I thought of giving a recommendation here but I fear that they would raise the prices too... :|
Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices
51–60 of 712 posts
Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices
#52>Until this change, customers who have used fewer resources have covered the costs, in a way, for other customers who have used much more resources. So... raising the prices for everybody instead?
Yeah, the justification given makes absolutely no sense - you are paying more than before even if you stay under the new limit (which is 1/20th of the original!) They also use the word "tariff" several times without elaborating, as if the person who wrote the email doesn't know the actual meaning of the word. Seems like intentional deception to hide a standard "we just want more money" price raise.
> as if the person who wrote the email doesn't know the actual meaning of the word.
In my country, "tariff" is seen in several contexts:
* A tax on imports, much in the news since the recent US election.
* A pub or bar's price list is known as the "bar tariff"
* Energy companies offer a selection of "tariffs" i.e. agreed contract rates for usage-based pricing. e.g. a 3-year-fixed-price tariff, a 100%-green-energy tariff, and so on.
* The portion of a 'life' jail sentence which must be served, before a prisoner can be considered for parole.
So I don't think it's incorrect to call a price list a "tariff", merely unusual.
Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices
#53Weird, one would expect that in anything related to technology either prices go down, or performance goes up over time.
True, so what gives? Just them wanting more money now that they got enough customers? They probably did some calculations and realized that damn, they could pocket more money so might as well try their luck. Like yeah, let us assume they have 10k customers: 7.05 * 10000 is 70500, 8.99 * 10000 is 89900, that is 19400 USD more for them, and that is just for one!
Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices
#54I run a dedicated server with them that does about 1 TB inbound / 50 GB outbound daily.
If they start fucking people over on the dedicated servers as well, this product is basically dead because I can't find anywhere else that allows me to do this at the current price point...
Unless of course I slap a box under my desk and hook it up to my fiber internet.
Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices
#55Possible theory why they did it: To my understanding, you don't pay for traffic, you pay for network capacity. Maybe US instances aren't getting the uptake they had hoped for, and they are looking lower some costs by reducing their network capacity (they are a very German company and care a lot about efficiency).
Hetzner is very cheap and still profitable because classic "economy of scale" and vertical integration. They own, build, and operate all their data centers. This comment goes into more details[1], but it's possible this doesn't really work out in a foreign location like US.
[1]: https://forumweb.hosting/13663-why-are-hetzners-dedicated-ho...
Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices
#56Am I calculating right that 20TB per month means around ~60Mbits per second for 24/7? Not a network expert, but it is hard to see how this could be sustainable for less than €5/month. Sounds a bit like the usual case where company is able to give a generous offering because most customers utilize just a small portion of it. Maybe with the attention they have been getting, they have attracted more bandwidth hungry cus…
That is what they (explicitly) said in the email: users using next to no bandwidth were offsetting the costs for the heaviest users. That was no longer sustainable.
I think I'm missing something then. If that were true, wouldn't you lower the network allowance and then make the product cheaper or at least priced the same? This would have the no-traffic users paying "their fair share" and the overage costs (or higher traffic addon) would make up for the heavy users.
The current plan makes everything more expensive for everyone. They would do this if a) they never had a sustainable model in the first place or b) they were just being greedy
Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices
#57It sounds like I can just move my bandwidth hungry servers to europe and eat the latency penalty- is that a correct read?
That's correct but assuming you want > 300 MB/s from EU to NA that will be a struggle.
If you don't care about high upload/download speed from/to NAEU then yes, that's a good move. Otherwise closeness in geo is still king.
Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices
#58> Until this change, customers who have used fewer resources have covered the costs, in a way, for other customers who have used much more resources. That is utter nonsense. If the customers who are 'covering the costs' have a problem, they can move? Yet even still they are charging those SAME customers who now actually receive less resources, even if they were using them or not.
> That is utter nonsense.
Hardly. Some level of cross subsidisation happens in all service of this nature. Depending on use youre either paying or receiving
Most Providers and customers just ignore it as inconsequential though.
Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices
#59So it seems that trying to compete with duopoly isn't working. Can we assume it is cause there is only few big corporations dominating internet infrastructure in US compared to EU with tons of medium sized and even small business that do it? I would love some good read about US infrastructure, especially why costs are so high compared to EU?
The per capita GDP of Germany is $52,745.76. The US is $81,695.19. The EU as a whole is $43,194. Median household income is $38,971 in Germany and $80,610 in the US.
When people cost twice in one place versus another companies will focus on more expensive but less people intensive approaches.
Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices
#60> Until this change, customers who have used fewer resources have covered the costs, in a way, for other customers who have used much more resources. That is utter nonsense. If the customers who are 'covering the costs' have a problem, they can move? Yet even still they are charging those SAME customers who now actually receive less resources, even if they were using them or not.
The problem with their old pricing structure is that it attracts high-utilization customers who will max out their transfer every month. But yes, they raised prices for all of us. Their pricing was so low, my guess is it was never profitable enough to be worthwhile long-term. It brought them a lot of business, some of which they'd be happier without under the old terms.