Remix clone Hacker News

I tried finding a URL with the same news, but none exists. This is mildly redacted to fit 4000 characters.

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Dear Mr XXX

** What will change? **

Starting on 1 December 2024, 01:00 am CET, we will begin charging new prices for newly-created Cloud servers and introduce new amounts for included traffic for Cloud Servers and Load balancers at the US locations in Ashburn (ASH) and Hillsboro (HIL). This also applies to existing Cloud servers and Load balancers that are switched to a different tariff using the “Rescale” function. For any existing Cloud servers and Load balancers you have at these locations, the new prices and the new amounts for included traffic will apply later, starting on 1 February 2025, 01:00 am CET. The price for traffic overage will remain unchanged in the new price structure.

What are the new prices and amounts of included traffic?

Product | Old price | New price | Old included traffic | New included traffic CPX11 | € 3.85 | € 4.49 | 20 TB | 1 TB CPX21 | € 7.05 | € 8.99 | 20 TB | 2 TB CPX31 | € 13.10 | € 15.99 | 20 TB | 3 TB CPX41 | € 24.70 | € 29.99 | 20 TB | 4 TB CPX51 | € 54.40 | € 59.99 | 20 TB | 5 TB CCX13 | € 11.99 | € 12.99 | 20 TB | 1 TB CCX23 | € 23.99 | € 25.99 | 20 TB | 2 TB CCX33 | € 47.99 | € 49.99 | 30 TB | 3 TB CCX43 | € 95.99 | € 99.99 | 40 TB | 4 TB CCX53 | € 191.99 | € 199.99 | 50 TB | 6 TB CCX63 | € 287.99 | € 299.99 | 60 TB | 8 TB LB11 | € 5.39 | unchanged | 20 TB | 1 TB LB21 | € 16.40 | unchanged | 20 TB | 2 TB LB31 | € 32.90 | unchanged | 20 TB | 3 TB All monthly prices are excl. VAT and excl. IPv4 addresses.

** Why are we making these changes? **

With the new tariff structure, we want to make conditions for our customers around the world as fair as possible. To do that, we will calculate our prices based on local conditions in Europe, Singapore, and the USA. Until this change, customers who have used fewer resources have covered the costs, in a way, for other customers who have used much more resources. We want to make things more balanced. The new prices will give our customers the best possible price for the resources they use.

** What else do I need to know? **

Displayed prices and included traffic on Cloud Console

For technical reasons, we will display the new prices and amounts of included traffic on the Cloud server and Load balancer detail pages on Cloud Console starting on 1 December 2024. This will also be true for your existing Cloud servers and Load balancers. However, the invoice will still be issued according to the previous conditions. A corresponding note will be displayed for your existing affected products. On the invoice preview on the “Usage” page, you will see the correct existing price for your existing servers.

Displayed prices on the Cloud API

In the transition time period between 1 December 2024 and 1 February 2025, the Cloud API will already return the new prices and included traffic. This will also be true for your existing Cloud servers and Load balancers. But this will only affect the display here. The invoice preview will display the correct existing price. And of course, your invoice itself will be for the correct existing price.

Traffic warning

You may see early traffic warnings during the transition time period starting on 1 December 2024 for your existing Cloud servers and Load balancers. Please note that the previous traffic included for existing Cloud servers and Load balancers remains valid until 31 January 2025.

If you do not agree with this adjustment, you can cancel the affected products at any time. We ask for your understanding for why we are making these changes. We truly believe that we can continue to offer you our Cloud Servers and features at the best price-performance ratio despite these adjustments.

Thank you for your trust and support.

Kind regards

Hetzner Online

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shubhamjain 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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. They own, build, and operate all their data centers. This comment goes into more details[1], but it's possible this doesn't really work out in a foreign location like US.

[1]: https://forumweb.hosting/13663-why-are-hetzners-dedicated-ho...

	▲	esskay 8 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Counterpoint: They could've lowered their capacity without changing plans if they were indeed seeing lower uptake, and increase capacity as/when it's needed if it did indeed ever pick up. They wouldn't be the first provider to put products out of stock whilst they scale back up.
	▲	crest 7 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		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 customer communication. They should care enough to provide their customers with time to respond and transparency to (re-)earn the trust a hosting provider requires.

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ptero 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This seems to be a huge PR blunder. As a single data point, I have to say that my first reaction is illogical.

I have two hetzner shared instances and I am royally pissed by the 20x reduction in traffic allowance. It is also irrelevant to me: over the last 12 months I never exceeded 1TB. My unhappiness on the traffic reduction is purely of a "what if I start using more" type. For which two rational answers is "well you can explore alternatives then" and "d'oh, your average is way under 100GB, it's not going over 1TB". But I still started looking at alternatives.

My feeling is that the reduction is aimed at a small group, but upsets a much larger set of customers who now will start looking for alternatives. Which indicates a typical marketing screwup. My 2c.

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SixThreeOne 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Very well put! I had the exact same reaction as you: even though I don't even use 1TB/month, I found myself looking at alternatives simply b/c of the cognitive jolt of seeing the 20x reduction. Sometimes I wonder if companies don't consider the psychological impact of changes enough. No, logically, this change means a meager price increase for me, but if it caused me (and at least one other) to think about competing offerings, then like you said, indicates a marketing screwup.

That's not to say they have to keep offering that much traffic if they're losing money (of course they don't), but the way you make changes matters.

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axelthegerman 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Fair I felt similar about it.

But then, I have looked at alternatives before they even offered their US locations (and also for a CA one) and couldn't find anything decent for even nearly the price.

So we can pay a little more and get a little less, or move somewhere else and either pay a lot more or get a lot less

	▲	christophilus 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		OVH is comparable and has locations in North America.

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fabian2k 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Is traffic generally much more expensive in the US than in Germany? This seems to be a US-only change and I'm wondering a bit about the reasoning here and whether to expect this to also change in other regions.

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jsheard 9 hours ago | parent [-]

Not really, CDNs with regional pricing usually charge almost if not exactly the same amount for NA and EU traffic. It's the other regions that tend to be more expensive.

I wonder if this has anything to do with how Hetzner operates in each region, they run their own EU datacenters but AFAIK they just rent rack space in the US, so they're more at the mercy of upstream providers.

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machinekob 8 hours ago | parent [-]

From Cloudflare blog about why EU prices are lower (around 50% cheaper than US at least according to cloudflare)

The value of an exchange depends on the number of networks that are a part of it. The Amsterdam Internet Exchange (AMS-IX), Frankfurt Internet Exchange (DE-CIX), and the London Internet Exchange (LINX) are three of the largest exchanges in the world.

In Europe, and most other regions outside North America, these and other exchanges are generally run as non-profit collectives set up to benefit their member networks. In North America, while there are Internet exchanges, they are typically run by for-profit companies. The largest of these for-profit exchanges in North America are run by Equinix, a data center company, which uses exchanges in its facilities to increase the value of locating equipment there. Since they are run with a profit motive, pricing to join North American exchanges is typically higher than exchanges in the rest of the world.

	▲	rsynnott 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		There _are_ non-profit neutral exchanges in the US (eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Internet_Exchange), but they're just not as dominant as they are in Europe.

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CalRobert 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Bit annoying that the word tariff differs between the continents. Was thinking it related to possible trade tariffs

	▲	devjab 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I wonder why English decided to narrow its meaning. Well I guess a language doesn’t decide anything, but I think you know what I mean. In many EU countries it simply means “cost list” or “price list” which can be for import duties but also for a range of other things. It’s very nice to have it called tariff in basically every EU country though. We get green energy tariffs and if it was called something different in each country they wouldn’t be fun.

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machinekob 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

So it seems that trying to compete with duopoly isn't working.

Can we assume it is cause there is only few big corporations dominating internet infrastructure in US compared to EU with tons of medium sized and even small business that do it?

I would love some good read about US infrastructure, especially why costs are so high compared to EU?

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WolfOliver 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

"Until this change, customers who have used fewer resources have covered the costs, in a way, for other customers who have used much more resources." ... This argument does not make sense. I use very few resources but have to pay more.

	▲	nh2 8 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The argument would make sense if the prices of any Hetzner service decreased (no longer necessary to substitute high traffic users). But all prices in this message increase.
	▲	aendruk 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Yeah, my price just changed from €7.05 to €8.99—in the name of fairness to low impact users? It’s brazenly nonsensical. It would be so much better if they’d just said “sorry but we need to raise prices”. The attempt to sugarcoat it is insulting to begin with, and it’s only made worse that their backwards excuse comes across as thoughtlessly trampling us.

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dmazin 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Oof, that reduction in bandwidth is huge.

Am I correct that this only applies to outgoing WAN traffic? Incoming/internal is still free?

	▲	CallMeMarc 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That is correct, incoming traffic is still free

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martin_a 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

duplicate: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42264668

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repple 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I wonder what proportion of traffic is AI model weights being served. They are huge files, lots of mostly duplicated + fine tuned versions, lots of interest to download the latest and greatest, lots of ML aficionados grabbing them.

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oysterville 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42264427

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ChrisArchitect 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[dupe] Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42264427

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nh2 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What their announcement does not cover is whether or not the 1 EUR/TB price above the free quota will still be active in the US.

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mythz 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Was also disappointed after receiving this update today, price increases across the board and gone are the days of generous 20TB free traffic which we've been enjoying for over a decade. Our Hetzner VMs now limited to 1-3TB free traffic, feels like the end of an era.

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dizhn 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This is only for USA, isn't it?

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bradley13 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

But, really? What are you doing, that your VMs need more than 1TB of data per month? That's a huge amount! That's 23MB per minute, continuously.

If you have a website with that kind of reach, the prices seem entirely reasonable.

	▲	authorfly 8 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I agree it is still reasonable. But some examples of things that are profitable under the old regime, but maybe not at 20x the limit: API services that consume media, whether to do some business logic specific thing or something specific, e.g. Transcriptions for videos, file conversion API, OCR API provider, etc. If you try a video app without using WebRTC and peer traffic your bandwidth can blow up too. Even if you use something like push notifications with base64. There are lots of traps that use Bandwidth.
	▲	theshrike79 8 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		You can get pretty cheap servers with massive storage (2x2TB for example) and use them as backup targets.
	▲	holoduke 8 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		We have about 50TB for about 500.000 users per month. Our Hetzner costs are about 2k per month. Similar setup at aws would cost us about 10 to 20k per month. No joke.

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risyachka 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It was expected considering during the last year everyone on Twitter was shouting left and right that everyone should use Hetzner because it is cheap.

Yeah it was cheap - only because the demand was low and they were competing on price.

Now it will only go up.

	▲	jeremyjh 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Its still a really good price though.

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bilekas 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Until this change, customers who have used fewer resources have covered the costs, in a way, for other customers who have used much more resources.

That is utter nonsense. If the customers who are 'covering the costs' have a problem, they can move? Yet even still they are charging those SAME customers who now actually receive less resources, even if they were using them or not.

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jeremyjh 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The problem with their old pricing structure is that it attracts high-utilization customers who will max out their transfer every month. But yes, they raised prices for all of us. Their pricing was so low, my guess is it was never profitable enough to be worthwhile long-term. It brought them a lot of business, some of which they'd be happier without under the old terms.

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zapkyeskrill 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Maybe that's exactly what happened. So now nobody is covering the free loaders and they need to charge them.

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Havoc 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> That is utter nonsense.

Hardly. Some level of cross subsidisation happens in all service of this nature. Depending on use youre either paying or receiving

Most Providers and customers just ignore it as inconsequential though.

	▲	bilekas 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The reasoning the gave still doesn't pass the smell test. If it's as they say, then they wouldn't increase the price they would tariff the traffic. Like other providers. Don't increase prices and claim it's to help the little guy.