Ask HN: Why is European/German Dedicated Hosting So Much Cheaper Than US?

by tworats on 8/9/2010, 9:40 PM with 15 comments

From another Ask HN thread about where people were hosting their sites I found the Hetzner Root Hosting packages:

http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produktmatrix/rootserver-produktmatrix-eq/

You can get a quad core i7-920 with 8G ram and dual 750GB disks for 49EUR per month, which works out to about $65/month.

By comparison, RackSpace's "Basic Series" dedicated server solution with a dual core Opteron, 3.G ram and 2x250GB disks goes for $419/month.

http://www.rackspace.com/managed_hosting/configurations.php

Am I comparing apples to oranges or is there really that much of a price difference between dedicated hosting in Germany and the US? What's the story?

  • by sandGorgon on 8/10/2010, 8:26 AM

    That's because the hetzner systems are built using desktop components, not server

    Opterons, Xeons, etc. are server class components, which need more expensive motherboards (typically those that can accomodate upto 64-GB RAM, 5X HDD, hardware RAID, iSCSI cards, etc.)

    Secondly, it's the routers/network equipment that they use - they are much more prone to downtime.

    webhostingtalk has a couple of interesting discussions about this.

    What I suggest is you take a look at the deals/offers sections of such websites and figure it out. I currently have a 2 X quad-core Nehalem with 12GB RAM, 5TB B/W and 4X500GB HDD in Raid 1+0 for $399

  • by noonespecial on 8/9/2010, 9:55 PM

    Rackspace is kind of pricey in general. Look over at http://interserver.net/ for some more reasonable US rates on a decent backbone.

  • by tworats on 8/9/2010, 11:35 PM

    Here's the origin thread, btw: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1564897

  • by lsc on 8/10/2010, 9:13 AM

    you say European... are there other providers in Europe that are priced competitively with hetzner.de?