Poll: Do you actually read Terms of Service before accepting?

I ran a traceroute to Hetzner Falkenstein from Wrocław last month. 14ms, clean path through Frankfurt. But the interesting bit was the reverse: their abuse form auto-replies with a copy of the relevant ToS clause. Section 3.2 for DDoS mitigation, 4.1 for "resource abuse."

They have it templated. They know exactly which paragraphs they enforce and which they ignore. The 80% clause is real -- I know two people who got the warning email. Both were running BOINC. Both moved to Contabo, where the price is lower and the enforcement is... different.

Luc, my friend, I get you. Hetzner's ToS is in English and German, not French. That's a problem for us in Lyon.

What matters for you:

• Section "Account Termination" -- when they can shut you down
• "Acceptable Use" -- what you can't do (torrent, mining, etc.)
• "Payment" -- if you're late paying, they wipe everything in 7 days I think

I just chuck it into Google Translate and double-check with DeepL. Not perfect but better than nothing.

Under German law, specifically §307 BGB, general terms and conditions must be transparent and may not unreasonably disadvantage the customer. A clause like "permanent load over 80%" without definition fails the transparency requirement.

However: Hetzner is German, but their customers are global. A consumer in São Paulo or Seoul has no practical recourse under German civil law. The directive harmonizes standards but not enforcement. This is the structural problem. The ToS is written to appear compliant while remaining operationally vague.

I have not read their full ToS. I read the data processing agreement once. It was adequate. Their terms are at https://www.hetzner.com

THIS. I found the jurisdiction clause too. They can move disputes to German courts. Do you know what a lawyer in Berlin costs? I looked it up once for fun. Not fun.

And I would do it again. My €4.51 Hetzner CX11 is older than some of my plants. If they terminate me tomorrow I have backups. The ToS horror is theoretical until it isn't.

Hermano, in Buenos Aires that is cheaper than a pizza. I do not read ToS for pizza and I do not read ToS for VPS.

But OVHcloud Argentina bills in pesos sometimes? No, they bill in euros. I learned this when my card charged me the conversion fee. Not in ToS, just reality.

I read nothing. I accept everything. I am Buenos and this is my confession.

This is the way.

Contabo VPS SSD 4 cores 8GB for like $6? I looked once. The ToS probably says they can sacrifice your firstborn to the latency gods. Did I read it? No. Did I buy? Also no, because their Asia routing is through Frankfurt and my players would riot.

Minecraft teaches you: uptime > everything. ToS is just the respawn screen you hope to never see.

This is why I self-host on a Hetzner auction box now — https://www.hetzner.com/sb. €34 for i7-6700, 64GB, 2x512GB NVMe. The ToS is the same but the price-to-annoyance ratio is better. They want to terminate that? Fine, I have ansible playbooks that rebuild the entire stack in 12 minutes.

I read the auction ToS once because I was bored in a Vienna coffee shop. The only surprise: they can replace failed hardware with "equivalent or better." Equivalent is subjective. Better never happens.

Just a heads up: we've now had three different companies named in specific claims (Hetzner, OVHcloud, Contabo). Please keep opinions and comparisons general -- "I heard," "in my experience," "I believe" -- rather than stating internal policies as certain fact unless you can source them. The forum search is full of dead links to ToS versions that changed six months ago.

Also: @lucgone, if you need help with Hetzner's French translation, PM me. I have a contact there who clarified the payment grace period once. Not posting it publicly because I don't want to be the source of truth on something that updates.

Carry on, this is good stuff.

Understood. Speaking generally then: seedbox providers are the wild west of ToS enforcement. Some have "no public trackers" clauses they ignore until they don't. Some have ratio requirements buried in FAQ, not ToS at all.

I read for "public tracker" and "DMCA response time." Everything else is betting on the provider's reputation, which is forum posts and trustpilot reviews, not legal text.

The gray areas are where the forum lives, no?