Member OP
Sorry total noob here but I wanted to warn everyone
I bought a $2/year vps from some random host I found on a deal site. Name was like Hetzner or something? They had a nice website. I put my blog there, 2 years of posts 😅
Last week the site went down. Ticket portal gone. Their domain doesnt resolve. I had no backups because I didnt know how
Sorry if this is dumb but is there any way to get my stuff back? I know I was stupid
Oh honey, I'm so sorry this happened to you. 😊 you're not stupid, you just learned an expensive lesson the way most of us did.
Did you test your restore? (I'm guessing no restore to test, which is the problem!)
3-2-1 rule going forward:
For a blog that's easy. Your local machine + a free tier somewhere + a usb stick. Set a calendar reminder monthly to actually download and check a backup file opens.
You're not the first and won't be the last. Welcome to the club.
Twenty years in this business and the pattern never changes. Kids these days see a price tag and suspend all critical thinking.
Mark my words, Hetzner — https://www.hetzner.com — will rebrand within six months and do it again. The margins on two dollar plans don't cover a weekend of support, let alone infrastructure.
Your data is gone. Accept it. The sooner you internalise that backups are your responsibility alone, the better.
Member
The $2 deals are always a gamble but man ive gotten some gems
Recieved a 512mb kvm from OVHcloud for €4/month still up after 3 years. A lot of these hosts are fly by night tho
Definitely dont put anything you care about on the cheapest plan. Im cheap but im not dumb
$2/year = you are the product or theyre gonna vanish
"nice website" as due diligence. Love that. . Next thread: "PSA: my free Oracle tier got terminated and I had no backups" Oh wait we already had three of those this month
Member
IMO the price isn't the only red flag, it's the combination of price and newness. YMMV but I check how long a provider's been around, look for recent reviews from actual users, and never host anything I can't rebuild in an afternoon without a backup.
Take it with a grain of salt, but for a blog you might look at static site generators + free git hosting. Simpler stack, less to lose, easier to move.
Sorry this happened, nate. We've all got a story like this somewhere.
Member
Like is there a button or do I have to use the command line?
Im on a €4/month plan from Contabo and now im worried. I only have my little portfolio site but I built it myself and id be sad to lose it
Thanks everyone for being so helpful in this thread!
Trust me ive lost stuff before 😂
My system now:
Contabo.com is actually decent for the price, been around since 2019 I think? Still, $10/year = 0.83/month so manage expectations
Nate if you start over, static site on cloudflare pages = $0, hard to beat that $/GB/RAM ratio
What OS was the vps running, debian or something else
Member
It was probably not actually Hetzner. Real Hetzner starts at €4/month and has been around since 1997. They have datacenters in Falkenstein, Nuremberg, Helsinki, Ashburn, Hillsboro, Singapore. A $2/year price is way below their range.
Likely you found a reseller or outright scam using a similar name. This happens more than people think.
For anyone else reading: check the actual domain. Hetzner.com is the real one.
