Contabo vs Hetzner

A Cloud VPS (Virtual Private Server) is a virtual server hosted on cloud infrastructure that provides dedicated resources (vCPU, RAM, storage) in an isolated environment. Contabo offers KVM-based virtualization ensuring guaranteed resource allocation with full root access.

Cloud VPS uses shared vCPU cores (virtualized), while Cloud VDS (Virtual Dedicated Server) provides dedicated physical CPU cores exclusively allocated to your server. VDS is ideal for CPU-intensive workloads requiring guaranteed consistent performance.

Contabo servers are unmanaged by default — you get full root access and are responsible for server administration. However, you can add cPanel or Plesk as paid add-ons for a control panel experience. Managed support is not included.

All Contabo servers include unlimited traffic under a Fair Usage Policy. This means there are no hard data transfer limits, but excessive bandwidth usage that impacts other users may be throttled. Standard usage patterns are not affected.

Contabo offers 1-month, 3-month, 6-month, and 12-month billing periods. Longer terms provide discounts: typically 10% off for 6 months and 20% off for 12 months. A small one-time setup fee applies to Cloud VPS 10 and Storage VPS 10 on 1-month and 6-month plans. All other plans and longer-term commitments have no setup fees.

Contabo operates 11 data center locations across 4 continents: Germany (Munich, Nuremberg), USA (Central, East, West), United Kingdom, Singapore, Japan, Australia, and India. You can choose your preferred location during server setup.

Yes, all Contabo servers include DDoS protection at no additional cost. The protection is always-on and helps mitigate volumetric attacks to keep your server accessible during attack attempts.

Yes, Windows Server is available as an add-on. Windows Server 2022 and 2025 Datacenter editions are offered starting at approximately EUR 7.50/month additional. Linux distributions (Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS, etc.) are included free.

NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) storage offers significantly faster read/write speeds compared to traditional SSD via the PCIe interface. Cloud VPS plans include NVMe as the primary option, while Storage VPS plans use larger SSD drives optimized for capacity.

Contabo offers Auto Backup as a paid add-on starting at EUR 0.75/month. This provides daily automated backups with instant 1-click recovery, retaining the last 10 backup versions. Manual snapshots are also included on all VPS plans.

Port speeds vary by plan: 200 Mbit/s for entry-level VPS, scaling up to 1 Gbit/s for higher-tier VPS, VDS, and all dedicated servers. 10 Gbit/s ports are available as an option on Turin dedicated servers.

Yes, you can upgrade to a higher-tier plan at any time. Contabo allows vertical scaling by moving to a plan with more resources. Additional storage can also be added as add-ons to existing servers.

Yes, Contabo provides a REST API for managing your servers programmatically. The API supports operations like creating, starting, stopping, and deleting servers, managing snapshots, and configuring networking.

Contabo supports Ubuntu (20.04, 22.04, 24.04), Debian, CentOS, AlmaLinux, Rocky Linux, Fedora, openSUSE, Arch Linux, and FreeBSD. Custom ISO images can also be mounted. Windows Server is available as a paid add-on.

Contabo does not offer a traditional money-back guarantee. However, the minimum contract is just 1 month, so you can try the service with minimal commitment. Note that a small setup fee applies to VPS 10 entry plans on short-term billing. Pre-paid accounts require no cancellation notice period.

Servers have both a monthly price cap and a price per hour. Your server's bill will never exceed its monthly price cap. If you delete your Cloud Server before the end of the billing month, you will only be billed the hourly rate. We will bill you for each cloud server until you choose to delete them. Even if you aren't actively using your server, we will bill you for it.

Yes. All servers that have finished their creation process will be billed until they are deleted, regardless of their state. This is because, internally, we allocate full resources to servers regardless of their power state. And it enables rapid startup and boot times for you, the customer.

It is a feature for fast, flexible, and cost-effective (SSD based) block storage which you can attach to your Hetzner Cloud Server.

Every block of data is stored on three different physical servers (triple replication).

Each customer has a default limit for the number of Cloud resources that we simultaneously provide. If you would like to increase your limit, you can send a request to our support team by opening a support ticket via Hetzner Console. Our team will quickly review your request and, if everything is in order, they will increase your limit.

We want to keep adding new features and services and are always interested in hearing from you on how we can improve our product! There are several ways you can provide us with product feedback or feature requests: Via our forum: please post your request in the Hetzner Cloud Board Via email: send us your ideas to [email protected] Unfortunately, we cannot give you a detailed roadmap of what we are working on. However, you can keep up to date by following us on our social media chann

We have continuously expanded our cloud locations in recent years. In addition to Germany and Finland, we now also have international locations in Ashburn, Virginia; Hillsboro, Oregon (USA) and Singapore. We are constantly examining possible future locations. If you don’t want to miss the opening of a new location, subscribe to our newsletter or follow us on our social media channels.

Yes, if the subdomain is created as a separate domain in web hosting, email addresses can also be configured for it.

You can flexibly use all of the storage space in your web hosting plan for your emails, website, and databases.

If you exceed your storage space, you will be charged €1.09 (including 19% VAT) per GB per month. If your storage space requirements have increased significantly, you can either switch to a larger web hosting package or purchase a storage space add-on (for €1.00 per 10GB).

PHP is the programming language used by many websites (e.g., WordPress). Normally, every visitor who accesses a page requires a short-term “PHP process” to generate dynamic content. The more simultaneous visitors there are, the more PHP processes are needed. Two processes are often sufficient for small websites with little traffic, while heavily visited sites require more PHP processes.

The memory_limit in PHP determines the maximum amount of memory that a single script can use. For example, if the value is set to 192 MB, each script can use up to 192 MB of RAM during its execution. The memory limit therefore applies per process and not as a total budget for all processes. If the set limit is exceeded, PHP terminates execution and reports an error (“Allowed memory size exhausted”). This setting protects the server from excessive memory consumption.

Varnish is a cache that can be used with CMS systems (e.g., WordPress, Drupal, TYPO3). Frequently requested content is stored in the cache and can thus be delivered directly without having to query PHP or the database again. This significantly reduces the server load and results in much faster loading times. Previously, Varnish could only be activated on managed servers. Now you can use it starting with Webhosting S.

No, the web hosting packages do not include a domain. This must be booked separately. Domain registration is available from Hetzner starting at /year. Without a domain, many web hosting features, such as HTTP access for publicly hosting websites, mailboxes, Varnish, and much more, cannot be used.