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Hetzner 'fair usage' suspension with no warning or data

Reviews by uma 6 replies 429 views
uma

Member OP

99.99% or bust

#1

Got this from Hetzner yesterday, no warning, no status page incident, just straight to ticket: Your account has been suspended for violating Section 14.3 (Fair Resource Usage). Our automated systems detected sustained CPU utilization exceeding acceptable thresholds for your tier. This suspension is non-appealable per Terms of Service. That's it. No graphs, no timestamps, no threshold numbers. I've been monitoring this box for 14 months. : 30-day average CPU was 12%, peak 34% during cron. Standard WordPress + WooCommerce, no custom jobs. I have:

  • UptimeRobot showing 99.97% over the period
  • Netdata logs with per-process breakdown
  • Only change: updated WP core 6.6 on Aug 3
Anyone seen Hetzner pull this pattern? Their status page shows all green, naturally. Alert fatigue is real but this one actually matters.

436 days. reboot is surrender.
AL

Member

#2

Bro... very strange gan.... no warning no nothing.... Hetzner cheap but this is too much.... I had same thing last year.... very suspicious....

They dont tell you the number because maybe no number at all.... automated trigger gone wrong bro....

olya

Member

Always Free

#3

Pro tip: check your WordPress heartbeat frequency immediately after that 6.6 update. Heads up, they changed the default interval in recent versions.

1. Look for POST /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php with action=heartbeat in your access logs
2. Check if the interval dropped from 60s to 15s (common plugin conflict post-update)
3. Multiply: 15s heartbeat × concurrent admin sessions × 24h = sustained CPU load that looks like abuse to naive monitoring

I saw this exact pattern on Oracle Cloud free tier in 2023. The automated suspension script doesn't distinguish between malicious load and misconfigured heartbeat. Your 34% peak was probably admin dashboard, not frontend.

4. File ticket referencing admin-ajax CPU attribution
5. Demand process-level breakdown per their own TOS Section 8.1 (they must provide this)

licensing is a suggestion
klaus

Member

yaml victim

4 #4

So this is why I left cloud Hosting for my gemütlich K8s Cluster at home... the Automation Of Suspension without Human Review is so very typical for this price Segment... na ja...

But actually the WordPress Heartbeat Theory is very plausible... I have seen the HeartbeatApi cause WordPress cpu spikes many times... the Graphs at Hetzner are probably just averaging wrong... so...

FyreJun

Member

#5

What's your OS and kernel version?

PetraSuper

Member

network boot believer

#6

I dont buy the heartbeat theory, 15s is still not sustained load

boot anything, anywhere, anytime
pieter_rtm

Member

#7

Same thing happened to me on Hetzner last March, no numbers either

Containers before it was cool

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