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1) Covering the ~$50k hosting bill for Jmail on Vercel sounds generous, but a self-hosted VPS on Hetzner could serve the same purpose for ~€30/month, which is o

by mdrzn 8mo ago

1) Covering the ~$50k hosting bill for Jmail on Vercel sounds generous, but a self-hosted VPS on Hetzner could serve the same purpose for ~€30/month, which is orders of magnitude cheaper and avoids vendor lock-in. 2) This comes as the CEO of Vercel, Guillermo Rauch, is already facing community backlash for publicly supporting Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, a move that’s led to boycotts and migrations off the platform among developers. All my homies hate Vercel.

dgrin91 8mo ago
Do you really think a $30 hetzner host can sustain that level of traffic performantly? Don't get me wrong, I love hetzner, but I would be very surprised if the numbers work out there.
- blibble 8mo ago
  yes and if it doesn't spawn up another $30 instance and add another RR entry to the dns serving static content scales horizontally perfectly
- mdrzn 8mo ago
  For sure, even cheaper if you cache effectively.
- Nextgrid 8mo ago
  Isn’t it just serving static content and the content fitting in RAM? If so your laptop can serve it just fine even.
  - iOSThrowAway 8mo ago
    A laptop would have a hard time serve thousands of people hitting a single endpoint multiple times a day.
    - lanyard-textile 8mo ago
      It all depends of course, but generally no, a laptop could handle that just fine.
      - marginalia_nu 8mo ago
        There may be a risk of running into thermal throttling in such a use-case, as laptops are really not designed for sustained loads of any variety. Some deal with it better than others, but few deal with it well. Part of why this is a problem is that consumer grade NICs often tend to overload quite a lot of work to the CPU that higher end server specced NICs do themselves, as a laptop isn't really expected to have to keep up with 10K concurrent TCP connections.
    - eqvinox 8mo ago
      With a 2025 tech stack, yes. With a 2005 tech stack, no. Don't use any containers, no[/limited] server-side dynamic script languages, no microservices or anything like that. Considering the content is essentially static, this is actually viable. Search functions might be a bit problematic, but that's a solvable problem. Of course you pay with engineering skills and resources.
      - eirpoeior 8mo ago
        Is there any feasible way to implement search client-side on a database of this scale? I guess you would need some sort of search term to document id mapping that gets downloaded to the browser but maybe there's something more efficient than trying to figure out what everyone might be searching for in advance? And how would you do searching for phrases or substrings? I've no idea if that's doable without having a database server-side that has the whole document store to search through.
        namibj 8mo ago
        There are several implementations of backing an Sqlite3 database with a lazy loaded then cached network storage, including multiple that work over HTTP (iirc usually with range requests). Those basically just work.
- schnebbau 8mo ago
  Lol yes? It's all reads. If it can all fit in ram, great. Otherwise an SSD will do fine too.
  - eqvinox 8mo ago
    You could probably serve it from the quad-core ARM64 inside the SSD controller, if you were trying "for the lulz".
- ExpertAdvisor01 8mo ago
  No . Hetzner would terminate your server as you are not a profitable customer.
  - jkukul 8mo ago
    A profitable customer? How would Hetzner know if you're profitable or not? I've hosted side projects on Hetzner for years and have never experienced anything like that. Do you have any references of projects to which it happened?
    - ExpertAdvisor01 8mo ago
      Because you are using an incredibly large amount of bandwidth for €30 a month. They offer unlimited bandwidth with their dedicated servers under a “fair usage” policy. The bandwidth costs would be higher than what you pay monthly, so they would simply drop you. You are probably using very little bandwidth, so it doesn’t matter in your case. However, I assume Jmail consumes a very large amount of bandwidth.
  - xyst 8mo ago
    I have heard of hetzner terminating customer relationships if too many legal complaints are filed against your VPSes. But not because of being "not a profitable customer". Mind sharing some links here?
    - ExpertAdvisor01 8mo ago
      https://lowendtalk.com/discussion/180504/hetzner-traffic-use-notice-unlimited-unlimited/p1 https://lowendtalk.com/discussion/180504/hetzner-traffic-use...
      - gnfargbl 8mo ago
        I am not sure how one even gets 250TB/mo through a 1Gbps link. In any case, completely saturating your networking for the full month is outside most people's definition of "fair use".
- thomasfromcdnjs 8mo ago
  If it's mostly static, just cache it at the http level e.g. cloudflare which I believe wouldn't even charge for 450m requests on the $20 plan at least
- gnfargbl 8mo ago
  I would use a $100/mo box with a much better CPU and more RAM, but I think the pinch point might be the 1Gbps unmetered networking that Hetzner provide. They will sell you a 10Gbps uplink however, with (very reasonably priced) metered bandwidth.
appreciatorBus 8mo ago
[flagged]
- bstsb 8mo ago
  > Ordinary people are not thinking about Israel roughly 47 percent of a recent US survey think supporting Israel is in the national interest of the United States, while 41 percent disagree. only 12 percent didn't offer an opinion. that's quite a lot of potential customers you're detracting when making a stupid political statement, especially taking a photo with a leader whom 49% of people "have an unfavorable opinion" of source: https://poll.qu.edu/poll-release?releaseid=3932 https://poll.qu.edu/poll-release?releaseid=3932
- LightBug1 8mo ago
  "In 2025, global anti-Israel and pro-Palestine demonstrations intensified, with ACLED recording more than 49,000 protests across 133 countries. Public sentiment shifted significantly, particularly following Israel's interception of a humanitarian flotilla in October 2025. Largest Global Mobilisations Bangladesh: On 12 April 2025, Dhaka hosted what was described as the largest pro-Palestine protest in history, with an estimated 1,000,000 participants at Suhrawardy Udyan. Italy: Between 3 and 5 October 2025, an estimated 2.3 to 3 million people participated in nationwide strikes and marches, marking the highest level of European mobilization during the conflict. Spain: Over 1,000,000 people filled the streets of Madrid, Barcelona, and other cities in early October to support the "Sumud Flotilla" and demand an arms embargo. Australia: Organisers estimated that over 300,000 to 350,000 people participated in nationwide rallies on 24 August 2025, following diplomatic tensions between the Australian and Israeli governments. Netherlands: Approximately 250,000 people marched in Amsterdam’s "Red Line" protest in October, the third such major rally in as many months. " I'm fully aware of my Jewish brothers and sisters who stand shoulder to shoulder with me against the current Israeli actions ... but, fuck Israel ... and all who support their current stance.
  - appreciatorBus 8mo ago
    Those are all very small numbers in the context of the actual electorates, and supports the claim that it is the same small group of activists obsessed over Israel, and not a widespread “community” concern.
kid64 8mo ago
$50k and €30 are of the same order of magnitude.
- graypegg 8mo ago
  This is offtopic honestly, but I'm curious if I've been using this phrase wrong for my whole life. Doesn't "order of magnitude" refer to steps of powers of ten? $50000 vs €30. (or €42066.30 vs €30 if I normalize the currency) 5x10^4 vs 3x10^1.
  - appreciatorBus 8mo ago
    You have it right, perhaps the original poster was referring to it in a more colloquial manner, in the sense that against 200 million in revenue, 50,000 and 30 are in the same ballpark?
    - NoxiousPluK 8mo ago
      I took it as a joke about the USD/EUR exchange rate ;)
    - SahAssar 8mo ago
      > in the sense that against 200 million in revenue, 50,000 and 30 are in the same ballpark I don't understand how those are in the same ballpark? I thought saying something is in the same ballpark suggested that they are similar in scale, and the implication is that little-leauge does not play in the same ballpark as a NBA team. They are in the same category (baseball), but not at all the same level.
      - liquidise 8mo ago
        At a big enough scale, previously large differences are effectively 0. 50k/mo is 600,000/yr vs 360/yr at 30/mo. Thats existential for a 1MM/yr company. Neither register on a balance sheet for a 1B/yr company. They are both closer to 0 than being a major cost.
xyst 8mo ago
Even before the Vercel CEO supporting a genocidal maniac. Vercel as a platform has been silently giving open source projects a "fuck you, pay me" when it comes to renewing benefits. Have seen it happen to smaller projects and even pointed it out when Vercel took static sites down. So they have always had a bad rep in my opinion.
throwaw12 8mo ago
2nd point resonates with me, how come he wants to cover expenses, while being connected to Israeli PM and Epstein is connected to Israel through Ehud Barak. Isn't he going to ask for a "favor"?
- dodomodo 8mo ago
  Barak and bibi are political enemies (or at least we're when Barack was a relevant political figure) and besides that I haven't seen anything suggesting that his connection with bibi is more than the one meeting that was publicized.
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
gverrilla 8mo ago
I'm new to webdevelopment and was using Vercel because people told me it was good, but I was unaware that the company supported the genocide. What other similar services there are that you would recommend?
- theturtletalks 8mo ago
  Railway/Render can easily host Next.js applications You could also get a VPS from Digital Ocean or Hertzner, run open-source PaaS like Coolify, Dokploy, Caprover, etc. Digital Ocean has app platform that’s lets you host these applications but more experience than VPS Sealos has a $7 and $25 plan and work with Next.js Just a few options. If you’re looking to leave Next.js completely, check out Tanstack Start. It’s by the creator of React-Query (defacto way to handle fetching data in Next.js). Still some rough edges but I think it could overtake Next.js once a bit more mature.

by mdrzn 8mo ago

dgrin91 8mo ago

Do you really think a $30 hetzner host can sustain that level of traffic performantly? Don't get me wrong, I love hetzner, but I would be very surprised if the numbers work out there.

blibble 8mo ago
yes and if it doesn't spawn up another $30 instance and add another RR entry to the dns serving static content scales horizontally perfectly
mdrzn 8mo ago
For sure, even cheaper if you cache effectively.
Nextgrid 8mo ago
Isn’t it just serving static content and the content fitting in RAM? If so your laptop can serve it just fine even.
- iOSThrowAway 8mo ago
  A laptop would have a hard time serve thousands of people hitting a single endpoint multiple times a day.
  - lanyard-textile 8mo ago
    It all depends of course, but generally no, a laptop could handle that just fine.
    - marginalia_nu 8mo ago
      There may be a risk of running into thermal throttling in such a use-case, as laptops are really not designed for sustained loads of any variety. Some deal with it better than others, but few deal with it well. Part of why this is a problem is that consumer grade NICs often tend to overload quite a lot of work to the CPU that higher end server specced NICs do themselves, as a laptop isn't really expected to have to keep up with 10K concurrent TCP connections.
  - eqvinox 8mo ago
    With a 2025 tech stack, yes. With a 2005 tech stack, no. Don't use any containers, no[/limited] server-side dynamic script languages, no microservices or anything like that. Considering the content is essentially static, this is actually viable. Search functions might be a bit problematic, but that's a solvable problem. Of course you pay with engineering skills and resources.
    - eirpoeior 8mo ago
      Is there any feasible way to implement search client-side on a database of this scale? I guess you would need some sort of search term to document id mapping that gets downloaded to the browser but maybe there's something more efficient than trying to figure out what everyone might be searching for in advance? And how would you do searching for phrases or substrings? I've no idea if that's doable without having a database server-side that has the whole document store to search through.
      - namibj 8mo ago
        There are several implementations of backing an Sqlite3 database with a lazy loaded then cached network storage, including multiple that work over HTTP (iirc usually with range requests). Those basically just work.
schnebbau 8mo ago
Lol yes? It's all reads. If it can all fit in ram, great. Otherwise an SSD will do fine too.
- eqvinox 8mo ago
  You could probably serve it from the quad-core ARM64 inside the SSD controller, if you were trying "for the lulz".
ExpertAdvisor01 8mo ago
No . Hetzner would terminate your server as you are not a profitable customer.
- jkukul 8mo ago
  A profitable customer? How would Hetzner know if you're profitable or not? I've hosted side projects on Hetzner for years and have never experienced anything like that. Do you have any references of projects to which it happened?
  - ExpertAdvisor01 8mo ago
    Because you are using an incredibly large amount of bandwidth for €30 a month. They offer unlimited bandwidth with their dedicated servers under a “fair usage” policy. The bandwidth costs would be higher than what you pay monthly, so they would simply drop you. You are probably using very little bandwidth, so it doesn’t matter in your case. However, I assume Jmail consumes a very large amount of bandwidth.
- xyst 8mo ago
  I have heard of hetzner terminating customer relationships if too many legal complaints are filed against your VPSes. But not because of being "not a profitable customer". Mind sharing some links here?
  - ExpertAdvisor01 8mo ago
    https://lowendtalk.com/discussion/180504/hetzner-traffic-use-notice-unlimited-unlimited/p1 https://lowendtalk.com/discussion/180504/hetzner-traffic-use...
    - gnfargbl 8mo ago
      I am not sure how one even gets 250TB/mo through a 1Gbps link. In any case, completely saturating your networking for the full month is outside most people's definition of "fair use".
thomasfromcdnjs 8mo ago
If it's mostly static, just cache it at the http level e.g. cloudflare which I believe wouldn't even charge for 450m requests on the $20 plan at least
gnfargbl 8mo ago
I would use a $100/mo box with a much better CPU and more RAM, but I think the pinch point might be the 1Gbps unmetered networking that Hetzner provide. They will sell you a 10Gbps uplink however, with (very reasonably priced) metered bandwidth.

appreciatorBus 8mo ago

[flagged]

bstsb 8mo ago
> Ordinary people are not thinking about Israel roughly 47 percent of a recent US survey think supporting Israel is in the national interest of the United States, while 41 percent disagree. only 12 percent didn't offer an opinion. that's quite a lot of potential customers you're detracting when making a stupid political statement, especially taking a photo with a leader whom 49% of people "have an unfavorable opinion" of source: https://poll.qu.edu/poll-release?releaseid=3932 https://poll.qu.edu/poll-release?releaseid=3932
LightBug1 8mo ago
"In 2025, global anti-Israel and pro-Palestine demonstrations intensified, with ACLED recording more than 49,000 protests across 133 countries. Public sentiment shifted significantly, particularly following Israel's interception of a humanitarian flotilla in October 2025. Largest Global Mobilisations Bangladesh: On 12 April 2025, Dhaka hosted what was described as the largest pro-Palestine protest in history, with an estimated 1,000,000 participants at Suhrawardy Udyan. Italy: Between 3 and 5 October 2025, an estimated 2.3 to 3 million people participated in nationwide strikes and marches, marking the highest level of European mobilization during the conflict. Spain: Over 1,000,000 people filled the streets of Madrid, Barcelona, and other cities in early October to support the "Sumud Flotilla" and demand an arms embargo. Australia: Organisers estimated that over 300,000 to 350,000 people participated in nationwide rallies on 24 August 2025, following diplomatic tensions between the Australian and Israeli governments. Netherlands: Approximately 250,000 people marched in Amsterdam’s "Red Line" protest in October, the third such major rally in as many months. " I'm fully aware of my Jewish brothers and sisters who stand shoulder to shoulder with me against the current Israeli actions ... but, fuck Israel ... and all who support their current stance.
- appreciatorBus 8mo ago
  Those are all very small numbers in the context of the actual electorates, and supports the claim that it is the same small group of activists obsessed over Israel, and not a widespread “community” concern.

kid64 8mo ago

$50k and €30 are of the same order of magnitude.

graypegg 8mo ago
This is offtopic honestly, but I'm curious if I've been using this phrase wrong for my whole life. Doesn't "order of magnitude" refer to steps of powers of ten? $50000 vs €30. (or €42066.30 vs €30 if I normalize the currency) 5x10^4 vs 3x10^1.
- appreciatorBus 8mo ago
  You have it right, perhaps the original poster was referring to it in a more colloquial manner, in the sense that against 200 million in revenue, 50,000 and 30 are in the same ballpark?
  - NoxiousPluK 8mo ago
    I took it as a joke about the USD/EUR exchange rate ;)
  - SahAssar 8mo ago
    > in the sense that against 200 million in revenue, 50,000 and 30 are in the same ballpark I don't understand how those are in the same ballpark? I thought saying something is in the same ballpark suggested that they are similar in scale, and the implication is that little-leauge does not play in the same ballpark as a NBA team. They are in the same category (baseball), but not at all the same level.
    - liquidise 8mo ago
      At a big enough scale, previously large differences are effectively 0. 50k/mo is 600,000/yr vs 360/yr at 30/mo. Thats existential for a 1MM/yr company. Neither register on a balance sheet for a 1B/yr company. They are both closer to 0 than being a major cost.

xyst 8mo ago

Even before the Vercel CEO supporting a genocidal maniac. Vercel as a platform has been silently giving open source projects a "fuck you, pay me" when it comes to renewing benefits. Have seen it happen to smaller projects and even pointed it out when Vercel took static sites down. So they have always had a bad rep in my opinion.

throwaw12 8mo ago

2nd point resonates with me, how come he wants to cover expenses, while being connected to Israeli PM and Epstein is connected to Israel through Ehud Barak. Isn't he going to ask for a "favor"?

dodomodo 8mo ago
Barak and bibi are political enemies (or at least we're when Barack was a relevant political figure) and besides that I haven't seen anything suggesting that his connection with bibi is more than the one meeting that was publicized.

deleted 8mo ago

[deleted]

gverrilla 8mo ago

I'm new to webdevelopment and was using Vercel because people told me it was good, but I was unaware that the company supported the genocide. What other similar services there are that you would recommend?

theturtletalks 8mo ago
Railway/Render can easily host Next.js applications You could also get a VPS from Digital Ocean or Hertzner, run open-source PaaS like Coolify, Dokploy, Caprover, etc. Digital Ocean has app platform that’s lets you host these applications but more experience than VPS Sealos has a $7 and $25 plan and work with Next.js Just a few options. If you’re looking to leave Next.js completely, check out Tanstack Start. It’s by the creator of React-Query (defacto way to handle fetching data in Next.js). Still some rough edges but I think it could overtake Next.js once a bit more mature.