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dpeckett | 1 year ago

This is typical of Hetzner, if a product SKU is losing money they very quickly make changes, even going as far as to discontinue the product entirely (eg. GPU servers). They definitely don't seem to be a fan of loss leaders.

I'm guessing somehow the traffic usage patterns of their USA customers was very different to their EU counterparts, or the cost of expanding network capacity was a lot higher than anticipated.

It's a bit of a shock for sure but it seems this model is a big part of how they can maintain their slim margins.

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gnfargbl|1 year ago

I have no complaints at all about this model. They work out the cost of providing a service, then they charge that cost plus a markup. They keep doing things that make them money. They stop doing things that don't make them money.

It seems like a straightforward way to run a business.

dpeckett|1 year ago

Yep they're the technology equivalent of a discount supermarket. Everything is commoditized to the extreme.

Breath of fresh air in the modern cloud era tbh.

josephcsible|1 year ago

I have one big complaint and one little one. The big complaint is that they didn't even give one business day's notice, and the little complaint is that they raised prices at the same time they cut what they were offering by 20x, instead of doing one at a time.

Moru|1 year ago

The bandwidth market is very different between EU and USA, maybe they weren't prepared for the much higher prices in USA? I'm pretty used to having a 100 Mbps connection to our servers that we can use without any strings attached. Even on the lowest tier. (Not Hetzner customer but been thinking about it)

tayiorrobinson|1 year ago

To be fair, given how cheap a lot of Hetzners products (especially Server Auction, my beloved) are compared to the competition, not wanting to have loss leaders seems reasonable to me

dumbledoren|1 year ago

Rather, the backbone providers dont do peering agreements and the traffic is very expensive, especially in the post-zirp inflation period. Europe is different - everybody peers with everybody so traffic is dirt cheap.