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Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices
251–260 of 712 posts
Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices
#252This is typical of Hetzner, if a product SKU is losing money they very quickly make changes, even going as far as to discontinue the product entirely (eg. GPU servers). They definitely don't seem to be a fan of loss leaders. I'm guessing somehow the traffic usage patterns of their USA customers was very different to their EU counterparts, or the cost of expanding network capacity was a lot higher than anticipated. It…
To be fair, given how cheap a lot of Hetzners products (especially Server Auction, my beloved) are compared to the competition, not wanting to have loss leaders seems reasonable to me
Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices
#253This thread is where I'm learning that American English uses tariff mainly for import tariffs. Here in India, the most common usage of it is to talk about telecom tariffs - mainly mobile, sometimes broadband. So it didn't even occur to me when reading the question that it might have anything to do with import tariffs, until I read some comments that misunderstood it that way.
Ah, at first I wondered if this had something to do with Trump getting elected and his claims that he will implement massive (import) tariffs.
Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah but if you're running something that is using a ton of bandwidth, presumably it's a service that needs to be online and reliable. Being cheap and constantly cycling out servers introduces complexity to your system. Hetzner could also easily change their terms to close this loophole if it's an actual problem.
You can automate it with zero downtime on kubernetes. And since internal traffic is free, you just need to cycle the ingress servers. Pay for the cheapest instance, get 20TB of egress. Churn em and burn em.
I bet that costs more than 20€ to do
Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices
#255This thread is where I'm learning that American English uses tariff mainly for import tariffs. Here in India, the most common usage of it is to talk about telecom tariffs - mainly mobile, sometimes broadband. So it didn't even occur to me when reading the question that it might have anything to do with import tariffs, until I read some comments that misunderstood it that way.
I vaguely remember the word tariff being used to refer to fees or duties in a history class growing up, but as you've noted, it's not used this way in American English anymore. When I got the email from Hetzner this morning, I thought they were taking preemptive action against some tariff/sanction that Trump must have announced against EU data companies.
Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 tar…
> So I don't think it's incorrect to call a price list a "tariff"
I'm pretty sure it is in American English. That usage might be ok in British English, but for Americans that terminology is going to be confusing. Before today, I had never heard tariff used for anything other than import taxes. And since this applies to servers in the US, it would make sense not to use terminology that would be confusing to people in that country.
Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Tariff can simply mean "fee". Don't be so proud of your ignorance.
It's not used that way in American English at all; it almost borders on archaic. Given the purpose of this email was to primarily let their American customers know they'd be raising prices on them, it seems unfair to tell someone they're ignorant when they were sent a message containing verbiage that has entirely different meaning to them.
Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
"We just want more money" Is the standard operating procedure and the goal of all for-profit companies. How can hackers not understand this? Of course they will always want as much money as possible, and it is up to you as a customer to decide if their product is worth what they are asking or if you will go to a competitor.
Because hackers are individual human beings, and as such are motivated by a whole variety of reasons, money being just one of them. When running small companies they still tend to be motivated by other things, such as proving a point, achieving a technical goal or having some cultural influence etc. It's only when the company grows in size that it becomes this soulless greedy sociopath we are all too accustomed to. H…
> It's only when the company grows in size that it becomes this soulless greedy sociopath we are all too accustomed to.
Most small and medium size businesses also fit this description. And I don't consider a price hike to be sociopathic or soulless. Greedy, sure. But businesses are always profit focused first and foremost.
Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
>“Culprits” because they used the service they paid for within its advertised limits? "Culprits" because it was their (legal) use of the service that made Hetzner rethink and change their service plan.
So then the culprits are the company’s own engineering and marketing departments for not correctly anticipating user demand.
It’s not any more possible to correctly anticipate all pricing structure vulnerabilities, than it is to correctly anticipate all program and API security vulnerabilities. There is always a statistical chance of novel outcomes when humans are involved.
Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
EU transit costs and peering agreements are much more relaxed and cheaper than in US
Europe is also a lot smaller network wise. Hetzner only have to get their traffic to Frankfurt to get connected to practically the whole of Europe. For the US, Ashburn N.Virginia is good but it's still only a single coast.
They are definitely paying under 2c/TB for traffic though.