Hetzner alternatives in the EU: who to pick, and when
We are one of the alternatives, so read this with that in mind. Hetzner is a very good provider, and for many people it is the right answer.
When to stay with Hetzner
If you are happy, your account is in good standing and Germany or Finland suits your users, stay. Moving a working setup costs more than any price difference.
Why people look elsewhere
The reasons we hear most from people who come to us:
- Location. Hetzner's EU datacenters are in Germany and Finland. Users in Portugal, Spain, Italy or the Balkans are closer to Lisbon or Prague.
- Account verification. Some new accounts are refused or asked for more documents, with little explanation.
- Support. At large scale, support follows scripts. Some customers want to talk to the people who run the hardware.
- A second provider. Putting backups or a standby server with a different company protects you if one account is ever blocked.
The alternatives, by what you need
| You need | Look at | Where |
|---|---|---|
| The lowest price for a small VPS | Netcup | Germany, Austria |
| Many locations, large company | OVHcloud | France and other EU countries |
| A full cloud platform (Kubernetes, managed databases) | Scaleway, UpCloud | France, Finland and other EU countries |
| Lots of RAM and disk for little money | Contabo | Germany |
| Southern EU location, own hardware, engineers on tickets | Euronodes | Lisbon (PT), Prague (CZ) |
Check each provider's current prices and terms yourself: they change often.
What we are, in numbers
| Euronodes | |
|---|---|
| Smallest VPS | 2 vCores, 4 GB RAM, 100 GB disk, €4.54/month |
| Traffic | 20 TB per month included |
| CPU | Uncapped, at most 3 vCores per physical thread |
| IP | IPv6 included, IPv4 €0.70/month |
| Billing | Hourly, from prepaid credit, no minimum |
| OS | Templates or any ISO you upload, full root |
| High availability | Ceph storage in Lisbon, the VM restarts on another host if one fails |
| Network | Our own, AS199053, DDoS protection in Lisbon |
| Company | Euronodes Ltd, Cyprus (EU), since 2016 |
Where we are not the right choice
- You need datacenters outside the EU. We have none.
- You need managed Kubernetes or a managed database service. We sell servers, not platforms.
- You want the absolute cheapest 1 GB VPS. Our smallest plan has 4 GB.
How to test before you move
Ask every provider a question about your workload before you pay, and compare the answers. Then rent a VM for a day and measure it, as described in how to choose an EU VPS provider.
Test our latency from where your users are: Lisbon looking glass and Prague looking glass.