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Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

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Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

#681

Post by dumbledoren »

mtmail wrote: post #341
lordofgibbons wrote: post #295

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.

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.

Hetzner values its old customers a LOT for some reason...

Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

#682

Post by dumbledoren »

crest wrote: post #135
shubhamjain wrote: post #55

Possible 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. T…

That doesn't explain a 20x regional pricing difference for the same service (outgoing bandwidth). It's either a malicious change to extract exorbitant rent from customers (hostages at that point) or buying enough bandwidth is whole lot more expensive than they calculated and it reflects costs to provide the product (a virtual machine a specific traffic cap). If its mostly the later case they really fucked up their cu…

American traffic is expensive and they scarcely do peering agreements. And the backbone providers are probably jacking up the prices to boost revenue in these inflationary times. Eu users are not affected because the Eu invested heavily in the internet backbone and everybody peers with everybody there. In the US the isps cripple any effort to improve the internet infrastructure for profit.

Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

#683

Post by fusl »

Their email makes sense, except it doesn't. As someone who considers themselves a low traffic usage customer, running hundreds of Hetzner Cloud servers - each averaging less than 10GB of data transfer, with only a few servers reaching the previously included 50-60TB/month - I’m now facing an overall increase in costs.

Not only are the per-server prices higher, but the drastic cut in included bandwidth (without a corresponding option for bandwidth pooling) means I'll be paying significantly more despite my usage being well within "low traffic" by their standards. It’s frustrating that Hetzner never introduced a bandwidth pooling option for customers where it would make sense, especially in scenarios like mine where usage is highly imbalanced across servers.

At this point, Vultr and Linode are starting to make a lot more sense, even with their more expensive traffic pricing, since both providers offer traffic pooling. This feature would have significantly softened the blow of Hetzner's pricing changes, but instead, they’re pushing costs onto loyal customers who don’t fit neatly into their new model.

Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

#684

Post by Aachen »

michaelt wrote: post #615
immibis wrote: post #598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you pay $5 and use $100 of bandwidth costs, you are in fact being subsidized by other users, not by margins. We don't know what OVH pays for bandwidth though.

If I order some shoes from Amazon, I find them uncomfortable, and I return them for a full refund causing Amazon to incur a loss - have I been "subsidised" by other customers? Personally I would say if Amazon makes a profit selling you a book and makes a loss shipping me some shoes which I return, the loss was paid by Amazon, not by you.

The comparison is more apt if you gained something (because the bandwidth user gets a product out of it), say by having worn the shoes for a day and doing this every day so you get free shoes for life. Then, yes, it's pretty clear the paying customers are the ones footing your bill

Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

#685

Post by conartist6 »

rvnx wrote: post #120
conartist6 wrote: post #101

Wow. You literally cannot pay them 10 times the price to give you that much bandwidth now. If you were using 20TB they just don't want you as a customer anymore

Literally quoting billing support: "It is a privilege to have the right to be a Hetzner customer"

What the... "a privilege to have the right?"

I don't think they know what rights are...

Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

#686

Post by pas »

matt-p wrote: post #676
pas wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They recently entered the US market, so almost surely there was some honeymoon period (ie. investment to gain market share), but likely there's a significant difference between how the IXP/bandwidth/peering market works in the US compared to their home market (EU).

Pricing is fairly similar, particularly in ashburn. Europe can be a little cheaper, but usually not a massive amount in it.

Hm, interesting! Then probably lots of "bandwidth conscious" folks pounced on on their fancy new PoP.

Whatever the reason, rather strange to do this without even a few days of notice.

Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

#687

Post by cameronh90 »

isodev wrote: post #623
cameronh90 wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty obvious what the concern is, no? Hetzner's process seems to be blocking real people with no malicious intent (myself included) from creating accounts, even when we try to provide proof. Obviously this means we end up using a different provider instead. Though in my experience attempting to do business in Germany, this kind of forbidden-by-default perspective is quite common there, so they probably don't s…

A credit card is “low trust” confirmation of identity. Usually for this kind of services, you also have to submit your ID for verification. Perhaps you’re based in a country where this is not possible so they didn’t ask upfront? Either way, it’s their process so you’re of course welcome to go elsewhere if you want. I don’t see it as a “bad thing” for companies to require some level of trust.

I'm based in the UK where we all have credit cards. I also did give them my ID - which is NOT typical for other hosting providers, actually, but I'm happy to provide it - but that still didn't satisfy them.

Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

#688

Post by oarsinsync »

matt-p wrote: post #667
oarsinsync wrote: post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What matters is the service plan offered by the cloud provider and the performance indicators they are contractually obligated to meet Indeed, and those indicators are specified in the contract, not in the headline product description. There are a lot of people unhappy that those indicators in this contract are not specific enough. Those people shouldn’t buy these contracts. (Also, if you use your 1Gbps port at ful…

Thats only true if all your customers choose the exact same 37 Hours (and the same/similar destinations) back in the real world that's very very unlikely and so the 95%ile "issue" is a bit misleading unless an individual customer has the ability to use more than a couple of percent of your overall capacity (rare-ish at scale).

I completely agree. The product being sold has only a loose connection to the cost incurred by the provider. This is why the product being sold is being sold in a vague / loose-ish way, because for the overwhelming majority of customers, the product being sold can be sold for a profit.

Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

#689

Post by oarsinsync »

rendaw wrote: post #669
oarsinsync wrote: post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s also reasonable for OVH to not do that, as most of their customers don’t understand 95th percentile billing, which is the model that they’re being charged at by their transit suppliers. It’s also reasonable for OVH to not do that, as most of their customers dont understand that transit costs blend with port costs depending on destination, and some destinations are effectively ‘free’ to send/receive from (fixed p…

You're acting like it's complicated, but they could just not say "unlimited" here: https://www.ovhcloud.com/en/bare-metal/bandwidth/ Like: > Generous bandwidth limits* > *see this link for details

It’s worth going back to the start of this thread and seeing that this all started with someone complaining that their provider had reduced the BW allowance and wanting somewhere with more generous allowances. When the provider sells things for what it actually costs, the customer gets upset and looks for someone selling a subsidised product in a misleading way. Leading to other people getting upset about the mislead. Those people should go to the original provider, who is doing exactly what they asked for!

Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

#690

Post by oarsinsync »

matt-p wrote: post #659
oarsinsync wrote: post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s also reasonable for OVH to not do that, as most of their customers don’t understand 95th percentile billing, which is the model that they’re being charged at by their transit suppliers. It’s also reasonable for OVH to not do that, as most of their customers dont understand that transit costs blend with port costs depending on destination, and some destinations are effectively ‘free’ to send/receive from (fixed p…

kind of true except if you've got 1000's of customers it all evens out and your traffic profile is actually quite smooth if you've got say 6 X 100G transits, 4 X 100G IXP ports and 5 X 100G PNIs then the impact of an individual 1G customer is not even noticeable, honestly. We can work to 1Mbps 95%ile being about 250GB of total transfer at scale.

I completely agree. The product being sold has only a loose connection to the cost incurred by the provider. This is why the product being sold is being sold in a vague / loose-ish way, because for the overwhelming majority of customers, the product being sold can be sold for a profit.
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