Renewals shock: forgot to cancel, now I own a dedicated server

Heads up: this is a cautionary tale with an unexpected ending.

Pro tip: always set calendar reminders 48 hours before trial ends. I did not.

Signed up for Hetzner's "dedicated trial" on Black Friday 2024. €29 first month, $189 after. Intended to benchmark for 3 weeks, write comparison post, cancel. Life happened. Calendar reminder was on wrong Google account. January 2nd: charged $189. February 2nd: charged $189. By March I realized and called to negotiate.

Cancellation policy: 30 days notice, plus I "used" the commitment period. After 2 hours on support chat, they offered 50% off remaining 9 months or keep at $129/mo.

I was furious. Then I ran actual workload numbers.

• Same tasks on my 8GB VPS fleet: 4 boxes, $72/mo total, constant CPU steal
• Dedicated E3-1270v6, 32GB, 2x480GB SSD: $129/mo, zero noisy neighbors
• Build times: 6min → 1min 40sec
• Database imports: actually finish

I kept it. I'm addicted. I can't go back to VPS. My "accidental upgrade" is now my main infrastructure. The shame is real. The performance is realer.

Anyone else "forget" their way into better hardware?

I do same thing with Vultr server last year no?

Free trial become 89 dollar. I cry. Then I run my things on it. Perfect. No steal. No lag.

Now I pay 89 every month. Is the price of happiness no? I think yes.

Doubled consonant for luck: ssserver is better server no? Actually no

→ → →

Lol

Nice

Wow

Populate with $15/TB SAS drives. Run ZFS raidz2. Total: ~$300 hardware, $50 colo if you have location.

• Your $129/mo = $1548/yr
  [*>My way: year 1 = $800, year 2+ = $600/yr
• You own the metal
• No "support chat" holding your data hostage

That said, I get the impulse. I "forgot" a RackNerd storage server trial once. 24TB raw. Still paying. Still using. The performance addiction is documented in medical literature, probably.