[Imustaskforhelp]

Yes Hetzner is still vastly cheaper option but there are better options now compared to hetzner and the issue is the way that they handled the pricing.

Its just simply unsustainable and burns a lot of trust/good will if you increase your prices 3x in such a short period of time

Trust me when I say this but Hetzner really belonged in its category previously. I had scoured almost everything and nothing could provide the scale at price Hetzner did back then but now I would say that its simply not true anymore and that there might be better options out there for what its worth.

I am really sad for Hetzner as I really enjoyed them and always wanted to build on top of them but looks like all good things come to an end :-(

[heybales]

Are you a Hetzner customer? I'm a Hetzner customer, and my prices did not increase by 3x (it was more like 1.25x) and the price increase was communicated months in advance and several times. I am running stuff on their older infra, so maybe they handled it differently? When hardwares price go up at least 4x for storage and ram, I don't see how you can avoid price increases and they are still one of the cheaper/cheapest options for what I need.

[thaumaturgy]

I am a Hetzner customer. I was in the middle of migrating infrastructure from DigitalOcean to Hetzner, most of all because DO's i/o on their droplets has been abysmal for a long time now.

Hetzner's latest price increase doubled-to-tripled the costs of any new resources I would deploy there. I've now halted the migration and I am seriously considering going all the way back to colo.

This most recent price increase was not communicated months in advance. I'm kind of wondering if you're thinking of the other price increase that happened this year, and not the most recent one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48540844

[ymolodtsov]

Existing instances don't get a new price until you resize them.

[AussieWog93]

Certain things went up more severely than others. CPX VMs went up by close to 3x, for example, whereas CX VMs didn't. Which is strange, because the justification they gave was about RAM/Disk prices, not CPU.

[jeremyjh]

It depends on the product.

I have two CCX13, which were small (2CPU, 8GB RAM) dedicated compute VMs in Ashburn. Those are 16.99 EUR / month on my account, but for me to add another would now cost 43.99 EUR.

[Imustaskforhelp]

My frugality had made me found cheaper options than Hetzner (at the cost of my sanity /jk)

But, hetzner was a really solid deal especially for larger specs, literally nothing could compete with it as I used to make literal lists of providers in my head that can compete against Hetzner/ovhcloud and there were none. They were so good, too good in fact and I had actually felt like they were so giant that they would be able to survive the ramflation and it would be the small shops who would be hurt the most but turns out that although yes small shops are hurt, even the largest of giants like Hetzner couldn't resist the Ramflation and were (forced?) for price increase whereas incredibly I have found small shops to still somehow be more resistant/competitive than the larger beasts.

Pardon me if I am wrong, which I usually am, but aren't there price differences between pre-existing customers and new customers as well, atleast if I am remembering it correctly.

@AussieWog93's comments also make sense in terms of somethings going up by 3x. There seems to be a general consensus online from my limited understanding that some if not many products have increased their prices quite substantially.

[whiterock]

mind sharing what you found in your search losing your sanity? :D

[matt-p]

there's a few like https://lowendtalk.com https://serversearcher.com

[khurs]

This is a goldmine for cheap deals

https://lowendtalk.com

[mkl]

Also: https://lowendbox.com/

[makingstuffs]

https://contabo.com/en/ Has been good for my mess around and hobby stuff

[Imustaskforhelp]

Contabo does have some steal factor involved, unfortunately and their support times aren't great though many people have quite differing and polarizing experience about them or so I have heard as I haven't really tried them personally.

But its good that contabo is able to be working for ya, They are quite price competitive and the issue with them as said prior really isn't their price so much as though all the other things.

So I am happy for you that it works out for you in the end! :-D

[Imustaskforhelp]

I have tried to discuss all of it in an other comment that I have written: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48658046 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48664139

Hope it is able to be of help and it helps ya, take care!

[khurs]

>When hardwares price go up at least 4x for storage and ram, I don't see how you can avoid price increases

You said you are on older infra? So why did they increase your costs 1.25x?

That old hardware has long depreciated and paid itself back many times over and you run a higher risk of an outage due to components wearing out over time.

You should be asking for a discount!

[utrack]

I suspect that the pressure on this old infra had increased (because the customers started moving onto it); from the market POV it makes sense to put a bit more pressure on the customer tbh.

[chpatrick]

Hetzner can't magically buy cheap hardware and prices have multiplied the last year.

[rekabis]

The problem is that the company is burning existing customers - for whom the hardware has already been long purchased - to subsidize new customers coming in during this time of higher hardware costs.

And burning existing customers costs a lot more than soaking new customers. Churn always costs far more in lost revenue than a slowdown in new customers. Plus, it impacts market image in a deeply negative way.

[mkesper]

But existing resources were not affected.

[Imustaskforhelp]

I understand that and I am not denying that but it would be now unfair to say that Hetzner belongs in its own category as there are now other alternatives who do compete with Hetzner in its pricing, who also I suppose weren't able to magically buy cheap hardware but I suppose some of them might've lucked out with good deals beforehand and spare-capacity.

Overall I am unsure of how much of the thing was under Hetzner's control itself or not in terms of raising the prices given Ramflation but in deep part I am saddened by it rather than angry on the state of how the whole situation turned out to be, and I wish nothing but good for hetzner as they move past this ramflation and hopefully people are able to give a look at some smaller shops as well which are made of mostly lovely people as well.

I hope that more people look at smaller hosting providers in general who were previously unable to compete at the level of hetzner but now are actually able to do so. I recommend trying them out and talking with them and using it for atleast hobby projects and hopefully even serious projects as I know some hosting providers smaller in scale than Hetzner but are something on which I might feel as comfortable as Hetzner on deploying, if not a bit more because sadly for better or for worse Hetzner is quite strict in some aspects.

[chpatrick]

How are the smaller hosting providers going to buy cheap hardware?

[Imustaskforhelp]

some already have spare capacity, others have better contracts with their vendors and some can provide DDR3 and specialize in that type of ram and some providers are willing to eat the costs to be better competitive and that the future would be better, some are doing things for ideological reasons as they themselves don't wish to raise prices because they want to provide better for the customers (strange I know but I know of one provider who has said that)

Not everything is good though and some providers are in fact dead-pooling as well and shutting down or raising prices but not to the degree of 3 times. They don't have the leverage that Hetzner does and people would simply migrate but both Buyvm and netcup are notable examples of price increase at the levels of 18-20% for most usecases which was still comparatively high back when they were done but understandable because of ram crisis, which is why my understanding of hetzner's price increase stops being a little understandable.

Ram prices are already declining from its peak and its around 2028 when its mentioned to have a glut. So as easy as it is for me to say but the crisis is comparatively short and there have been other costs involved for hosting providers which is declining (cost of IPv4 is declining as AWS,Google and other giants have stopped hoarding/buying even more IPv4)

It's a tough space for hosting provider but I hope I have shown the how part of how they manage it, its not as easy as it was during the 2020's but it is managable with some smart price increases and other mechanisms or so I have heard. I have just recently bought a few 7$/yr vps's from such shared providers. They don't earn too much from the 7$/yr vps's as much as they earn from the word of mouth (TNAHosting ftw) and thinking of it as (amortizing?) advertisement costs.

Which is why considering all of this and the fact that I was a very massive Hetzner fan back in the day pre price increase, I have felt like the way Hetzner has done things just doesn't feel very Hetzner-y and that there were better ways to manage it and even if not, then there are better shops out there welcoming you, waiting for you to give them a shot as well. I have written another comment detailing some other MASSIVE list of providers as well if this interests ya.

[piva00]

What is comparable to Hetzner in price/scale/features?

[matt-p]

Many smaller providers have reasonable price/features but you need to dig in a comparison site or just generally to find them I guess. Like e.g serversearcher.com serverhunter etc

[khurs]

OVH is one

[Imustaskforhelp]

If you want very small servers: either get a 7$/yr vps or (upcloud if all you want is 1gb ram/1core esq server for very lightweight purposes)

The thing after Hetzner's price increase is that there isn't one size fits all anymore and I guess it might not impact people like me who knows in my opinion, many providers but in this situation its a net loss for many who might be paying higher prices. So here is my small list:

if you want vps that are behind nat: @backtogeek at (tierhive.net) is your guy. He's on hackernews as well.

If you want a very small vps with high egress: Upcloud is an interesting option as they provide 33TB (100mbps) even on their smallest machines. Ionos is a good option as well.

Dedirock/host-c are good for storage backup. Don't rely on their reliability or bandwidth but rely on having multiple deplyoments on different such servers for good backups.

Main: OVHCloud/Greencloud/onidel/buyvm and to a lesser degree Netcup as well are some good verdicts. I like layer7 and servarica as well and I have personally talked in direct messages to the person behind loclix.io

I personally use TNAHosting/Avahosting 7$/11$ yr servers respectively as I am idling them. You might be amazed by what 7$ servers can achieve as I usually code in golang/rust which work extremely good, I also host my own mail server on Tnahosting as it has port 25 enabled (though I do this just for fun) and in my lifetime, I also had a Netcup vps for 10$ for 3 months which had 8gb ram and 4 cores and 500 gb HDD.

I use cloudflare tunnels in front of my vps to prevent DDOS, not that my website has a lot of traffic anyway and have previously made custom scripts to manage it easier and I sometimes use zed and zed's remote server to connect to my server especially when I was on my netcup server and I also use micro-editor quite frequently on my vps's.

Oh can't forget xhosts.uk if you want UK vps's. I really feel like they are a good host and I have said their story on HN earlier as well but they sadly had some disabilities but instead of taking the disability check, they wanted to earn and make their own way and so have operated a vps servers because they like doing this. I really have a lot of respect for them.

"instead of taking the easy option and claim all kinds of money from the government for my disabilities I work as much as I can and hope I strike it lucky with the right customers one day."

This is a comment that they had written with me in personal discussions.

Ethernet servers is a good provider if you want port 25 access/mail access from what I've heard about them as they don't usually allow it. Skrime.eu can fit in some of my criterias as well. H4F.net(Riyad) is a respected provider as well.

Advinserver is good as well as they provide the stats of all servers so you can find the amount of steal and other factors and I have heard some people say some good things about them.

Hosting is one of the few businesses which is cooperative and competitive between many of these players and especially on the lower side of things run much on goodwill. There are always some cases of complaints but its a comfy space. You can almost find a specific host which can be best for your use case and it can be worth finding them out. I have tried to give the limited knowledge that I have.

but lets face it, what i have written is probably a brain fart and Its mostly information overload and I dont expect people to change their providers with this but my point is to be more aware about the provider space in general and to find the best provider for your own specific use case.

Feel free to e-mail me (mail in profile) if you have any specific use case and if I could help optimize the bill or give a more specific list of providers who can help in your use case. Price itself isn't the only factor as there are of reputation, steal factor, long term sustainability and many others.

I have spent too much time on such forums (to even a detrimental cost indeed) and I just like sharing the few things that I know. Perhaps I can get someone to save some money as some of these providers have affiliate programs and I can then spend that money to buy more french fries :-D

Have a nice day and take care. Domains are much more simplified though than servers and I recommend people to look at https://tld-list.com if they want to find out about domains.

[enoeht]

Quick glance on those two hosters and i cannot find these 7$ / y prices.

[BenjiWiebe]

Me neither, but I found the $3 option with an even quicker glance.

https://tnahosting.net/hybrid-vps/

[Imustaskforhelp]

These are usually on flash-deals and especially during black fridays and cyber-mondays.

I had bought from TNAhosting during a flash-sale

Even at 7$/yr vps there are multiple providers with layering rates of confidence within the provider.

Here are some resources that I can give:

https://vpspricetracker.com

https://lowendtalk.com

here is a post by a Lowendtalk member about some of these price comparison websites

https://lowendtalk.com/discussion/215318/price-comparison-si...

From the post:

https://www.serverhunter.com/

https://serverdeals.cc/

https://vpspricetracker.com

https://www.vpsbenchmarks.com/best_vps

https://www.hostfind.co.uk/web-hosting/vps-hosting/

https://hostingsift.com/hosting?type=vps

I also recommend looking at serververify which is a website created by the creator of colocrossing iirc: https://serververify.com

I have personally used serverdeals.cc and vpspricetracker.com in the past and they are some good resources BUT most of what I have snatched are within flash-sales of various kinds, whether just for as providers running it for an advertisement way or when I was using a netcup instance on their christmas/Advent calendar deals.

Hope i am able to help and take care, my friend.

[dzonga]

are there US based providers i.e data centers in the US you recommend for cheap VPS like the one the $7/11 year VPS options you mention since most of those are European based ?

[faverin]

I'm a Hetzner customer and this year's price rises have been well communicated.

Everyone's prices have gone up and i checked if i could go elsewhere and they are still cheaper for their quality level. Deffo beat Digital Ocean and cloud overlords like AWS, GCP, Azure, etc for my needs.

I am particularly pleased they locked in my old hosting plan prices after the recent increase. Seems fair. New hardware has skyrocketed in cost so I don't see how you can avoid price increases.