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Hetzner switches to new billing model

docs.hetzner.com

131–140 of 206 posts

Re: Hetzner switches to new billing model

#131
post #45

I've heard that Hetzner is a good provider, so I want to buy a cheap unmanaged VPS server in the USA. But can not find any mention about VPS. Any help, please? Just need to replace this one (the same bad story $$$ as Netlify recently): https://www.leaseweb.com/fr/cloud/virtual-server

Be ready to handover a copy of your national ID/passport

I've had a similar experience where my account was banned despite providing all the info they requested (including my passport).

Hetzner was the only provider where I was banned despite providing everything I was asked for. I've deployed services on plenty of providers (AWS, GCP, Digital Ocean, Vultr, etc) without issue.

Apparently, this has been an on-going struggle for them. A few weeks ago they were even called out on an episode of the syntaxFM podcast for this behavior after one of the hosts had his account banned [0].

It's still a bit of a mystery to me honestly. Is their fraud detection so poor where they're forced to ban new sign-ups in this manner? How can Hetzner's competition tell that these accounts are legitimate (without ridiculous requirements such as passport) and Hetzner can't (even when provided with full home address, passport, etc)? I'm assuming Hetzner can't because they've seemingly developed a reputation for banning legitimate developers and the only reason I can think of where they'd be fine with that is if they actually have a very difficult time telling whether an account is legitimate or not.

[0]: https://twitter.com/stolinski/status/1750226126499139665

Re: Hetzner switches to new billing model

#132
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep: Dear Mr David Allison After reviewing your updated customer information, we have decided to deactivate your account because of some concerns we have regarding this information. Therefore, we have cancelled all your existing products and orders with us. Best regards Your Hetzner Online Team

That's terrifying. Did they at least give you time to backup your data?

I was evaluating them at the time. No data loss

Re: Hetzner switches to new billing model

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh, ymmv. I migrated a bunch of stuff from OVH->Hetzner a few years ago and the support experience was absolutely, insanely, beyond-belief bad. P1 call having to explain "what's an ip address" to their 'engineers'. About 6 hours after we moved prod over, they brought down my EIPs for like 4 hours because of a route they didn't understand and flagged as spam, and in the end we rolled back the migration and cancelled…

What are EIPs? If you are referring to the eth stuff, everything to do with crypto is banned on hetzner

I assume they're talking about elastic IPs and not Ethereum Improvement Proposals

Re: Hetzner switches to new billing model

#134
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that said, while digital ocean is great, as far as i know hetzner is somewhat cheaper. compare! at digital ocean, 12$: 2GB RAM, 1vCPU, 20GB SSD, 2TB transfer at hetzner, 10,50$: 8GB RAM, 2vCPU, 80GB SSD, 20TB transfer

Yes, but Hetzner costumer service is from another planet. So in case of issues they won't be able to help, and you will have issues.

Similar to the other commenters I much disagree - "but this ofc. rly depends on what you expect from them..."

If the thing has power, network, working hardware and is able to "boot into there rescue-system" that is all they care about. And for that support has been stellar including preventive disk swaps, moving disk into new chassis and such with feedback and action within minutes basically 24/7.

But the software end is ofc. entirely on you, down to the BIOS where they roll you a network-KVM-Cart to the box for some hours after requesting it with a click. They wont fix your HTML errors, nor your php syntax errors, or explain how to setup SSL on your apache, nor will they help when you dont know how to operate ssh/putty ;) and if "with such an issue" one bothers the 24/7-datacenter guys (and not just "8-16/5 normal customer support") I may even understand that it seems a little rude ;-)

Re: Hetzner switches to new billing model

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh, ymmv. I migrated a bunch of stuff from OVH->Hetzner a few years ago and the support experience was absolutely, insanely, beyond-belief bad. P1 call having to explain "what's an ip address" to their 'engineers'. About 6 hours after we moved prod over, they brought down my EIPs for like 4 hours because of a route they didn't understand and flagged as spam, and in the end we rolled back the migration and cancelled…

What are EIPs? If you are referring to the eth stuff, everything to do with crypto is banned on hetzner

Elastic IPs i believe - you can attach/detach an IP to a server instead of having a new IP everytime

Re: Hetzner switches to new billing model

#136
post #119
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's terrifying. Did they at least give you time to backup your data?

Please note that Hetzner does this only in couple cases: a) fake account data ; b) previous strikes (unpaid invoices, abuse etc..) with them ; c) in some cases customer is from country they do not do business with. I bet gazzilion OP above is within a or b

Their ToS also classifies Crypto-Mining, farming or plotting (whatever that is) as grounds for cancellation.

Also everything forbidden by German law results in a cancellation. So if you would have for example posted something before 2017 about a state leader that might seem like an insult your server might be gone. ( https://www.loc.gov/item/global-legal-monitor/2017-07-26/ger... )

https://cdn.hetzner.com/assets/Uploads/downloads/AGB-en.pdf Section 8.3

Re: Hetzner switches to new billing model

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep: Dear Mr David Allison After reviewing your updated customer information, we have decided to deactivate your account because of some concerns we have regarding this information. Therefore, we have cancelled all your existing products and orders with us. Best regards Your Hetzner Online Team

What? That sounds extremely unacceptable. Can we get some context please, there must be a reason. Were you able to backup first?

I created an account to evaluate them on Sun, 18 Jun 2023, 13:25 UTC. I verified my account on Sun, 18 Jun 2023, 13:29.

I received the above email entitled 'Rejection of Your account XXXXX' on Mon, 19 Jun 2023, 09:15.

I didn't follow up further. No backups required as I hadn't purchased anything

Re: Hetzner switches to new billing model

#140
post #106
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

South America would be great as well

South Africa sounds like a good compromise between Australia and South America :) Wonder what's the shortest possible latency between those points? Alternative, more interesting question: Assuming Hetzner have a data center in Germany and one in Finland, where should their next data center be in order to reduce latency as much as possible, in the most countries?

They also have one in the US.

So probably East Asia?

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