Timeline:
- 14:02: payment confirmed
- 14:03: "your account is ready"
- 14:03: first email: verify email
- 14:07: second email: verify phone
- 14:15: third email: "additional verification required"
- 14:23: account actually active
Screenshots attached. Each step.
Contabo. "Instant" means 21 minutes and three barriers. I measured.
This is not instant. This is friction with marketing.
Observed similar behavior on OVHcloud onboarding in 2024-Q3. Median activation latency 1.8e3 s, n=12 trials[1]. No correlation with payment method.
RFC 5321 §4.5.3 does not mandate delivery within any window[2]. "instant" remains undefined in hosting SLAs.
[1] self-hosted measurement rig, debian 12, chrony-synchronized
[2] RFC 5321, https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5321
Thank you for the detailed report, cleardmitri.
We reviewed this case internally. The delay was caused by our fraud prevention pipeline flagging the signup for review. Three verification steps were not the cause—they were the resolution.
Without that friction, the account would have been auto-suspended within the first hour due to a mismatched BIN range. The "instant" path would have been worse.
We are updating our messaging to clarify "instant activation pending automated verification." Not as catchy. More accurate.
— Admin
