My provider experience: six hosts in twelve months

Ngl this started as a joke and became a trauma log. I needed GPU inference nodes, not even training, just LLM hosting for a side project. 24GB VRAM minimum, 48GB preferred.

Host 1: Contabo. "GPU instances coming Q2." Q2 passed. Q3 passed. Ticket response: "the team is excited." I left.

Host 2: OVHcloud. Actually had A40s. Price fine. Then they migrated my instance to "new hardware" and the CUDA version was incompatible with my compiled wheels. 6 hours rebuilding. Left.

Host 3: Vultr. Advertised RTX A6000. Delivered... a6000 via passthrough from some guy's gaming rig? Performance was 30% under spec. Lol

Host 4: Hetzner. DDoS on neighbor IP, null-routed my /24 for 18 hours. No communication.

Host 5: InterServer. Billing system double-charged, took 11 tickets to fix. Support used emojis unironically.

Host 6: Hostinger. "Unmetered" except 100Mbps after 2TB. Buried in AUP.

So I made this. Full comparison, pain rated 1-10.

| Host | GPU | Price/mo | Downtime | Pain |
|------|-----|----------|----------|------|
| Contabo | promised | €0 | ∞ | 4 |
| OVHcloud | A40 | $420 | 6h | 6 |
| Vultr | "A6000" | $380 | 0h | 8 |
| Hetzner | A40 | €450 | 18h | 9 |
| InterServer | A100 40GB | $680 | 0h | 5 |
| Hostinger | A40 | $390 | 0h | 7 |

Now? I need host 7. Guess who has actual A40s in stock, verified benchmarks, and I never finished the trial with.

« how to say » the Contabo, it is the classic. I have the same with the GreenCloudVPS, the GPU « coming soon » for six months. Oui, I paid the deposit. The deposit they keep.

Random Thought: the « unmetered » is always metered, just the meter is hidden. I prefer the honest limit, at least you know the enemy.

@garykwh your table, it is useful. I will add to my the little notebook. The Hostinger, the 100Mbps, is it hard throttle or the « best effort » ?

Perhaps your methodology for pain rating may benefit from inclusion of support response time as a weighted factor. Let us consider that OVHcloud at six hours of downtime with resolution may, in certain respects, demonstrate superior operational character to InterServer's zero downtime yet eleven tickets for billing correction. I do apologize for the presumption of offering unsolicited analysis.

Hetzner null-route was 18h because no scrubbing center. Anycast would have rerouted in <5 min. 500Gbps attack on shared /24, upstream dropped prefix. No filtering layers, no RTBH, no customer-triggered mitigation. Basic DDoS protection is $200/month elsewhere. They charged $450 and delivered none — https://status.hetzner.com shows this wasn't a one-off.