by MathiasPius on 2/29/24, 1:14 PM
This is actually great. I maintain a library[1] for interacting with the Robot interface using Rust, but testing is heavily gated because of the potential costs it might incur, which is why a lot of the purchasing/cancellation APIs haven't been thoroughly tested.
With this billing, I'll be able to do thorough integration testing without breaking the bank.
And of course with hourly billing, horizontal scaling becomes much more feasible.
[1] https://github.com/MathiasPius/hrobot-rs
by mikkom on 2/29/24, 12:19 PM
I have a dedicated server in Hetzner and I don't understand what this means. How do they decide when the server is "used"? Based on CPU allocation? SSH sessions? HTTP traffic? Power?
It's easy to shut down virtual servers and continue from the same position. It's not that easy to do the same for servers.
The linked page is very unclear about this.
by BilalBudhani on 2/29/24, 3:10 PM
Hetzner is one of those "just take my money" services, so more power to them.
Besides, for some reason I always thought they charge hourly but show pricing in monthly format for easier pricing.
by lionkor on 2/29/24, 11:06 AM
For anyone else who may be confused - this is already the case in Cloud (obviously), but now will apply for Robot as well.
> This structure will be similar to our Cloud billing.
It says it here, but I glanced over it :)
by lovegrenoble on 2/29/24, 12:57 PM
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
by pointlessone on 2/29/24, 11:21 AM
> We will always use the hourly price when it saves you money, meaning when you have used a product for less than a month, and the total hourly price is less than the monthly price.
That’s nice, I guess.
> we have decided to no longer send invoices to all of our customers on the same day. Instead, we will spread them out throughout the month. You will always receive your invoice on the same day of the month. But this day will be different from customer to customer.
It’s not clear to me when the billing moth starts. Is it the day the invoice is sent or is it a regular calendar month? Either way it might be confusing.
by severino on 2/29/24, 1:31 PM
It would be nice if cloud offerings like Hetzner would allow one to set the contract duration and pay in advance, for example, one year. And once that year passes, you could tell them to extend it for another year, or do nothing and get your server deleted. This way you have a control over your spending and avoid surprises. I guess some providers (OVH?) allow you to do that, but of course it requires that all costs be fixed and have no "extras" for bandwidth consumption or things like that.
by voytec on 2/29/24, 11:34 AM
If monthly price won't increase than this appears to be a good change. But their dedicated servers have an "installation fee", so it won't be cost-effective to rent them for short periods, and VMs are billed on hourly basis already, to my knowledge. Not sure which products this change covers.
by boplicity on 2/29/24, 2:18 PM
I don't seem capable of actually setting up an account with Heztner and logging in. Their security is so tight, it seems to constantly lock me out. What if I were an actual customer? Yikes.
Does anyone else have this issue?
by tiffanyh on 2/29/24, 2:25 PM
Will this cost more for existing customers?
What they should have made more clear is, for existing customers - will this be cost neutral or cost more.
Ideally, this is cost neutral for existing customer and gives the flexibility of paying partial month for partial usage.
by CamelCaseName on 2/29/24, 4:33 PM
I've only ever heard fantastic things about Hetzner.
I'm shocked PE hasn't bought them yet and raised prices.
by DonnyV on 2/29/24, 3:32 PM
Does anyone know if Hetzner is looking to open up a datacenter in Australia or in Southeast Asia?
by ayi on 2/29/24, 6:20 PM
If we can get over the fact that they ban accounts out of nowhere, that can be good news. But not for me. Because I couldn't even sign up.
by sixhobbits on 2/29/24, 2:03 PM
This overall sounds like it makes sense and brings their billing into line with other providers.
But it's super confusingly written and presented. Why is this an essay with CAPITAL LETTERS to try to simplify things. It looks like they put in a ton of effort to make sure people aren't confused, but this doesn't seem like the thing to give people to ensure that they aren't confused.
by roschdal on 2/29/24, 12:14 PM
Hetzner ist best, kein protest.
by willcodeforfoo on 2/29/24, 11:53 AM
Last time I checked, Hetzner doesn’t have any dedicated offerings in the US, only cloud, is this still the case?
by antman on 3/1/24, 3:18 AM
Nice but illegal in some European countries. If you have a cost with a fixed deal (aka bare metal server per month) law has it that its upfront. If its a monthly cost it should be invoiced be the first 5 days of the following month.
I guess I can tell the IRS that Hetzner has a problem with their cron jobs or with the uniform distribution of their accounting people workload.
by nottorp on 2/29/24, 12:30 PM
So basically some large customers wanted to rent physical servers by the hour so now everyone gets to rent physical servers by the hour?
by DonnyV on 2/29/24, 4:18 PM
by yaseer on 2/29/24, 4:11 PM
If anybody has migrated from AWS to Hetzner what was your experience? What kind of cost savings did you see?
I know it's not a like-for-like comparison, I am particularly curious about the price differentials though, AWS is often a premium.
by pknerd on 3/1/24, 12:48 PM
Only if Hetzner enters in LLM hosting for masses, it'd be fun
by unixhero on 2/29/24, 3:08 PM
I just started a hosting gig myself. I got tired of the costs.
by ta8903 on 2/29/24, 1:34 PM
When are they allowing sign ups for third world countries?
by degun on 2/29/24, 8:07 PM
What a beautiful company.