7 ms·

What's the catch? If Hetzner were that good at that cheap with no catches, why haven't they steamrolled AWS, Packet, DO, and everyone else?

TheDong 8y ago
There are multiple "catches" here. 1. Ease of use -- Bare metal servers are harder to use than VMs; you can't trivially snapshot your bare metal server, you can't trivially clone it, there aren't tons of AMIs available. Hetzner has fewer UX designers and has less control of the platform to provide a better UX / console experience / onboarding experience. 2. Cost/availability of personal -- More people know AWS than how to PXE boot machines. Sure, you might not actually have to do complicated stuff for Hetzner's bare metal, but it's still more complicated. You might have to get some real ops people (rather than just saying the word devops and pretending everything is okay). 3. Other cloud services (ELB, RDS, etc) -- Sure, you can connect a hetzner machine to an RDS endpoint, but it's slower and harder than just using the AWS ecosystem. People want S3, ELB, RDS... They don't want to hire 5 more guys to run Ceph, HAProxy, and database clusters. 4. Ecosystem of tools -- People have used AWS and its APIs for so long that you can find pre-built tooling to do all sorts of things, from libraries to make lambda functions, to terraform modules to manage machines. I don't even know if Hetzner has a real API. It certainly has a smaller ecosystem. 5. Mindshare -- The cheaper/better service doesn't actually steamroll people who have mindshare / brand recognition in every case, so even if hetzner were better, AWS already might have enough critical mass. 6. Easier "region expansion" -- With AWS, if you want to reduce latency to some customers for application servers, moving between regions is trivial. Hetzner, not so much. Also, hetzner's networking is qualitatively worse for reaching other services (most of which are on AWS). I think the main issue here is that people are comparing two things that can't really be compared. AWS includes S3, ELBs, RDS, etc. Hetzner does not help. AWS offers robust APIs and features. Hetzner, not so much. AWS has brand recognition, and no one will get fired for going with AWS. I know how to run my own servers, I know how to use AWS. For a startup that had a focus on software, not hardware, I'd still absolutely go with AWS because I know for a fact the ecosystem of services and tools, coupled with the ease of finding more people who know AWS, make it the much safer choice.
- Slartie 8y ago
  > AWS has brand recognition, and no one will get fired for going with AWS. Now replace "AWS" with "IBM"... Funny how the exact same thought processes that used to happen on big lazy enterprise corporations now translate to all those startups that used to mock the big lazy enterprise corporations for this sort of thinking.
  - coder543 8y ago
    It would be funny if I agreed with you about who is thinking these thoughts, but I'm pretty sure this line of thought is exclusive to employees at medium / large corporations, not startups. At a startup, these decisions are often made either collectively or from the top. In either case, no one is getting fired for picking something other than AWS, and startups are more willing to take technology risks.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    Well seeing that the executives who chose IBM in the 80s were right. You can still buy new hardware from IBM that is compatible with thier systems from the 80s. Thier competitors not so much.
    - leoc 8y ago
      A lot of Burroughs stuff is still fairly well supported iirc?
      - kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
        Unisys just uses emulation in their newest machines.
        leoc 8y ago
        That would seem to probably be good enough? The users probably mostly just need their systems to just go on working with no alterations.
whitepoplar 8y ago
I'd imagine it's because people aren't spending their own money. The pattern I see: use AWS at work, use DigitalOcean/Linode/Hetzner for hobby projects when $$ is coming out of your own wallet.
- haimez 8y ago
  No one ever got fired buying IBM, err... AWS
  - metildaa 8y ago
    But the company may fold from the usurious AWS charges...
    - shiftpgdn 8y ago
      I have literally seen this happen. Non-technical management demand forklifting everything into the cloud because "global availability" and "no more wasted time with in house data centers.". Company hit a cash hole due other issues they could have survived if they weren't staring down a monster AWS bill.
      - metildaa 8y ago
        Owning your core infrastructure might not be hip and cool, but it sure can make or break a company. Nevermind that your at rhe mercy of your vendor when it comes to billing, features, maintenance windows and much more.
ta1234567890 8y ago
The catch is marketing. Most people don't make decisions based on what is universally better for them, they make decisions based on the very limited information they have and rely heavily on the people they know as well. All of this means that usually the companies/products/services that are the most well known will take the biggest share of the market, pretty much regardless of anything else (unless their offering completely sucks, but then they'd probably wouldn't be able to spend as much on marketing). So it's not about price and it's not about features or quality. Very hard to compete with Amazon.
- coder543 8y ago
  However, Hetzner has apparently been around for 21 years, as I've learned. They actually started doing this before Amazon. It's possible that they're just massively underappreciated, or people had reasons to pick something else over that extended period of time. A lot of discussion here has pointed out that most people would rather have easy access to managed services from AWS (or GCP, Azure, etc.), rather than hiring engineers to manage and operate their own in-house copies of those services, and I tend to agree.
  - ta1234567890 8y ago
    I had never heard of Hetzner before reading this thread on HN. Been using AWS for almost a decade. Most people I know are using either AWS or Google Cloud. A lot use Linode or Digital Ocean for personal projects.
Aeolun 8y ago
Hetzner is now at about the same place where Digital Ocean was 1 year after launching. The difference being they’ve already launched separate storage provisioning.
MaxBarraclough 8y ago
I'm probably not seeing the whole picture here, but location might be part of it. Here in the UK, especially with Brexit looming, many of us insist on UK-based servers, which Hetzner don't seem to offer.

TheDong 8y ago

There are multiple "catches" here. 1. Ease of use -- Bare metal servers are harder to use than VMs; you can't trivially snapshot your bare metal server, you can't trivially clone it, there aren't tons of AMIs available. Hetzner has fewer UX designers and has less control of the platform to provide a better UX / console experience / onboarding experience. 2. Cost/availability of personal -- More people know AWS than how to PXE boot machines. Sure, you might not actually have to do complicated stuff for Hetzner's bare metal, but it's still more complicated. You might have to get some real ops people (rather than just saying the word devops and pretending everything is okay). 3. Other cloud services (ELB, RDS, etc) -- Sure, you can connect a hetzner machine to an RDS endpoint, but it's slower and harder than just using the AWS ecosystem. People want S3, ELB, RDS... They don't want to hire 5 more guys to run Ceph, HAProxy, and database clusters. 4. Ecosystem of tools -- People have used AWS and its APIs for so long that you can find pre-built tooling to do all sorts of things, from libraries to make lambda functions, to terraform modules to manage machines. I don't even know if Hetzner has a real API. It certainly has a smaller ecosystem. 5. Mindshare -- The cheaper/better service doesn't actually steamroll people who have mindshare / brand recognition in every case, so even if hetzner were better, AWS already might have enough critical mass. 6. Easier "region expansion" -- With AWS, if you want to reduce latency to some customers for application servers, moving between regions is trivial. Hetzner, not so much. Also, hetzner's networking is qualitatively worse for reaching other services (most of which are on AWS). I think the main issue here is that people are comparing two things that can't really be compared. AWS includes S3, ELBs, RDS, etc. Hetzner does not help. AWS offers robust APIs and features. Hetzner, not so much. AWS has brand recognition, and no one will get fired for going with AWS. I know how to run my own servers, I know how to use AWS. For a startup that had a focus on software, not hardware, I'd still absolutely go with AWS because I know for a fact the ecosystem of services and tools, coupled with the ease of finding more people who know AWS, make it the much safer choice.

Slartie 8y ago
> AWS has brand recognition, and no one will get fired for going with AWS. Now replace "AWS" with "IBM"... Funny how the exact same thought processes that used to happen on big lazy enterprise corporations now translate to all those startups that used to mock the big lazy enterprise corporations for this sort of thinking.
- coder543 8y ago
  It would be funny if I agreed with you about who is thinking these thoughts, but I'm pretty sure this line of thought is exclusive to employees at medium / large corporations, not startups. At a startup, these decisions are often made either collectively or from the top. In either case, no one is getting fired for picking something other than AWS, and startups are more willing to take technology risks.
- scarface74 8y ago
  Well seeing that the executives who chose IBM in the 80s were right. You can still buy new hardware from IBM that is compatible with thier systems from the 80s. Thier competitors not so much.
  - leoc 8y ago
    A lot of Burroughs stuff is still fairly well supported iirc?
    - kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
      Unisys just uses emulation in their newest machines.
      - leoc 8y ago
        That would seem to probably be good enough? The users probably mostly just need their systems to just go on working with no alterations.

whitepoplar 8y ago

I'd imagine it's because people aren't spending their own money. The pattern I see: use AWS at work, use DigitalOcean/Linode/Hetzner for hobby projects when $$ is coming out of your own wallet.

haimez 8y ago
No one ever got fired buying IBM, err... AWS
- metildaa 8y ago
  But the company may fold from the usurious AWS charges...
  - shiftpgdn 8y ago
    I have literally seen this happen. Non-technical management demand forklifting everything into the cloud because "global availability" and "no more wasted time with in house data centers.". Company hit a cash hole due other issues they could have survived if they weren't staring down a monster AWS bill.
    - metildaa 8y ago
      Owning your core infrastructure might not be hip and cool, but it sure can make or break a company. Nevermind that your at rhe mercy of your vendor when it comes to billing, features, maintenance windows and much more.

ta1234567890 8y ago

The catch is marketing. Most people don't make decisions based on what is universally better for them, they make decisions based on the very limited information they have and rely heavily on the people they know as well. All of this means that usually the companies/products/services that are the most well known will take the biggest share of the market, pretty much regardless of anything else (unless their offering completely sucks, but then they'd probably wouldn't be able to spend as much on marketing). So it's not about price and it's not about features or quality. Very hard to compete with Amazon.

coder543 8y ago
However, Hetzner has apparently been around for 21 years, as I've learned. They actually started doing this before Amazon. It's possible that they're just massively underappreciated, or people had reasons to pick something else over that extended period of time. A lot of discussion here has pointed out that most people would rather have easy access to managed services from AWS (or GCP, Azure, etc.), rather than hiring engineers to manage and operate their own in-house copies of those services, and I tend to agree.
- ta1234567890 8y ago
  I had never heard of Hetzner before reading this thread on HN. Been using AWS for almost a decade. Most people I know are using either AWS or Google Cloud. A lot use Linode or Digital Ocean for personal projects.

Aeolun 8y ago

Hetzner is now at about the same place where Digital Ocean was 1 year after launching. The difference being they’ve already launched separate storage provisioning.

MaxBarraclough 8y ago

I'm probably not seeing the whole picture here, but location might be part of it. Here in the UK, especially with Brexit looming, many of us insist on UK-based servers, which Hetzner don't seem to offer.