UpCloud are good, and I've used them for over 5 years. They aren't cheap compared to DigitalOcean/Linode (everything is extra €€€) but when I benchmarked the providers before picking them their CPU and disk IO was faster than the other cloud platforms. The internal network has been more reliable than every time I've used DigitalOcean's.
All this is for London data centres. It'd be interesting to re-benchmark them against other providers.
The tricky thing about these services is that they often cannot compete on price or on capability. The scale and mature feature sets of US based cloud providers outweigh the benefits of keeping it within European ownership for most commercial organizations. For Europe to truly compete, they shouldn't copy IaaS models, but come up with new innovative PaaS models in yet to develop markets, such as XR or internet-decentralization. Those markets provide a chance to go in front at an early stage and with enough dedication of both the EU government and the European business community, this can be a start to differentiate itself from the US and China.
Hetzner has been the cheapest big option when you just want raw servers for at least a decade, and e.g. Scaleway is pretty similar in price to US based providers.
> The scale and mature feature sets of US based cloud providers outweigh the benefits of keeping it within European ownership for most commercial organizations.
That's what companies thought about manufacturing in China. But that was before they found out the costs of corruption and loss of trade secrets. If you're a fantastically succesfuly European company, what's to stop Trump (or any future president) just deciding you're too big and need to be sold to "an american investor"?
It is high time for companies and banks to invest only where democracy thrives because when you invest where it doesn't, your investment simply ends up being controlled by gangsters. This might benefit you for a while. But eventually, it won't.
Most commercial organizations are not "internet" companies. They can run their business on a single VPS. Even e-commerce sites with several million euro turnover can run their Magento instance on a single VPS. Or industries manufacturing things can still run their inventory software or ERP stuff on some cheap VPS.
The overwhelming majority of commercial organizations don't even have a registered domain. They pass well under our radars because they'd never hire any of us for help.
Last one who asked me, a fertility clinic, wanted a blog, so I registered a domain for them, set up Google services (back then it was free for their org size - something like 5 people), Wordpress, their payment accounts, and that was it. Apart from e-mail and shared documents, they had zero cloud presence. If they wanted to self-host their blog (something I would discourage) they'd need nothing more than a single tiny instance behind Cloudflare.
I don't recommend IONOS as they require a phone call to cancel any services and their billing system was inconsistent with the documentation (at least when I tried it recently).
Also this list not including Hetzner is deeply shameful.
Well, I am self-hosted, and hackers using clouds for hacks/scans (and the so-called "scanners-for-your-own-security-we-swear-we-don't-sell-the-scan-data-to-the-bad-ppl") are really a pain. OVH is not safe (and their scanner/hacking bot onyphe is a pain). But lately the "top" is ucloud.cn and everything hosted on digital ocean. Actually very few front IPs from russia or iran.
I wonder if there are EU clouds doing that properly, namely with its own internal "security" cleanup crew and getting rid of those hackers and scanners.
Well, I once got a notice from Hetzner, that I needed to either stop running or harden some random open service I wasn't aware of running on my dedi box (I may have forgotten to install a firewall...). If i recall correctly, they were bound by German law, to monitor their network for suspecious activity, and if the customers didn't comply, they could close down your box. Now, it was a while back, my memory is a bit fuzzy and I don't have the time to look through old emails. Consider this anecdata.
One thing about the EU based platforms is that they tend to have much more limited free tier, often there's none.
IMHO the deep pockets of the US based tech is their primary competitive advantage. In other countries they seem to try to make a bit of money every month but in USA they tend to aim to make a lot of money at once down the road. I'm under the impression that when non-US services end up failing, US based ones end up enshitified.
So the EU based stuff stays about the same for many years, the US based stuff starts as we are saving the world, democratizing the technology and doing all this for free(*) and then your bill jumps 100x or your experience goes 100x down.
But e.g. Hetzner, OVH and Ionos are so cheap, you can easily keep a project alive for years until it gets traction or break even. Paying like 50€ a month is peanuts.
Merrymake has a pretty nice free tier, with very few limitations, and it's definitely technologically advanced. And it being serverless, you'll only pay for as much as your code runs, if you wanna go paid tier.
I hope we're going to see a move to more cloud agnostic stacks. I'm currently running Patroni between Hetzner and Netcup, with an Amazon Lightsail VPS as a third etcd member. If Hetzner decides to flag my account, the hot standby on Netcup will take over (or the other way around, as I switch on a weekly basis). Still using Amazon with AWS SES and Route53 but these can be replaced by other parties if need be.
They have mixed reputation in some cases, but honestly their pricing is great for side projects and such, maybe even running a small/medium business as long as it's within their ToS.
Shameless plug (I’m an employee):
If you need advanced services beyond vms/block storage/object storage from your cloud (i.e. databases, kafka, opensearch) also check out aiven.io . We support many EU cloud providers.
We're a Danish-based and -owned 3-year old cloud provider, and we can definitely compete with the big US clouds on technology and price. Merrymake is serverless, extremely fast (if not the fastest in EU), and infraless, meaning we hide away all the clutter, so devs can focus on their code instead. So it's not just a GDPR-compliant alternative, but a technological advancement to the US providers.
[+] [-] pbowyer|1 year ago|reply
All this is for London data centres. It'd be interesting to re-benchmark them against other providers.
[+] [-] denniebee|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Tenoke|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] mvc|1 year ago|reply
That's what companies thought about manufacturing in China. But that was before they found out the costs of corruption and loss of trade secrets. If you're a fantastically succesfuly European company, what's to stop Trump (or any future president) just deciding you're too big and need to be sold to "an american investor"?
It is high time for companies and banks to invest only where democracy thrives because when you invest where it doesn't, your investment simply ends up being controlled by gangsters. This might benefit you for a while. But eventually, it won't.
[+] [-] Puts|1 year ago|reply
Most commercial organizations are not "internet" companies. They can run their business on a single VPS. Even e-commerce sites with several million euro turnover can run their Magento instance on a single VPS. Or industries manufacturing things can still run their inventory software or ERP stuff on some cheap VPS.
[+] [-] rbanffy|1 year ago|reply
The overwhelming majority of commercial organizations don't even have a registered domain. They pass well under our radars because they'd never hire any of us for help.
Last one who asked me, a fertility clinic, wanted a blog, so I registered a domain for them, set up Google services (back then it was free for their org size - something like 5 people), Wordpress, their payment accounts, and that was it. Apart from e-mail and shared documents, they had zero cloud presence. If they wanted to self-host their blog (something I would discourage) they'd need nothing more than a single tiny instance behind Cloudflare.
[+] [-] sanxiyn|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] joshvm|1 year ago|reply
https://cloudferro.com/
https://cloudferro.com/pricing/pricing-tables/waw3-1-cloud/v...
Re the sibling comment they do offer trial credit, but I have explored the terms. I don't think there's a recurring free tier though.
[+] [-] throw0101b|1 year ago|reply
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenStack
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_CloudStack
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_cloud_computing_infras...
[+] [-] notpushkin|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] drpossum|1 year ago|reply
Also this list not including Hetzner is deeply shameful.
[+] [-] bertman|1 year ago|reply
>Hosters with a focus on virtual servers, are only listed in the category virtual private server (VPS) hosters.
>https://european-alternatives.eu/category/vps-virtual-privat...
Hetzner is the very first entry in that category.
[+] [-] andrewstuart|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] staticelf|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] genewitch|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] sylware|1 year ago|reply
I wonder if there are EU clouds doing that properly, namely with its own internal "security" cleanup crew and getting rid of those hackers and scanners.
[+] [-] spyke112|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] mrtksn|1 year ago|reply
IMHO the deep pockets of the US based tech is their primary competitive advantage. In other countries they seem to try to make a bit of money every month but in USA they tend to aim to make a lot of money at once down the road. I'm under the impression that when non-US services end up failing, US based ones end up enshitified.
So the EU based stuff stays about the same for many years, the US based stuff starts as we are saving the world, democratizing the technology and doing all this for free(*) and then your bill jumps 100x or your experience goes 100x down.
[+] [-] rmoriz|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] pwnage_royale|1 year ago|reply
Full disclosure, I work there.
[+] [-] arend321|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] KajMagnus|1 year ago|reply
They're based out of Sweden, and offer bandwidth in Mbit/s, rather than GB/month (as per their pricing page, https://glesys.com/vps/pricing)
[+] [-] KronisLV|1 year ago|reply
They have mixed reputation in some cases, but honestly their pricing is great for side projects and such, maybe even running a small/medium business as long as it's within their ToS.
[+] [-] concerndc1tizen|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jadtz|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] alanfranz|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] riezebos|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] DaveMcMartin|1 year ago|reply
My company uses OVH and I have also used UpCloud, it is pretty good.
[+] [-] pkstn|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] svilen_dobrev|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] pwnage_royale|1 year ago|reply
We're a Danish-based and -owned 3-year old cloud provider, and we can definitely compete with the big US clouds on technology and price. Merrymake is serverless, extremely fast (if not the fastest in EU), and infraless, meaning we hide away all the clutter, so devs can focus on their code instead. So it's not just a GDPR-compliant alternative, but a technological advancement to the US providers.
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
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