[HN Gopher] Hetzner raises prices while significantly lowering b...
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       Hetzner raises prices while significantly lowering bandwidth (US)
        
       Author : acaloiar
       Score  : 121 points
       Date   : 2024-11-28 20:56 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (adriano.fyi)
 (TXT) w3m dump (adriano.fyi)
        
       | trollied wrote:
       | Dupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42264427
        
         | gnabgib wrote:
         | Lots of dupes of this one today
         | 
         | 107 points/50 comments
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42264668
         | 
         | 88 points/38 comments
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42264789
        
       | atomic128 wrote:
       | As a customer of Linode, I feel like I'm getting a lot, maybe too
       | much, for the money I pay.
       | 
       | For $5 per month, I have a CPU running continuously near 100%
       | utilization, training and retraining L1/L2/L3-CPU-cache-resident
       | transformers, looking for patterns in futures and options
       | markets.
       | 
       | This kind of extreme resource utilization is becoming more
       | common, and these businesses have to adapt to stay profitable.
       | 
       | I expect Linode to change the price on me, eventually.
        
         | dangus wrote:
         | I don't find that to be all that impressive.
         | 
         | I'm immediately saving money with the server I built out of
         | mostly used parts and threw in my closet compared to VPS
         | solutions.
         | 
         | The only reason it's near 100% utilization is because $5 VPS
         | instances have barely any computing power assigned to them.
         | 
         | For the same price as one game server I'm running something
         | like 5-8 VMs at once. I can utilize 128GB of RAM and 6/12 real
         | CPU cores (Ryzen 3600).
        
           | Aeolun wrote:
           | Completely unrelated, but I'm surprised how many people
           | actually use the Ryzen 3600, from desktops to servers, it
           | seems to be everywhere.
        
         | ryukoposting wrote:
         | What's the justification for this approach? Buy an old NUC with
         | some cheap Celeron in it, install Hamachi if you need remote
         | access, and it'll pay for itself in a couple months.
        
           | Firerouge wrote:
           | Seeing as they are paying $5 a month, how do you expect
           | buying a NUC to pay for itself in a few months? Where are you
           | finding NUCs for $20 with free electricity?
        
             | viraptor wrote:
             | Any decommissioned office PC from eBay will be faster than
             | $5 linode. For example search for optiflex
             | https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=optiplex+pc&_udhi=30
             | They're not too power hungry either if you make sure not to
             | go for i7s
        
         | gear54rus wrote:
         | Don't think we're close to that point yet. You can still get
         | the same server for free from oracle free tier if you're
         | willing to put up with god awful enterprisey control panel.
         | 
         | Also that linode CPU is virtualized (i.e. at least some of that
         | cache is shared).
        
           | dizhn wrote:
           | Oracle has people jumping all kinds of hoops to get that
           | service too. Just like Hetzner. Took me a few tries with
           | different credit cards then tried to get one for my friend
           | with their card and nothing would work. Great free service
           | though. That ampere vm with 24 gb ram is quite capable.
        
         | qwertox wrote:
         | It's most likely a vCPU. So even the caches are shared.
        
       | czhu12 wrote:
       | What are some examples of applications people are running that:
       | 
       | 1. Require 20TB of bandwidth / month
       | 
       | 2. That bandwidth can't be shielded by Cloudflare and others?
       | 
       | Is it like... real time video streaming? Gaming servers? I can't
       | imagine a web app getting anywhere close to that.
       | 
       | I run a mid sized NFT art creation website that generates both
       | images and GIF's (https://mintables.club) and with over 100000
       | users at peak, it only needed about 1.5TB of bandwidth.
        
         | ironhaven wrote:
         | BitTorrent seedbox. If you are apart of a private torrent
         | tracker you may download 5tb and upload 10tb of data per month
         | to be in good standing within that tracker's community
        
           | lysace wrote:
           | Yeah, this is it.
        
         | Figs wrote:
         | PeerTube comes to mind.
        
         | bouncycastle wrote:
         | blockchain nodes
        
         | mickael-kerjean wrote:
         | I have 2 services that run above those figures:
         | 
         | 1. the demo instance of my OSS software which a bring your own
         | storage Dropbox like UI for SFTP, S3, FTP, and every protocols
         | imaginable: https://github.com/mickael-kerjean/filestash People
         | tend to come in the demo to upload / download tons of stuffs
         | 
         | 2. the docker registry for my oss stuff since I was kicked out
         | of the docker open source program and now need to find a new
         | place to store all the images. 10 millions downloads over the
         | last few years, it does add up very quickly way above the 20TB
         | limits if your image isn't super slim and try to selfhost
         | everything
        
           | arccy wrote:
           | github's registry (ghcr.io) is the other big free one
        
         | viraptor wrote:
         | There are many data streams you may want to process that take
         | lots of network traffic. CT logs, monitoring aggregators, web
         | crawlers, etc. For the traffic you initiate, there's no
         | proxying/caching you can do.
        
         | johannes1234321 wrote:
         | Besides needing it: Not having to fear that an attacker
         | spamming the machine with Mail or web requests or something
         | incurs a bug traffic bill gives better sleep at night.
        
         | klabb3 wrote:
         | [delayed]
        
       | imperialdrive wrote:
       | Those are some steeeep drops. I'm curious how they settled upon
       | such numbers.
        
         | Aeolun wrote:
         | Presumably by looking at their competition, and realizing
         | they're still a better option.
        
       | ChrisArchitect wrote:
       | [dupe] Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42264427
        
       | lordofgibbons wrote:
       | I created an account with Hetzner earlier this year, and
       | confirmed my Credit Card with them, but a few second later, they
       | auto-suspended my account before I could log in.
       | 
       | I emailed support, and they bluntly told me to create a new
       | account and this time use real information... Needless to say, I
       | bought compute elsewhere.
       | 
       | I don't know how they're still in business.
        
         | vdfs wrote:
         | I've been reading about how great Hetzner for years but i
         | couldn't get past the sigup page where they require a credit
         | card just to create an account.
        
           | aryonoco wrote:
           | Honestly if you are providing computer resources, that's
           | pretty standard now and one of the only lines of defence
           | against abuse
        
         | Simon_ORourke wrote:
         | That's a particularly, but unfortunately good example of how
         | awful they are as a company. The sooner they get pushed out of
         | business the better.
        
         | viraptor wrote:
         | It's always a balance between how much fraud you allow and how
         | many real customers you reject. They set their threshold at an
         | interesting level, but maybe they're happy with that choice.
        
           | Buttons840 wrote:
           | You're right. But unfortunately this mindset moves us closer
           | and closer to having algorithms exclude people from society
           | and life. And as the stories already told here show, it can
           | happen to any of us for no apparent reason.
           | 
           | It's like, imagine a magic wand that, if waved, would make
           | life a little better for 99% of society, but much worse for
           | 1%. Would it be moral to wave that wand?
        
             | johnfn wrote:
             | Arguably, we wave that magic wand every time we decide
             | _not_ to donate to starving children in third-world
             | countries. Which is pretty often!
        
             | tshaddox wrote:
             | There's nothing particularly scary about "algorithms"
             | making these choices since it's just people at these
             | companies choosing and implementing the algorithms. It
             | wouldn't get better if those humans weren't allowed to use
             | algorithms to make these choices since decisions.
        
           | klabb3 wrote:
           | What type of fraud exactly? You mean like stolen CCs? It
           | feels very medieval as a financial trust system if every
           | little vendor can't trust payments, even when you _pay up
           | front_? Like this is in some ways worse than cold hard cash.
           | And then we pay VISA premium on top of that, for the
           | convenience of being mistrusted..
        
         | dan353hehe wrote:
         | Yep. Same thing happened to me. I was not able to get my
         | account working. Ever.
         | 
         | I have all my stuff on vultr now.
        
         | Salmonfisher11 wrote:
         | > I don't know how they're still in business.
         | 
         | They have 400 GBit/s of DTAG transit.
         | 
         | Showing that they are rich as fuck without saying it.
        
         | haolez wrote:
         | Same with me a few years ago. Their support told me that they
         | didn't want me as a customer. It was my first interaction with
         | them. I swear I'm just a regular nerd with a credit card :D
         | 
         | They are bizarre.
        
         | qwertox wrote:
         | When I ordered a VPS at Netcup (a Hetzner alternative) they
         | called me and asked me for the name of the hotel next to my
         | place to check if I really lived at the address I provided. I
         | guess that if i would have needed to look it up, that is,
         | struggled a bit with the answer, they would have denied me as a
         | customer.
        
           | this_user wrote:
           | I had the same thing, but this was a business address while I
           | was working remotely and had no idea about the area. Told
           | them as much on the phone while looking the answer up on
           | Google Maps. They just accepted that and opened the account.
        
         | pbhjpbhj wrote:
         | Your complaint is they didn't allow you to misrepresent your
         | identity?
         | 
         | I think they're obliged to take your details, not least of
         | which for tax purposes, as an EU company. (Though maybe they
         | have a non-EU company too?)
         | 
         | There are directives akin to the USA Bank Secrecy Act where
         | companies selling certain services 'have to' collect
         | information on their customers.
         | 
         | When you buy online in USA don't you have to identify yourself
         | so you can pay your state sales taxes?
        
           | reaperman wrote:
           | What led you to assume that GP misrepresented their identity?
           | The way I read the comment - they put their real info but was
           | accused of putting fake info.
           | 
           | How would you even attempt to rectify that?
        
             | Aeolun wrote:
             | Send them a copy of your ID?
        
         | tonygiorgio wrote:
         | Always felt like they were in the business of blaming and
         | hating their customers. Cloud providers that nitpick and judge
         | every aspect of their customers' business details and
         | technicalities are a huge operational risk. This archaic
         | practice is the reason generic cloud orchestration was a must,
         | and it's just not needed anymore.
         | 
         | I don't care how cheap they are. You get what you pay for.
        
           | Aeolun wrote:
           | There's nothing about cheap that implies terrible customer
           | service. Or rather, the reverse isn't necessarily true.
        
           | jorvi wrote:
           | Are Hetzner Europe and US run by different companies or
           | something?
           | 
           | My experience in the EU has been nothing but stellar.
        
             | rahkiin wrote:
             | I believe so, so that it does not run foul of the CLOUD
             | Act.
        
         | crowcroft wrote:
         | I signed up and immediately got banned because I was accessing
         | through a VPN, which I think is a common problem others have
         | had. I emailed them and their advice was to stop using a VPN
         | and try again.
        
         | danpalmer wrote:
         | I think this might be a cultural thing. HN, SV, and the market
         | for IaaS/SaaS products is a bit of an American monoculture,
         | where "the customer is always right" and there's a strong
         | desire to make the customer happy. I think this is mostly a
         | good thing and especially a good way to build early stage
         | companies, but in my experience it's less present elsewhere.
         | 
         | In some places companies are happy doing their own thing, don't
         | need every customer, don't need to be everything to every
         | customer, and won't fight for business in the same way. Does
         | that limit them? Maybe? But I suspect not enough to be a
         | problem most of the time.
        
         | mtmail wrote:
         | I was customer for 10 years, but for business I needed a second
         | account. Banned immediately even after I submitted a passport
         | copy. Worked after contacting their support. Still happy
         | customer (with both accounts). I think they're just very strict
         | and get their (un)fair share of stolen credit card or stolen
         | identity signups.
        
         | rtpg wrote:
         | I mean your transaction probably got flagged as fraudulent
         | (like if your postal code didn't match your card), it's not
         | that mysterious.
         | 
         | I think most online operators that have "spend $3 with us"
         | tiers have to be super vigilant about card transactions, and
         | when you fall into the cracks you're a bit SOL.
        
       | cjaackie wrote:
       | It's kind of not the brightest to both raise prices and reduce
       | services at the same time, who's in charge over there? Maybe I'm
       | missing something ?
        
       | consumer451 wrote:
       | Is anyone old enough to remember 1and1? Similar arc?
        
         | dindresto wrote:
         | They still exist, called ionos now: https://www.ionos.com/
        
           | consumer451 wrote:
           | Yes, I should have been more clear. It was another Germany?
           | based provider that gave excellent, even free prices... until
           | they didn't.
        
         | danpalmer wrote:
         | Maybe I'm too young to remember the good times, but to me 1and1
         | were just the European GoDaddy. Mostly targeting small
         | businesses who didn't know any better and ripping them off with
         | bad services at inflated prices, through a lot of well targeted
         | marketing. Selling things like email with a 250MB inbox and 2MB
         | attachment limit far beyond the time when that was a reasonable
         | offering, and at a far higher price than that was worth (being
         | worth roughly zero).
        
           | consumer451 wrote:
           | They started with free .com registration.
        
       | themgt wrote:
       | As a Hetzner bandwidth enjoyer affected by this, this is why (
       | _HN cough_ ) multi-cloud/dedi k3s is great, because if you get
       | rug pulled you just migrate to another provider with better
       | prices.
       | 
       | That said, $1/TB for bandwidth overage seems pretty fair. I
       | empathize with the complaining but if the new price is such a
       | ripoff everyone should be recommending what cloud VM provider
       | they're migrating to for a better deal.
        
         | princevegeta89 wrote:
         | As someone who's already using the dedicated server for a ton
         | of things, I have been really grateful. But now, I have a new
         | question, are they going to do this to their dedicated servers
         | as well?
        
         | ndjdjddjsjj wrote:
         | It does feel like a case of the Costco hotdog going up to $2
         | followed by "grrrr. Thats it! I'm..... going to keep buying it
         | because it is still damn cheap!"
        
       | mobeigi wrote:
       | To be fair their pre-change allowances were insanely generous.
        
       | xeornet wrote:
       | Not sure why this is front page news.
        
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       (page generated 2024-11-28 23:00 UTC)