It really is so much cheaper. After dropping S3/RDS/ECS for OVH bare metal running Proxmox, my costs decreased significantly. I still use Route 53 and back up to S3, though.
Please don't compare Hetzner to the abomination that is OVH. OVH is more or less ok for non-critical fun projects, but Hetzner is often cheaper and always more reliable.
Hetzner used to be only significantly better than OVH. Now they are in a different league.
It's great to know that we have Hetzner fans in Australia. We're always looking out for new locations. I'll make sure to share a +1 for Australia with our business development team. :) --Katie
Under European law it is reasonably impossible for an individual to run a forum or blog which is open to comments:
> The EU just passed TERREG yesterday without a vote that requires anyone running a website with user generated content (a blog with comments, a forum etc.) and if they have significant EU user base to establish legal presence in the EU and have an officer responsible for deleting content with 1 hr SLA. That's out of reach for most of people. You cannot even block your site for EU traffic, because EU users can use VPN.
[…]
> On 12 September 2018, the European Commission presented a proposal for a regulation on preventing the dissemination of terrorist content online, which included:
>The one-hour rule: a legally binding one-hour deadline for content to be removed following a removal order from national competent authorities;
Not to mention restrictions on "hate speech", NetzDG, impressums...
If they are operating this datacenter under their German company, wouldn't all clients have to comply with this?
"Geldstrafen für Anbieter, die aus technischen oder betrieblichen Gründen einer Löschanordnung nicht innerhalb einer Stunde nachkommen können (z.B. private Webseitenbetreiber zur Nachtzeit), sind ausgeschlossen."
In english: "Fines for providers who cannot comply with a deletion order within one hour for technical or operational reasons (e.g. private website operators at night time) are excluded."
>"Fines for providers who cannot comply with a deletion order within one hour for technical or operational reasons (e.g. private website operators at night time) are excluded."
>So... you're wrong.
Whether he's actually wrong hinges on what counts as "operational reasons". If it's during business hours and I'm out for lunch, does that count? What if I'm in the office/home but I left DnD mode on?
As your comment states you already technically have to comply with this if you have a significant EU user base, regardless of your provider.
Non-EU sites like twitter for example comply - I get the netzdg options when I click report from Germany, they have legal presence etc. despite not being hosted here.
I don't think the location of the company matters. As far as the EU is concerned if you are serving an audience in the EU you have to comply even if you are hosting on AWS or any other hosting provider regardless of where you are in the world.
IANAL, but I don't think this law is a relevant factor when picking your hosting provider.
Does the law specifically carve out exceptions for hosting companies? If there isn’t an explicit exception, then the cloud hosting company could also be subjected to the same requirements to remove censored content from their platform within 1 hour of receiving the notice.
A hosting platform hosting user-provided code and content isn’t that much different than a forum platform hosting user-provided comments in the eyes of the law.
> Does the law specifically carve out exceptions for hosting companies?
Does this law even apply to hosting companies? The description mentions people running websites, which in this case refers to customers of hosting companies such as AWS, Hetzner, and others. Expecting hosting companies such as Hetzner to be responsible or liable for content that a client posts on a service running on one of their vCPU would make as much sense as going after AWS just because a conspiracy nut posted a tweet.
And the cloud hosting platform would have to react within one hour (at least usually). An autoreply saying "no" isn't a reaction, but a human answering is a reaction.
Apart from the obvious restrictions on holocaust denial and related socially incendiary language, there have been laws passed criminalizing hate speech.
Hate speech is defined pretty broadly so something as harmless as - free translation - "man, what a schlong!" directed against a state-level politician caused a small media storm and included the police raiding the house (well... they didnt' even manage to raid the correct house) of the person who typed out that tweet. (#pimmelgate if you want to look it up)
That's not to say that there aren't more vile comments and death-threats that maybe deserve to be looked at a little closer to protect the victims, that are also the focus of these legal tools. But in general it seems something prone to abuse of power, and hosting providers can, to varying degrees, be coerced into aiding the state agents in enforcing these laws.
The raid was the result of the politician (the Innensenator of Hamburg, responsible for the city police) reporting the post to the police. From there they had to investigate (regardless of the NetzDG or any other law governing social media). I agree that the raid was way our of proportion and probably a result of the police trying to please their boss.
Me neither but it makes sense. As long as a customer is willing to pay more than electricity+bandwidth cost, why should they throw them out? In their server auction you often find old servers at price points that are really attractive. For a database server, a 10yr old CPU with an old SSD and 250GB memory can be faster than a brand new server with a fraction of the memory. And they offer the former one for ~50€ in their server auction (at least they did yesterday).
I'm really surprised though how many servers survive for that long. But they probably mix-and-match components whenever one part of a server fails.
Hi there - We are currently just focusing on the new location for cloud servers. Depending on how successfully things go there, we may consider adding other products in the future. But we will discuss that internally first before making any announcements. Sorry that I can't give you a firm yes or no answer. --Katie, Marketing, Hetzner Online
Thanks for the reply! Hope you pass along that for the ones of us only using dedicated an option to have that in NA would be greatly appreciated! Last I looked into deploying infra in both EU and NA I had to use multiple providers.
I'm with OVH because of their NA presence (Canada). Prefer dedicated servers because of the bang for the buck. Hopefully that's in Hetzner's roadmap too
How is OVH these days? It's been years since I used them heavily, back when I was doing some game server stuff, and they were the standard in the community I was in.
I often had speed issues between OVH servers in the US and Hetzner servers in Europe. But not sure which fault it was, never got anywhere. Hetzner support was helpful, they claimed it was on the side of OVH. OVH never really got back to me on this.
Hi there, I am very sorry that you had this negative experience back in 2018. If memory serves correctly, when we launched Hetzner Cloud during this time, there was a large surge in the number of fake accounts new customers tried to make. So I could imagine our teams being overly careful about new accounts, and especially if names didn't quite match up. Usually, we are able to restore data from locked servers/accounts within the first 48 hours, and to the best of my knowledge, we were able to do that back in 2018 as well. So if you responded within 30 minutes, and your account was re-activated, I think this could have been possible in theory. However, I am not, in fact, a technician or member of the cloud support team, and I am not aware of the details of your case. Perhaps there was something else that happened with your servers or data that I am unaware of. I am very sorry that you had this negative experience with us. Naturally, we don't want any of our customers to feel this way. --Katie, Marketing, Hetzner Online
Your head of sales [name redacted] was the one that reinstated my account and called me "unprofessional" for using a shortened version of my last name.
He told me that it is not worth contacting people like me (his words), and suggested there was nothing wrong with their internal procedures and that they had no intention to do anything differently.
I understand that mistakes happen, and I do not absolve myself entirely, but I found the response to this particular incident overly offensive and accusatory for a mistake that I do believe to be an error in the way the incident was handled.
Hi again, I am sorry that he called you unprofessional. That shouldn't have happened. So I am sorry. His frustration may have been based on a cultural misunderstanding.
In Germany, whenever you sign up for a product or a service where there is likely to be an ID check or a validity check, people here know that they need to use their full legal name, even if it is a really long name, or if they have middle name(s) that are part of their legal name. It they are using a credit card, that name needs to match, too. For a German sysadmin, it would be unprofessional to not use the same name as is on their legal ID/payment information.
I know that some cultures may abbreviate parts of their middle/last names, so it's understandable that customers from these countries may not be aware of how important it is in Germany for names to match exactly.
I know that this issue isn't just an issue in Germany. I used to work in a retail store, and my store was very serious about preventing credit card fraud. We regularly did NOT let people buy things if their name on their ID didn't match the name on their credit card. I also had several Brazilian friends in the USA who had similar issues, and they learned to always use the version of their names on their passports for everything.
We will likely still be strict about customers' information matching their IDs/payment information. He's right that we will likely not change this any time soon. However, I am sorry that his answer came off as abrasive and impolite. -Katie
I used a shortened version of my last name for my account details.
It's difficult to pronounce, so I usually go by my preferred name.
(They have my full name from my e-mail and credit card)
I'm most upset that there was no opportunity to resolve this minor confusion amicably, and what really got me the most is that there was no attempt at an apology, considering the e-mail I got clearly stated that service would resume "once steps are taken to remedy the situation"
I was very polite to them, but everyone I talked to at the company was telling me that it was my fault.
I've never left an encounter with a company feeling more frustrated.
It was your fault. IANAL, but I'm reasonably sure that under German law a contract that you deliberately enter under a wrong name is retroactively void (von Anfang an nichtig). Sorry. When it comes to names, Germany doesn't f'k around.
This may very well be the case, which would only strengthen the need for posting such a warning so that other people are aware that they can have their data wiped due to minor trivialities.
I autofilled the form with my browser and was unaware of the issue until I got their e-mail.
There was no chance to remedy this.
I understand that they have no legal obligation to me, and am posting to make others aware that the company might not be interested in resolving conflicts with anything other than the heaviest of hammers.
That Hetzner cannot be sued for this is different from claiming this is acceptable behavior.
Most people come from cultures where filling a form incorrectly does not entitle people to immediately destroy their things.
I also come from a country where putting "full name" on a form only means people expect more than your first name and it is customary to not use all of your last names. I am sure many are in the same boat.
Hi again, I see.
Before I respond, could I ask you to please re-post that image without my colleague's name in it? And could you also edit your above comment so that my colleague's name is no longer in it. Unfortunately, some of our coworkers have been harassed in the past after their names were published online. So we try to prevent this from happening. Thanks in advance for doing that. I really appreciate it.
Okay my response - Again, I think there is a bit of a cultural misunderstanding going on here. I would say most Germans understand that they are responsible for verifying their identity and using their legal name when making important purchases or doing something else official. Here, names that do not match are often a sign that the account is fake. We find hundreds of fake accounts every week. Fake accounts are very closely linked with criminal behavior, people who otherwise abuse our products, and people who do not follow our ToS. Clearly, we do not want to attract customers with fake accounts to our company. So if we find an account that seems fake, it does not make sense for us to expend extra time and energy to write to that customer and ask them if they made a mistake when they entered their name on their customer account. That would dramatically increase the likelihood that spammers and scammers would get accounts and abuse our services. It would not only hurt our customers (because it would hurt our the trustworthiness of our IPs, etc.), but it would also lead to a massive increase in abuse and to victims affected by that abuse.
So, I agree that the tone from my colleague could be better here. And I will talk to him about that. And, again, for that, we are sorry. But the basic content of what he wrote is sound in my opinion. --Katie
Hi. I have resent the image with better redactions and offer my apologies.
As I mentioned in other comments, my issue is not whose mistake this was, as I'm sure we can both agree that technically I am to blame for my mistake.
My issue is that there was no attempt to amicably resolve this.
The end result was that I lost 15 days worth of labor where I was spending 10-16 hours per day trying to launch a product.
I was unable to recover from the loss of momentum that was incurred by this. (I mean, who really can maintain that type of work effort for an extended period?)
The end result was that the project eventually failed and I lost an amount of revenue that was significant to me.
Again, I am not trying to express that I am not to blame for not closer checking forms that my browser autofills for legal accuracy .. moreso I am suggesting that this could have been resolved by just sending an e-mail to double check things with me before deleting all of my data.
I also reject your idea of deleting accounts that "seem fake". If you have a valid e-mail address, and a valid credit card, which all share more or less the same name, are you really going to reach for the delete button?
This is exactly my issue, and is what cost me so much grief.
If someone gets married and changes their name, are you going to delete their data too?
This is a rhetorical question. At any rate, I can only hope your company adopts a less hostile stance towards your customers, but I do appreciate you taking the time to respond.
First, thanks for editing your other posts. I really and sincerely appreciate it. :)
Second, I am very sorry that you lost so much work. I remember long ago losing around two weeks' worth of work on my master's thesis, so I understand the grief that's involved. I got much better at making multiple backups after that. But it really sucked, and when I think about it today, it still makes me a bit sad. I can understand how you still feel burned by that experience with us. I do appreciate you talking to me about what happened. Really.
The marriage-name-change question is a good one, actually. If someone legally changes their name after they are already a customer with us, they can write us a support request and make sure this gets changed in their customer information. If a customer who's just changed their name legally wants to be sure they get an account, they should update their legal ID first. (But I think most people in this situation do quickly update their legal IDs. I know my husband did when he took my name.)
We do have a brand new Head of Customer Service, and I will be sharing feedback from customers about their negative experiences. And I am sure that he will talk that into consideration when he assesses our processes and how we can improve them. --Katie
You blurred out your own name but left the other person's name in cleartext. That's not playing fair.
I've killed this comment. If you want to make another image that blurs out both names, let me know at hn@ycombinator.com and I'll be happy to unkill the comment.
You can make your substantive point about your interaction with the company without spotlighting an individual like that.
Just a note that I appreciate all of the hard work you do here to keep the conversation here civil, and will strive better to follow the example you set for all of us.
I’m running $2500 worth of servers on Hetzner privately since 2015 and about $400 worth of VMs on Hetzner Cloud. The only instance of issues with them was Hetzner locking the outgoing traffic of a VM after it started bursting a few million packets to the local network in an infinite loop. I called them, they explained it, I fixed it and they unblocked it. Pretty happy with Hetzner. The traffic that goes over some of my servers would be $50k+ per month on AWS.
The human term is "sarcasm", Lt. Commander Data. There are only a certain number of business domains that deal with multi-petabyte monthly data transfer. So it's an amusing leap to presume the oldest profession on that list.
Thanks for researching a footnote cite to the TOS document. But it's not literal. Whoosh.
Any notable competitive advantages over DigitalOcean, Linode, Vultr, and all the other "starting at $5" copycat options in the U.S.?
Looking at their price sheet, and converting Euro to U.S. Dollar, it appears that their "$5 droplet" currently costs $4.05. You'd have to make sure you pay with a credit card that doesn't charge foreign transaction fees, and you'd have to hope that the currency exchange rate doesn't shift in a less favorable direction later.
If you're a company operating larger VM's or larger numbers of VM's, then maybe? I guess. But if you're a self-propelled company or an investor-funded startup, then you're probably on AWS, Azure, or GCP anyway. And for personal side project use in the U.S., I'm just not seeing any real reason to jump for a 95 cent discount that will fluctuate.
EDIT: A thank you to the people who actually answered the question, or gave their own personal experience, rather than just downvoting. Looking more closely at the price sheet, I can see that while the smallest option is not very distinguishable from DO or Linode, Hetzner does get more competitive at larger VM sizes.
They'll probably buy certificates, as do most providers with these labels. As they refer to hydro power, I'm sure they haven't built their own power plants. But I don't think "small" companies have other options if they want to use renewable energy.
Hopefully this means dedicated servers will come soon.
For those unaware, Hetzner truly has unbeatable pricing. Pricing that's even substantially cheaper than OVH.
I welcome competition.
EDIT: what's odd is that on their FAQ [0] they state dedicated AMD servers are available in Ashburn, but when I go to their actual dedicated server page [1] - no US locations are listed for any dedicated offering.
They didn't build their own dc, so cost will be much higher than with their own data centers. Cloud has higher margins, I don't think they'll be able to offer dedicated servers at the same price. Maybe if cloud takes off there they use it as a basis to build their own data center though. But the one in Finland took a few years from their first announcement so I don't think this will come soon. I'd imagine we see other cloud locations in 3rd party data centers before that.
It appears AMD Dedicated is coming (see my EDIT comment above). If they're able to offer dedicated at the similar price points to other regions, it would be truly amazing.
Right now we are only focusing on cloud servers. If things go well with the new ASH location, we will consider adding other products and services, such as dedicated root servers. But we will discuss this internally first before we make any announcements. --Katie, Marketing, Hetzner Online
I'd also like to express my interest in US dedicated servers. I really like the pricing of your EU offering it'd be great to have something a bit closer here besides OVH!
That's great to know. You're clearly not the only one who feels this way. I'll be meeting with a colleague in the business development team son and will pass on all of the customer wishes for dedicated servers in the US. :) --Katie
I have to say, we were awestruck at the pricing and the Europe/US footprint is exactly what we need, so we are going all in to Hetzner. (The video tour of the datacenter was really good too)
Oh, that's wonderful! I'm so glad to hear that you're going to go all in with us. And I am really pleased you liked the video from der8auer at our data center. His crew did a great job, and I really love the topics he covered and how much detail he went into there. :) If you're new to us, make sure to check out these:
some general cloud information: https://docs.hetzner.com/cloud
stuff on GitHub: https://github.com/hetznercloud
tutorials: https://community.hetzner.com/tutorials
And have fun! --Katie
hetzner locked my account because my manager put it in my name, and then much later, stopped paying it. OK, but they seem to treat me as a scammer since I am in the USA.
If the account is in your name you're responsible for payment. But you can probably sue your manager for doing that. I don't see Hetzner's fault, they'll have to assume that you opened the account if it's in your name and was likely used by you.
But that's for you to pursue (to sue the fraudster would be a first step). Without a court decision, the counterparty has no reason to go after another person than the one on the contract.
Obviously this is going to vary per jurisdiction, but in the US this is plainly wrong. The burden is on the party asserting a debt to prove that the debt is legitimate. If Hetzner wished to enforce the debt, they would have to go to court and substantiate that their contract was really entered into with OP.
Instead they're just extrajudicially screwing with him, likely due to organizational incompetence - nobody was empowered to evaluate the situation with human judgement. Legally they can do this, as they can choose to not do business with anyone they'd like. But potential customers are free to judge the poor handling of this situation as a real risk, and avoid relying on Hetzner too much.
Pricing. Where else can you get a i7-6700 with 64GB RAM, 2x512 GB NVMe SSDs for just 40 euro per month?
I have been using Hetzner for business purposes for 8 years or so. Never had a problem with them, and the bang for buck is high and above anyone else in the industry.
Anyone know of a similar server case I could purchase? I really love the simple utilitarian look of the case with a single fan shroud over the CPU/RAM.
I run some machines on Hetzner with 10x disks sw-RAIDed in a very hands off fashion. From time to time I look how they're doing.
Usually a few disks have blown up, or are erroring or have smart errors. I then need to open 1 ticket per disk to get it fixed. They get replaced with really old disks (25k+ hours) which suffer same failures soon after.
At one point support complained that I was making too many requests to change their broken disks as if it was my fault that 20% were screwed.
Then they treat you like an idiot as much as they can. They ask you to provide disk slots numbering for disks which are impossible to get/know for a customer because they cannot read the serial number labels on the chassis and generally assume customer's fault to not know where they plugged something.
Sometimes machines do not restart after changing the disks and they don't realize so have to follow up again.
Network isolation doesn't exist so any weird network behavior from the machines towards then LAN gets you blocked.
If something is wrong you have to beg for some console access that they need to enable on demand only to find they plugged something wrong.
Hi there, I am sorry that you've had so many negative experience with us when it comes to technical support for hardware-related issues. And I am especially sorry that you feel our support treated you like an idiot. That's clearly not our intention. As the company's in-house English teacher, I am curious about incidents like this. Perhaps if you have a ticket number where that happened, you can share it with me. Please feel free to send them to katherine.snow@hetzner.com. --Katie
I'm also a customer of yours who experienced something similar: the three separate hetzner websites needed to manage my servers and account were unintuitive to me when I first started using your services (compared to other hosting providers), so I tried reaching out to your support staff. I was very surprised when they responded to my questions in a notably condescending tone.
I still use your services today, but that interaction left a lingering taste in my mouth, so much so that I haven't bought any new services from your company since that incident.
I am sorry that we made such a bad impression on you. Yes, the three different user interfaces (konsoleH, Robot, and Cloud Console), can take some time to get used to, and can be quite unintuitive at first glance. [Robot is for unmanaged dedicated root servers and products related to these servers; konsoleH is for managed products and exotic domains that usually require more support for registrations; and Cloud Console is for our cloud servers and related products.] Our company has been working on trying to slowly integrate these to make it easier for customers to use them. We're making progress step by step.
Unfortunately, technicians who are familiar with our systems sometimes forget how confusing they can be for new (and existing) customer. In my English classes to improve customer service, I really emphasize the importance of trying to see things from the customers point of view. And I will continue to push my colleagues to do that. --Katie
This is great news, this finally means Hetzner has ambitions beyond Europe.
It is also interesting that Linode, DO, Vultr and UpCloud are all moving up the value chain and try to be a simplify, mini AWS with managed services. Hetzner will now take their place and becomes the more affordable cloud hosting provider with very little features.
And I am surprised at all the dedicated box comments, really wish Hetzer will some day do that on US or may be Canada. But my guess is that it would require something like OVH with huge investment on Datacenter.
Hi there - Some customers in this situation who plan on using us in the future will pay via bank transfer, and they purposefully make their payment much large, like €10 or €20. This then gets entered on your account in credit and you're invoices will be deducted from it. If you choose to do this, please make sure to note your customer number in your bank/wire transfer. If you later decide to cancel your account, we'll refund you for any credit still left on your account. --Katie
130 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 200 ms ] threadHetzner used to be only significantly better than OVH. Now they are in a different league.
> The EU just passed TERREG yesterday without a vote that requires anyone running a website with user generated content (a blog with comments, a forum etc.) and if they have significant EU user base to establish legal presence in the EU and have an officer responsible for deleting content with 1 hr SLA. That's out of reach for most of people. You cannot even block your site for EU traffic, because EU users can use VPN.
[…]
> On 12 September 2018, the European Commission presented a proposal for a regulation on preventing the dissemination of terrorist content online, which included:
>The one-hour rule: a legally binding one-hour deadline for content to be removed following a removal order from national competent authorities;
Not to mention restrictions on "hate speech", NetzDG, impressums...
If they are operating this datacenter under their German company, wouldn't all clients have to comply with this?
"Geldstrafen für Anbieter, die aus technischen oder betrieblichen Gründen einer Löschanordnung nicht innerhalb einer Stunde nachkommen können (z.B. private Webseitenbetreiber zur Nachtzeit), sind ausgeschlossen."
In english: "Fines for providers who cannot comply with a deletion order within one hour for technical or operational reasons (e.g. private website operators at night time) are excluded."
So... you're wrong.
PS I agree that TERREG is bad.
>So... you're wrong.
Whether he's actually wrong hinges on what counts as "operational reasons". If it's during business hours and I'm out for lunch, does that count? What if I'm in the office/home but I left DnD mode on?
Non-EU sites like twitter for example comply - I get the netzdg options when I click report from Germany, they have legal presence etc. despite not being hosted here.
IANAL, but I don't think this law is a relevant factor when picking your hosting provider.
A hosting platform hosting user-provided code and content isn’t that much different than a forum platform hosting user-provided comments in the eyes of the law.
Does this law even apply to hosting companies? The description mentions people running websites, which in this case refers to customers of hosting companies such as AWS, Hetzner, and others. Expecting hosting companies such as Hetzner to be responsible or liable for content that a client posts on a service running on one of their vCPU would make as much sense as going after AWS just because a conspiracy nut posted a tweet.
No
Also none of those restrictions apply to stuff like a VM provider.
Hate speech is defined pretty broadly so something as harmless as - free translation - "man, what a schlong!" directed against a state-level politician caused a small media storm and included the police raiding the house (well... they didnt' even manage to raid the correct house) of the person who typed out that tweet. (#pimmelgate if you want to look it up)
That's not to say that there aren't more vile comments and death-threats that maybe deserve to be looked at a little closer to protect the victims, that are also the focus of these legal tools. But in general it seems something prone to abuse of power, and hosting providers can, to varying degrees, be coerced into aiding the state agents in enforcing these laws.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eo8nz_niiM
I'm really surprised though how many servers survive for that long. But they probably mix-and-match components whenever one part of a server fails.
They sent me an email saying my account was paused and to contact them to resolve it, which I did within half an hour.
My account was reinstated minus all of my environment.. just a blank account. They deleted everything and told me they had no way to restore it.
Beware hosting anything with them unless you keep backups with another provider.
Your head of sales [name redacted] was the one that reinstated my account and called me "unprofessional" for using a shortened version of my last name.
He told me that it is not worth contacting people like me (his words), and suggested there was nothing wrong with their internal procedures and that they had no intention to do anything differently.
I understand that mistakes happen, and I do not absolve myself entirely, but I found the response to this particular incident overly offensive and accusatory for a mistake that I do believe to be an error in the way the incident was handled.
In Germany, whenever you sign up for a product or a service where there is likely to be an ID check or a validity check, people here know that they need to use their full legal name, even if it is a really long name, or if they have middle name(s) that are part of their legal name. It they are using a credit card, that name needs to match, too. For a German sysadmin, it would be unprofessional to not use the same name as is on their legal ID/payment information.
I know that some cultures may abbreviate parts of their middle/last names, so it's understandable that customers from these countries may not be aware of how important it is in Germany for names to match exactly.
I know that this issue isn't just an issue in Germany. I used to work in a retail store, and my store was very serious about preventing credit card fraud. We regularly did NOT let people buy things if their name on their ID didn't match the name on their credit card. I also had several Brazilian friends in the USA who had similar issues, and they learned to always use the version of their names on their passports for everything.
We will likely still be strict about customers' information matching their IDs/payment information. He's right that we will likely not change this any time soon. However, I am sorry that his answer came off as abrasive and impolite. -Katie
It's difficult to pronounce, so I usually go by my preferred name.
(They have my full name from my e-mail and credit card)
I'm most upset that there was no opportunity to resolve this minor confusion amicably, and what really got me the most is that there was no attempt at an apology, considering the e-mail I got clearly stated that service would resume "once steps are taken to remedy the situation"
I was very polite to them, but everyone I talked to at the company was telling me that it was my fault.
I've never left an encounter with a company feeling more frustrated.
So not Hetzner's fault, then.
I am not trying to express that I am absent of blame, but rather expressing frustration that there was no attempt to resolve the matter.
It was only a guess on their side about my name, and they jumped straight to deletion without knowing anything for certain.
This is the warning I wish to convey, that if you get caught up in such a mixup, that you may not expect some sort of due process.
Seems like a silly argument to say because the contract could be unenforceable you should expect them to delete your data.
The more likely scenario is a script or employee thought it was a fraud account, and deleted the vms.
If you make a typo, you need to remedy the issue as soon as you become aware of it.
You need to use at least your first and last name, unless you are from a culture that does not use last names.
There was no chance to remedy this.
I understand that they have no legal obligation to me, and am posting to make others aware that the company might not be interested in resolving conflicts with anything other than the heaviest of hammers.
Most people come from cultures where filling a form incorrectly does not entitle people to immediately destroy their things.
I also come from a country where putting "full name" on a form only means people expect more than your first name and it is customary to not use all of your last names. I am sure many are in the same boat.
Anecdotes like these are enough to tarnish a brand forever in the minds of potential customers.
https://imgur.com/a/y1dMhd2
I'd think twice before hosting anything with them.
I would immediately consider to move my projects to another provider if I were a customer with them.
They have an account on HN, so maybe they could clarify. I certainly wouldn't be considering to become a client with them.
Okay my response - Again, I think there is a bit of a cultural misunderstanding going on here. I would say most Germans understand that they are responsible for verifying their identity and using their legal name when making important purchases or doing something else official. Here, names that do not match are often a sign that the account is fake. We find hundreds of fake accounts every week. Fake accounts are very closely linked with criminal behavior, people who otherwise abuse our products, and people who do not follow our ToS. Clearly, we do not want to attract customers with fake accounts to our company. So if we find an account that seems fake, it does not make sense for us to expend extra time and energy to write to that customer and ask them if they made a mistake when they entered their name on their customer account. That would dramatically increase the likelihood that spammers and scammers would get accounts and abuse our services. It would not only hurt our customers (because it would hurt our the trustworthiness of our IPs, etc.), but it would also lead to a massive increase in abuse and to victims affected by that abuse. So, I agree that the tone from my colleague could be better here. And I will talk to him about that. And, again, for that, we are sorry. But the basic content of what he wrote is sound in my opinion. --Katie
As I mentioned in other comments, my issue is not whose mistake this was, as I'm sure we can both agree that technically I am to blame for my mistake.
My issue is that there was no attempt to amicably resolve this.
The end result was that I lost 15 days worth of labor where I was spending 10-16 hours per day trying to launch a product.
I was unable to recover from the loss of momentum that was incurred by this. (I mean, who really can maintain that type of work effort for an extended period?)
The end result was that the project eventually failed and I lost an amount of revenue that was significant to me.
Again, I am not trying to express that I am not to blame for not closer checking forms that my browser autofills for legal accuracy .. moreso I am suggesting that this could have been resolved by just sending an e-mail to double check things with me before deleting all of my data.
I also reject your idea of deleting accounts that "seem fake". If you have a valid e-mail address, and a valid credit card, which all share more or less the same name, are you really going to reach for the delete button?
This is exactly my issue, and is what cost me so much grief.
If someone gets married and changes their name, are you going to delete their data too?
This is a rhetorical question. At any rate, I can only hope your company adopts a less hostile stance towards your customers, but I do appreciate you taking the time to respond.
The marriage-name-change question is a good one, actually. If someone legally changes their name after they are already a customer with us, they can write us a support request and make sure this gets changed in their customer information. If a customer who's just changed their name legally wants to be sure they get an account, they should update their legal ID first. (But I think most people in this situation do quickly update their legal IDs. I know my husband did when he took my name.)
We do have a brand new Head of Customer Service, and I will be sharing feedback from customers about their negative experiences. And I am sure that he will talk that into consideration when he assesses our processes and how we can improve them. --Katie
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You blurred out your own name but left the other person's name in cleartext. That's not playing fair.
I've killed this comment. If you want to make another image that blurs out both names, let me know at hn@ycombinator.com and I'll be happy to unkill the comment.
You can make your substantive point about your interaction with the company without spotlighting an individual like that.
Just a note that I appreciate all of the hard work you do here to keep the conversation here civil, and will strive better to follow the example you set for all of us.
The redactions have been redone and forwarded.
I posted screenshots of some communications in another reply.
GB * cost per GB
1 * $0
9999 * $0,09
40000 * $0,085
100000 * $0,07
800000 * $0,05
= $51.299,91
[0] 8.2. of https://www.hetzner.com/assets/Uploads/downloads/AGB-en.pdf
Thanks for researching a footnote cite to the TOS document. But it's not literal. Whoosh.
Sarcasm doesn't always communicate itself, particularly in very short comments.
They won’t stop you from hosting your own private onlyfans site though.
That should be true of any provider / data.. 3 is 1, 2 is none, and 1 is crazy...
If you are not following 3-2-1 backup you are asking for trouble I dont care what provider or service you are using
I did however lose a full two weeks of heavy effort.
Looking at their price sheet, and converting Euro to U.S. Dollar, it appears that their "$5 droplet" currently costs $4.05. You'd have to make sure you pay with a credit card that doesn't charge foreign transaction fees, and you'd have to hope that the currency exchange rate doesn't shift in a less favorable direction later.
If you're a company operating larger VM's or larger numbers of VM's, then maybe? I guess. But if you're a self-propelled company or an investor-funded startup, then you're probably on AWS, Azure, or GCP anyway. And for personal side project use in the U.S., I'm just not seeing any real reason to jump for a 95 cent discount that will fluctuate.
EDIT: A thank you to the people who actually answered the question, or gave their own personal experience, rather than just downvoting. Looking more closely at the price sheet, I can see that while the smallest option is not very distinguishable from DO or Linode, Hetzner does get more competitive at larger VM sizes.
I recently made a switch and now have a AMD Epyc server with twice the specs for the same amount / month.
I'll probably move more and use docker for my WordPress instances there. Easier to maintain than in my droplets and it should be much cheaper too.
And the Hetzner 2 vCPU / 2GB Ram / 40Gb disk space is ~$5.50 USD/month.
Digital Ocean's closest offering has one less vCPU, 15GB more disk space, but is $10/month.
https://www.hetzner.com/managed-server https://www.hetzner.com/unternehmen/umweltschutz/
I heard from reliable sources that it's total greenwashing and bullshit, but I don't know how to research that further.
Makes sense though if they are so much cheaper than others.
https://www.businessfinland.fi/en/whats-new/cases/2018/inves...
I think it's only Finland that they are 100% wind
Its bs if you would expect Hetzner owned windmills connected straight to the DC.
Hopefully this means dedicated servers will come soon.
For those unaware, Hetzner truly has unbeatable pricing. Pricing that's even substantially cheaper than OVH.
I welcome competition.
EDIT: what's odd is that on their FAQ [0] they state dedicated AMD servers are available in Ashburn, but when I go to their actual dedicated server page [1] - no US locations are listed for any dedicated offering.
[0] https://docs.hetzner.com/cloud/general/locations/
[1] https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver
FYI - your AX101 dedicated offering in my mind is the best offering in the market. I'd love to see this come to the US.
https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/ax101/configura...
It's really not a company's fault for stopping to provide a service when it's not paid for.
Instead they're just extrajudicially screwing with him, likely due to organizational incompetence - nobody was empowered to evaluate the situation with human judgement. Legally they can do this, as they can choose to not do business with anyone they'd like. But potential customers are free to judge the poor handling of this situation as a real risk, and avoid relying on Hetzner too much.
I have been using Hetzner for business purposes for 8 years or so. Never had a problem with them, and the bang for buck is high and above anyone else in the industry.
But please feel free to prove me wrong. :)
Usually a few disks have blown up, or are erroring or have smart errors. I then need to open 1 ticket per disk to get it fixed. They get replaced with really old disks (25k+ hours) which suffer same failures soon after.
At one point support complained that I was making too many requests to change their broken disks as if it was my fault that 20% were screwed.
Then they treat you like an idiot as much as they can. They ask you to provide disk slots numbering for disks which are impossible to get/know for a customer because they cannot read the serial number labels on the chassis and generally assume customer's fault to not know where they plugged something.
Sometimes machines do not restart after changing the disks and they don't realize so have to follow up again.
Network isolation doesn't exist so any weird network behavior from the machines towards then LAN gets you blocked.
If something is wrong you have to beg for some console access that they need to enable on demand only to find they plugged something wrong.
But they're cheap so...
I still use your services today, but that interaction left a lingering taste in my mouth, so much so that I haven't bought any new services from your company since that incident.
It is also interesting that Linode, DO, Vultr and UpCloud are all moving up the value chain and try to be a simplify, mini AWS with managed services. Hetzner will now take their place and becomes the more affordable cloud hosting provider with very little features.
And I am surprised at all the dedicated box comments, really wish Hetzer will some day do that on US or may be Canada. But my guess is that it would require something like OVH with huge investment on Datacenter.
Guys, I love you but couldn't you just give me a way to pay forward or roll it in the next one?