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Ask HN: European Linode / DigitalOcean alternatives
Title says it all. I'm looking for European (non-US servers and non-US corporation) alternatives for VPS servers. Can anyone recommend some? Anyone with personal experiences, or any companies out there offering this?
- kfullert 13y agoBytemark (http://www.bytemark.co.uk/ http://www.bytemark.co.uk/) offer "legacy" VPS and dedicated servers (been a customer for 10 years now) and they also have a new Cloud offering called BigV (http://bigv.io http://bigv.io) which I've started using for stuff - great company, great service, they've recently donated a 16-blade, 57Tb server to the Debian project as well (including hosting) - http://blog.bytemark.co.uk/2013/04/04/a-major-infrastructure-donation-to-the-debian-project http://blog.bytemark.co.uk/2013/04/04/a-major-infrastructure... They really are the mutts-nuts!
- tdobson 13y agoTim from Bytemark here - if you've got any questions or anything - feel free to ask them here - or email 'support at bigv.io' and put it to my attention. With regards to privacy from warrants etc, we're currently considering a warrant canary - https://twitter.com/matthewbloch/status/348354514081951744 https://twitter.com/matthewbloch/status/348354514081951744
- jamiecurle 13y agoWow, I've been an on and off customer for six years - your cloud offering looks immense.
- tdobson 13y agoThanks! Well, do give us a shout if there's ever anything we can help with (or even more crucially, anything we can improve on, or start doing that we're not doing!) Have a great day! -Tim
- thenomad 13y agoBytemark are superb. I've been using them for a decade also. Their new Cloud offering is bloody good, fairly cheap, and remarkably fast for a cloud service. Plus, they've got their Symbiosis Linux distro, which makes setting up servers considerably easier (although you can also use Debian, Ubuntu, etc), they actively work to support the Open Source community, and generally they kick ass.
- rockyj 13y agohttp://www.hetzner.de/ http://www.hetzner.de/ quite solid and have great prices too.
- szajbus 13y agoWe always go with Hetzner for european based hosting. It is Germany-based. Never had any problems during our partnership with them, which we started 4 years ago.
- sanityinc 13y agostrato.de are very good too, and have very similar offerings to hetzner: I've been using them myself for years. However, they require payment by German domestic bank transfer, and the contracts are a little harder to terminate. I'd try hetzner the next time.
- junto 13y agoI'm in Germany. Bank transfer isn't a problem. I'll check them out.
- e12e 13y agoI can second Hetzner - although I've only used them for dedicated servers, and only very little.
- grexi 13y agoAnd they offer credit card payment, too.
- tbh 13y agoHetzner is good, the hardware is (mostly) good, the provisioning is fast, the support responses are fast but they follow scripts very closely. The biggest problem is that their network is terrible. We typically lose contact (50% packet loss, 100ms latency) with a machine for 5-10 minutes every day. Different (groups of) machines, different times of the day and night. Every time, Hetzner claim it was an "attack". I haven't measured it, but they're probably within the 99% availability (allows for 1.68 hours/week downtime) they advertise for any one machine. Maybe my expectations are too high. :)
- WildUtah 13y agoEast Asian alternatives would be helpful to some of us, too, if any commenters want to mention those. Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, or anyplace else that has reliable connections would be excellent.
- tr0ss 13y agohttp://edis.at http://edis.at has some great european options, and they are based in Austria it seems. I have been using them before, only for a little while but they do have some cheap options. I have not done any benchmark so I cannot say anything about the performance. Worth looking at though!
- oddsignals 13y agoWe've been using their VPSes for a couple of months and are happy with them so far, even if the management interface is a bit clunky. They also have a good selection of data centers if location/latency is important.
- alexrbarlow 13y agohttp://brightbox.com/ http://brightbox.com/ is quite good. Based in England as par as I know..
- tehwalrus 13y agoI have found the experience of using brightbox quite good, but it is much more expensive than other services. The smallest, cheapest, single VPS system that I had running came out at about £26 per month. And that's with almost no bandwidth - which is pay as you go (typically I used 2p per month). They split this cost up, so you get billed separately for an IP address (which you can share between boxes via a load balancer), bandwidth, actual number of box-hours, etc, and then tack VAT on at the end. It's a great service, I just ended up paying much more than I expected because of the way they structure their billing/price plans.
- tezza 13y ago¿ Do you know that Linode has London based servers ? I rent some of their London servers happily ( aside from cancelling my credit card the other day due to a breach, no-one's perfect ) Edit: I see you're concerned about data-privacy... so latency is not your issue -- In that case I also use: * Hetzner.de and in the past I have used * FlexiScale ( based uin Reading, UK ) This is more akin to Amazon EC2 http://www.flexiscale.com/products/flexiscale/pricing/ http://www.flexiscale.com/products/flexiscale/pricing/
- kfullert 13y agoDigitalOcean also have servers in Amsterdam, but they don't fit the OP requirement as they're run by a US-owned corp
- glazskunrukitis 13y agoLeaseWeb is quite good, except for their recent MegaUpload fiasco.
- edp 13y agoI use Gandi[1], they have both IaaS and PaaS offers. They are based in France with a datacenter near Paris. They have a very good support team and I'm happy with the service so far. [1]: https://www.gandi.net https://www.gandi.net
- WildUtah 13y agoGandi is no longer a European company. Around 2010 they opened new offices in the USA and should be expected to act as a US company.
- TheHippo 13y agoGandi runs on OVH. There are been rumors that they might became an settle over to the states, but to the current day the are located in France (and I doubt this will change). I can really recommend them, if you are looking for some "cloudy" servers (dynamic resources, etc.)
- pyritschard 13y agohttp://www.exoscale.ch http://www.exoscale.ch has a very similar approach to digital ocean: very quick provisionning, extensive API and automation tool support
- pyritschard 13y agoI should mention that exoscale is based in Switzerland and thus PRISM/ACTA free and is an IAAS provider (as opposed to a VPS provider).
- retrack 13y agoAntoine from exoscale. We have a "regional" approach to cloud computing, with 3 positions: datacenters, operations and company status/funding all exclusively from Switzerland. It is written in our Terms.
- casual_slacker 13y agohttp://prq.se/?intl=1 http://prq.se/?intl=1 is a hosting and colocation company in Sweden with strong free-speech values. They're also against the data retention policies that are being implemented in other EU countries.
- zmb_ 13y agoYou should be aware of this when considering Sweden for hosting: http://wikileaks.org/wiki/New_Swedish_law_draft_for_centralized_internet_and_telephony_interception,_Dec_2009 http://wikileaks.org/wiki/New_Swedish_law_draft_for_centrali...
- pathy 13y agohttps://cloudroyale.se/ https://cloudroyale.se/ recently launched, I haven't used them but their offering seems pretty good and they are part of FS Data which is well established hosting provider in Sweden. That said, Swedish hosting is pretty expensive compared to others. I currently use Leaseweb for my own servers, but other alternatives are OVH, Hetzner among others.
- arjitc 13y agoGMOCloud (Japanese company) Japan location based KVM http://vps.gmocloud.com/ http://vps.gmocloud.com/ and CrownCloud (Australian company) Frankfurt location based KVM/OpenVZ
- omd 13y agoWe switched from Linode to http://www.cloudvps.com http://www.cloudvps.com last year because they are in my home town here in The Netherlands and the prices are almost half of Linode's. We have some high traffic websites running with them and have had no problems so far.
- tehwalrus 13y agoI've been with IOVPS after RapidSwitch sold their VPS business to them. I have one trivially underused server, so I can't speak for performance. They can't handle recurring billing automatically (you have to log in every month and pay - which leads to late charges if you forget) and they are much more expensive than Digital Ocean. I've tried BrightBox too. Someone else has already mentioned them, and I left a big reply there - basically, very good if you need to jump from 1 to 15 servers automatically to host your massive app, but very expensive in any other case. I'll be switching to Digital Ocean with their Amsterdam data centre when droplet deployment is back up - it's just so much cheaper than anything else I've seen, and perfectly matched to my requirements (if anything, generous - $5/mo compared to £18, or £26 with BrightBox, for a tiny 512MB RAM, 20GB HDD Linux box.)
- junto 13y agoA pity that Digital Ocean is a US corp. It means that they can be subpoenaed. Their pricing is awesome. Corporate location is bad.
- tehwalrus 13y agofor my purposes, this isn't a priority. If I do get around to setting up my own mailserver, then I'll care (although I'll probably just use an old box sat in my living room, or a raspberry pi - I don't get that much mail.)
- vayan 13y agoOVH - https://www.ovh.co.uk/vps/ https://www.ovh.co.uk/vps/ £5.99/mo - 1 core - 512Mo - 25Go - 100Mbps/1To
- Hansi 13y agoSeconded, I've used their dedicated server options for a while, great value for money.
- wzdd 13y agoI switched to OVH last month. They are not as good as Linode: my VPS was rebooted recently, and I've had to make a couple of changes to the default configuration to deal with some weirdnesses (screen and tmux would exit immediately, for example). However, so far, it has been good enough.
- daveid 13y agoI'm using VPS.net for a few years now, I think they are great and they have a good and quick support team. They're a British company as far as I know but they have data centers everywhere, and you can choose where to host your VPS.
- muyuu 13y agoReposting from some hellbanned chap: ----- GMOCloud (Japanese company) Japan location based KVM http://vps.gmocloud.com/ http://vps.gmocloud.com/ and CrownCloud (Australian company) Frankfurt location based KVM/OpenVZ ----- Non-EU is probably even better if privacy is your concern.
- pavs 13y agoIf you are concerned about privacy, I would also be wary about having servers on some EU countries and check on their relationship with USA in data sharing.
- kimlelly 13y agoI suggest Switzerland. It's not part of the EU (therefor not subject to EU laws), it's politically neutral (it never goes to war), it's one of the best examples of healthy democratic systems and it values privacy very much.
- kimlelly 13y agoThe only downside is: Prices are currently still higher (which screams for new competition, in case anyone from Switzerland is listening...)
- hellerbarde 13y agoDo you have a proposed provider? because i find it a bit hard to find one that doesn't host their servers in the Hetzner Datacenter in Germany. EDIT: word
- kimlelly 13y agoIf you know who is just "reselling", it would be cool to get the names so they can be outed and avoided. (Sorry, no, I currently don't know that market well, yet.)
- kfullert 13y agoI used to work for a business ISP (PSINet) who had a DC near the foot of Mt Geneva in Switzerland - not sure what happened to it after things wound down?
- hellerbarde 13y agoDatacenter in Switzerland: - http://www.dfi.ch/en/about-dfi/swiss-data-center-switzerland.html http://www.dfi.ch/en/about-dfi/swiss-data-center-switzerland... - https://www.switzerland.net/ https://www.switzerland.net/ (datacenter info: http://www.greendatacenter.ch/deCH.aspx http://www.greendatacenter.ch/deCH.aspx) - http://www.binarics.ch/die_technik.php http://www.binarics.ch/die_technik.php - https://www.greenserver.ch/index_en.html?gclid=COTU9NOwmLgCFcRe3god82sAcQ https://www.greenserver.ch/index_en.html?gclid=COTU9NOwmLgCF... listed by how quickly I found them on google :) EDIT: formatting
- bbayer 13y agoI can suggest Hetzner. Their plans are the best in terms of performance/price ratio.
- kubaz 13y agoOktawave (http://www.oktawave.com/ http://www.oktawave.com/) - based in Poland, very fast hardware. e24cloud (http://www.e24cloud.com/ http://www.e24cloud.com/) - from Poland too, second availability zone soon.
- buro9 13y agohttp://www.brightbox.co.uk http://www.brightbox.co.uk I asked them about their policies regarding plans to expand to the US or hold any US interests, and also specifically asked about a mention in their policy documents on defamatory content (as I deal with user generated content) and received this good response: we're based in the UK, both co-founders are UK residents and we have no plans to become a US company. All our datacentres are in the UK, and expansion plans are for the EU only. We believe strongly in data protection and obey all the relevant laws. I agree that ISPs really *should* be considered "mere conduits" but unfortunately there is legal precedent that means we can be held responsible for defamatory content if we're notified and do nothing about it. Usually, solicitors for the allegedly defamed contacts both us and our customer. If our customer is unresponsive or uncooperative and the alleged defamation continues, then we get held responsible. So our AUP considers defamation abuse to enable us to take action to protect ourselves if we have to. The only other option available to us would be to have customers indemnify us against any legal action (most likely in the form of a large deposit :). But we're not interested in suspending accounts or servers any time a solicitor writes to us. If you deal with the reports in a timely fashion (usually within 48 hours) then you shouldn't expect any problems. And for what it's worth, we've never actually had to suspend anyone for this (though we've come close enough to feel the need to put it in our AUP). I also plan to utilise Jump Networks: http://www.jump.net.uk/ http://www.jump.net.uk/ which is about as close to http://prgmr.com/san-jose-co-location.html http://prgmr.com/san-jose-co-location.html as you're going to find in London. Remember... if you're going CoLo it's all about power consumption. Finally, other sites I checked out included http://www.cloudsigma.com/ http://www.cloudsigma.com/ and http://www.prometeus.net/sito/ http://www.prometeus.net/sito/
- gales 13y agoServerlove (http://www.serverlove.com/ http://www.serverlove.com/) are based in the UK, and offer a comprehensive API, plus CLI tool.
- zeitg3ist 13y agoFlareVM is pretty good: http://www.flarevm.com/ http://www.flarevm.com/
- lemming 13y agoAssuming you're doing this for privacy reasons, some information about the various jurisdictions involved would be really interesting too if people know the answers. My understanding is that Sweden and the UK are out due to traffic monitoring, that may also apply to other EU states.
- altharaz 13y agoI used to work with a very little company built with passion. http://www.harmony-hosting.com/ http://www.harmony-hosting.com/ Their support is amazing, and will help you in French or English.
- sdoering 13y agoI would recommend http://uberspace.de/ http://uberspace.de/ with their (non root) VPS/shared hosts. Shell-access, Ruby, Python, Perl, node, etc, etc all major DB_Systems, 10gig space, traffic, I believe unlimited. Nerds themselves, that do not wanna have a lot of your data to begin with. And you pay, what the service is worth to you (minimum 1 € per month). I switched there some time ago and am totally happy since. Great guys, great service, great philosophy behind the product (and, as the normally do server hosting for smaller companies, financially secured by themselves). EDIT: By the way: you can try them for one month, just using a untaken uberspace-name without anything else (not even an email-address necessary): https://uberspace.de/register https://uberspace.de/register
- junto 13y agoThat is crazy / cool. You pay them what you feel like. Interesting biz model.
- kimlelly 13y agoThis usually means, the pricing won't last very long.
- groundCode 13y agoI would so try these guys, but they only take money by bank transfer from what I can see which means, from the UK, it becomes very annoying.
- czottmann 13y agoI can recommend https://www.jiffybox.de/ https://www.jiffybox.de/ — Germany-based, part of Domainfactory, a German company. The VPS prices are rather good, and I'm happy with the performance and reliability so far.
- teekert 13y agohttps://www.transip.nl/vps/ https://www.transip.nl/vps/ (starts from 10 euro, first month 5) And my Raspberry Pi is (for free) in a rack with these guys: https://www.pcextreme.nl/aurora/ https://www.pcextreme.nl/aurora/ (starts from 5 euro)
- lbrent 13y agohttp://www.hosteurope.de/Server/Virtual-Server/ http://www.hosteurope.de/Server/Virtual-Server/ Unfortunately their website seems to be only available in German. I run several services on their VPS and root servers and have not experienced a major problem yet.
- kimlelly 13y agoPlus, they're owned by the UK group, so...
- clneagu 13y agoInexpensive VPS on Hetzner infrastructure https://enablevps.com/ https://enablevps.com/ 8€ / 1G RAM machine & access to all host cores. KSplice on the host so no need to reboot. Minimal but decent features.
- cig 13y agoI've setup a personal server on moln.is recently (2 months) - 18 euro / month for 1GB RAM, 1 core, 50GB disk space, 1GB traffic with 1 GB NIC. They seem to value privacy. I am not too happy with the SLA but then I had no issues so far - satisfied with the service so far.
- ksec 13y agoDediServe are good. But still dont match those two in terms of pricing.