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Advice and opinion about NetCup, Contabo and similar hosting providers
Hi,
I need to choose a VPS hosting provider for deploying my Ruby on Rails web application.
It would be my first experience ever with website hosting.
I started to read some reviews in internet, and the first providers I bumped into are Digital Ocean, Linode and OVH. Being my budget limited (10 € per month) and their starter plans not satisfying, I started to look for alternatives, and I discovered NetCup first and then Contabo.
NetCup root servers look very attractive, however I read negative reviews about NetCup, like for instance at HostAdvice, especially in regard to difficulties in closing relationship with them. Contabo seems more known as a provider, and unlike NetCup they have English documentation (I fear about NetCup's control panel being mixed german/english). However I suppose that their VPS are less efficient than NetCup's root servers.
I would appreciate any opinion in regard to, and comparison between (if possible), Contabo and NetCup. I am indecided between NetCup's Root Server RS 1000 G7 SE and Contabo's VPS M SSD, although the reviews I read are pushing me towards Contabo.
I would also appreciate any advice in choosing the appropriate provider. I suppose there might be also good alternatives to the above German providers, and many of you may have useful suggestion to share.
Comments
Contabo was renamed before some years because of bad reviews so do a reasearch. Netcup is to good to be true in my eyes so I avoid it. There was some reviews here as their network is not stable but I never tried them to be sure.
Btw, they seem to have many promoters here on LET so things are getting worst when someone says they are good and others bad. I do trust hetzner, ovh and leaseweb.
i would keep Netcup and drop Contabo.
Netcup are professional no bs on all matters. Both you and them must/will honour the TOS/contract.
I have been using netcup since March, 2017.
Everything works fine for me.
Except their 31-days cancellation policy is kind of pain in arse. But that's quite typical among German ones
Yep, Netcup is better, at least until critical mass of LET cheapskates will fuck their IP subnets with SPAM and kills CPU/HDD with mining.
What are you looking for exactly? Low price? High performance? Stability? Why are the starter plans for OVH/DO/LN not satisfying?
Contracts with NetCup will need to be terminated one month in advance, but other than that, I don't think it's too difficult.
VMHaus @vmhaus is great. Better than anything I've tested for my usage.
I tested: OVH, DO, Linode, GCE, Vultr and AWS.
Digital Ocean was my first choice, because of the Dokku droplet and the vast documentation, however 1GB of memory seems low to me. For the same price Linode offers 2GB of ram, so my attention switched to Linode. Still I wondered if there could be better offers on cpu and bandwidth, so I discovered OVH. I started a conversation with them via ticket but for me their customer support is really bad, since I waited even 7 days for answer and it was always unsatisfying, insufficient and hasty. Thus I started to look somewhere else and found the two german providers. On paper they look so good and promising compared to DO and LN... However they are less known. Probably if I did not have a low budget I would choose Digital Ocean, recommended by many web developers (included the Ruby on Rails community).
Made me laugh. Why don't you go with Hetzner? They're well known and one of the biggest providers in Germany (with two own datacenter parks), Netcup uses their DCs aswell.
You could look into their CX line or wait for the cloud to be released (which should happen this year). They don't charge VAT if you're outside of EU. But they verify your passport upon registration.
Thanks @pike for the link, now I understand. DuckDuckGo suggested as a first query result for 'Hetzner hosting' a south African provider: that looked really weird for me, I was a bit confused.
this is hetzner usually mentioned here
https://www.hetzner.de/
I heard of Hetzner building a new DC in Finland but this african DC/company doesn't seem to be related to them.
never had network problems on netcup, but i wont buy vps, only their "root servers" with dedicated cores.
"dedicated"
By the way, since some of you are already NetCup customers or tried it, do you know if German is required to use their control panel and other services? They only have German documentation and a german forum...
Panel can be set to English. Forum UI too(you can't translate posts though
)
Also https://netcup.eu.
At the top of page, click "In English".
you can switch their panels to english, no problem. if you need help, I can guide you ;-)
for the english webpages itself you need to watch closely, as they sometimes might differ slightly or have grandfathered links to offers.
if you order from their RS line you can cancel within 30 days of their satisfaction guarantue and get your money back.
it is reported that they charge german VAT to non european customers (all prices on their webpage includes those).
as other said before you need to actively cancel at least 31 days in advance (within their control panel) to not be billed again. that whole prepay/expiring thing simply isn't that common in germany like in other countries... complaints about that are unjustified - people are just too lazy to read and notice before signing up.
for your first order grab a discount code from my signature which will give you a one time 5€ off of your first order ;-)
I haven't had much experience with contabo yet, but as has been mentioned before they have kind of mediocre reputation esp. for support and such...
edit: by the way, your budget gives you more choice of course, have a look at UltraVPS - 4GB and 50GB SSD at 9€ (they do deduct VAT so more like 7.56€), they also have more locations to choose from
https://www.ultravps.eu/en/?pdid=OB595E46555DO6331C64 (aff, gives you 15% for 6 month ;-))
or go for clouvider, buyvm, hosthatch, inceptionhosting, speedykvm to name a few...
The default Centos installation is in german language, so you just need to "export LANG=en_GB.UTF-8" to change it.
With my last order some discount options were not available on the english version of the website (6month).
Contabo is not bad per sé, but you may wanna check my review.
@Ympker, sure. Where is your review?
https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/107757/contabo-review-vps-m-ssd
I wouldn't even touch Netcup with a 10 foot pole. The fact that many users are heavily promoting their way-too-good-to-be-true offers should set off big red ass alarms. Stick with Hetzner if you need a german provider.
There are a lot of folks with hidden agendas promoting this company, Netcup, and these promoters words will be fraught with peril . Avoid them like the plague, there are a lot of bad reviews about Netcup that these LET promoters aren't telling you.
@Falzo: I checked ultravps.eu and also received a response from their customer support. They do not offer ddos protection.
My hosting provider should not necessarily be German, I just started to read about German providers here at LET. I am not prejudiced against providers from elsewhere.
@llehirgen Although I am a recent migration to NetCup (moved my dedi sites to it to save cash), I have no complaints whatsoever.
I've actually been bored enough to do various software installs on a #2/mo special, and the KVM is setup properly- and works with all of them. Their network doesn't do strange things, other than IPv6 being link-local, so you may need to tune kernel parameters to keep it "online", since by default Linux turns it off. I've had all of my services monitored, and I've had about 17 minutes downtime when one service was migrated due to hardware failure. I can live with that.
The fact that you need to use two interfaces (one for basic billing/etc, one for service management) is a touch annoying, but it's not all that difficult to get up-to-speed with.
@vmhaus is a new face to LET, but so far, they've been quite easy to work with, and the KVM just works. Right now they've got services in the UK, and are working on a US presence.
I won't do business with Contabo.
>
Thank you for the support! The US is being worked on right away, the first juniper & PDU got racked yesterday, the second is coming today.
may I know where in US ?
Really? people that tried their service and are very happy about it are... "promoters" and in bad, but you that never tried their service because they... are too good to be true, but still throw a speculation (about what you've heard sometime somewhere fot their network) for a product you've never used, are OK? Sigh
I am a "promoter!". I "promote" a lot of good hosting companies, to help other people in LET find a vps that will fulfill their needs, just like I wanted when asked for help from fellow LETters when needed something myself. I do not have any aff link, nor ever did i have one from any company, so, I am not earning any money for my saying. What exactly did I do wrong and you accusing me?
Why should a... "promoter" talk about the "bad" reviews or, even more, search for them to... warn LET, when by his own experience the service is more than good? What is a LET member? The... "hosting authority"? And what's your review about Netcup? Have you ever used them? Did they was wrong in your relationship with them? And, please, tell us, what is the hidden agenda?
@llehirgen I am a netcup user since early 2017 (2 vservers with shared cores and one root server with dedicated cores) and I have to say, I am impressed for the speed, the stability, the power of those machines. They are not the cheapest ones, but especially the root servers will beat to hell a lot of the dirty cheap with older hardware dedicated servers with double price than them. Overall, I am happy.
As of the bad reviews, I have only seen some about the charge after the cancellation. Netcup is a german provider and the fine print is in German. You should translate and read it to understand the rules (e.g. cancellation period) that you are going to sign renting a vps. This applies not only for netcup but for every hosting provider you will buy something from them.
As of Contabo, the performance is fair but certainly not so good as netcup's. They have shared cores (like netcup's vservers) but they lack in speed and network sometimes (more oversold than netcups maybe?). But overall, they are rather good and stable enough for production stuff.
@qtwrk West US
I've used all cores on almost 100% for more than two days (applying effects, upscaling and stabilization to some HD video projects of mine) and I did not get any warning or caping from netcup. The cpus were working fine, and the editing and rendering lasted about what I was expecting according to those cores. So, it seem they are really dedicated cores.