your account.
         | 
         | >We do not share details about why certain accounts appear
         | suspicious. Publishing this information would make it easier
         | for people to create fake accounts and abuse our services.
         | 
         | I even went through their live-video face verification and
         | passport scan and they didn't budge on this.
        
       | tiffanyh wrote:
       | Will this cost more for existing customers?
       | 
       | What they should have made more clear is, for existing customers
       | - will this be cost neutral or cost more.
       | 
       | Ideally, this is cost neutral for existing customer and gives the
       | flexibility of paying partial month for partial usage.
        
         | kobalsky wrote:
         | the post says: "Just to make it clear, the montly price you
         | will pay will NOT change, even if you see some short-term
         | changes in monthly totals on your invoices during the
         | transition period."
        
           | naiv wrote:
           | This is for existing customers. If they offer servers for an
           | hourly rate I would expect prices to up with a priced in
           | setup fee
        
       | unixhero wrote:
       | I just started a hosting gig myself. I got tired of the costs.
        
       | BilalBudhani wrote:
       | Hetzner is one of those "just take my money" services, so more
       | power to them.
       | 
       | Besides, for some reason I always thought they charge hourly but
       | show pricing in monthly format for easier pricing.
        
         | bcye wrote:
         | That was only for cloud products until now I think
        
         | reddalo wrote:
         | Way better than DigitalOcean, I hope they keep being that way
        
         | waldrews wrote:
         | What other services fall into the "just take my money"
         | category? I fully agree, Hetzner is a good deal.
        
         | lannisterstark wrote:
         | >just take my money
         | 
         | and run MITM services*, yes.
         | 
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37961166
        
       | DonnyV wrote:
       | Does anyone know if Hetzner is looking to open up a datacenter in
       | Australia or in Southeast Asia?
        
         | rmbyrro wrote:
         | South America would be great as well
        
           | diggan wrote:
           | South Africa sounds like a good compromise between Australia
           | and South America :)
           | 
           | Wonder what's the shortest possible latency between those
           | points?
           | 
           | Alternative, more interesting question: Assuming Hetzner have
           | a data center in Germany and one in Finland, where should
           | their next data center be in order to reduce latency as much
           | as possible, in the most countries?
        
             | Tomte wrote:
             | They also have one in the US.
             | 
             | So probably East Asia?
        
       | yaseer wrote:
       | If anybody has migrated from AWS to Hetzner what was your
       | experience? What kind of cost savings did you see?
       | 
       | I know it's not a like-for-like comparison, I am particularly
       | curious about the price differentials though, AWS is often a
       | premium.
        
         | diggan wrote:
         | I helped some smaller companies move from AWS EC2 to Hetzner
         | dedicated servers. One example: Biggest cost saving was in the
         | bandwidth bills. They also realized they don't really need to
         | be able to scale up/down in minutes or having 6 instances
         | online, but having two beefy machines lead to better
         | performance, less latency and cheaper monthly bills.
         | 
         | Originally they just went with AWS because the developer who
         | did infrastructure stuff was most (only?) used to it and had
         | some certification or similar, without really thinking about
         | why AWS. Reached out to me when they started to wonder why
         | things were so expensive for what they were doing.
        
       | DonnyV wrote:
       | Why isn't their US Data Centers not listed in the table of Data
       | Centers they run? https://docs.hetzner.com/general/others/data-
       | centers-and-con...
        
         | diggan wrote:
         | Maybe they don't operate those data centers themselves?
         | Outsourced perhaps.
         | 
         | > Which data centers does _Hetzner_ operate?
        
           | ffsm8 wrote:
           | Yes, they state as much when you order anything and talked
           | about it at length when they introduced the US offering.
           | 
           | They're shipping their specialized server systems to select
           | providers for housing, essentially. Most maintenance is done
           | remotely... aside from replacing faulty hardware etc
        
           | JonathonW wrote:
           | Hetzner's US cloud zones are colocated in someone else's
           | facility (AFAICT they don't specify where):
           | https://docs.hetzner.com/cloud/general/locations/#are-the-
           | se...
        
       | CamelCaseName wrote:
       | I've only ever heard fantastic things about Hetzner.
       | 
       | I'm shocked PE hasn't bought them yet and raised prices.
        
         | thijsvandien wrote:
         | So had I, until I actually tried to sign up. Have a look at the
         | way they treat you when they have (unfounded) suspicions. It's
         | beyond ridiculous.
        
           | rsync wrote:
           | So many problems just disappear when your prices are
           | (relatively) expensive...
        
             | AnonHP wrote:
             | Maybe. But price is still one of the larger concerns for
             | many people. When I checked this a couple of years ago, it
             | seemed like Hetzner's Storage Box (the one sorta competes
             | with your rsync.net) had a much lower price, a much larger
             | capacity per dollar/euro and more storage tiers.
        
           | AnonHP wrote:
           | They ask for a government ID in some cases. I was able to
           | provide one with some details masked, and they wanted the
           | name on my account to match the name on the government ID.
           | This is a commercial transaction, not Facebook. So I was
           | kinda ok with that. But it is weird and ridiculous.
        
             | thijsvandien wrote:
             | Whether to provide proof is at least a choice you get to
             | make, but in my case even that wasn't on the (empty) table.
        
         | cyberpunk wrote:
         | Meh, ymmv. I migrated a bunch of stuff from OVH->Hetzner a few
         | years ago and the support experience was absolutely, insanely,
         | beyond-belief bad.
         | 
         | P1 call having to explain "what's an ip address" to their
         | 'engineers'.
         | 
         | About 6 hours after we moved prod over, they brought down my
         | EIPs for like 4 hours because of a route they didn't understand
         | and flagged as spam, and in the end we rolled back the
         | migration and cancelled the contracts.
         | 
         | Bummer for them; we ended up scaling out to several hundred
         | thousand euro a year in OVH, which has been absolutely fucking
         | exemplar.
         | 
         | So while some people really do rave about them, I was so
         | annoyed by that experience that I will almost certainly never
         | use them again.
         | 
         | Being a German myself, I'm 90% sure it's because the support is
         | based in Germany, where technology goes to die.
        
           | pinkgolem wrote:
           | What are EIPs?
           | 
           | If you are referring to the eth stuff, everything to do with
           | crypto is banned on hetzner
        
             | steezeburger wrote:
             | I assume they're talking about elastic IPs and not Ethereum
             | Improvement Proposals
        
             | gowthamgts12 wrote:
             | Elastic IPs i believe - you can attach/detach an IP to a
             | server instead of having a new IP everytime
        
       | ayi wrote:
       | If we can get over the fact that they ban accounts out of
       | nowhere, that can be good news. But not for me. Because I
       | couldn't even sign up.
        
         | pquki4 wrote:
         | Same here. I provided an authentic US drivers license for their
         | verification (which I normally wouldn't do) yet that didn't
         | pass the verification, no reason given. Well, if they don't my
         | money, fine, I'll do it elsewhere.
        
       | degun wrote:
       | What a beautiful company.
        
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