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The $1/month host that wasn't terrible

Deals & Offers by olya 36 replies 4.8K views
olya

Member OP

Always Free

8 #1

I have been running workloads on Hetzner's cheapest tier since February 2024. Eighteen months. Here is what actually happened.

1. Signed up via their annual promotion ($12/year, effectively $1/month)
2. Provisioned a 1 vCPU / 512MB RAM / 10GB SSD instance in their US-East location
3. Migrated a low-traffic static site and a small Python API

Uptime by my own UptimeRobot monitoring: 99.72% through July 2025. Three brief outages, all under 15 minutes, all announced in advance for "network maintenance."

Pro tip: Their control panel is custom and clunky, but they offer vanilla Debian 12 netinstall ISOs. Skip their templates.

Heads up: The $1 price only holds if you pay annually. Monthly is $3.50.

I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. It did not. I am documenting this because the forum search shows 47 complaint threads and zero positive reviews for this provider.

I will update at month 24 or when something breaks.

licensing is a suggestion
FyreJun

Member

2 #2

It is my humble opinion that perhaps your experience may not reflect the typical outcome for most users of this service. I do not wish to cause offense, but I must ask whether you have verified these figures through independent measurement. Let us consider that monitoring from a single location may produce incomplete results. I apologize if my question seems impertinent.

mediaaustin

Member

Deliverability Nerd

12 #3

The uptime figure is plausible but incomplete.

For what it's worth: I tested Hetzner's mail handling for a client in March 2025. Their IP space is on two minor blocklists (Spamhaus CSS and one ROKSO-adjacent listing). SPF/DKIM pass fine, but DMARC alignment fails because they rewrite Return-Path without warning. Not a dealbreaker for web hosting, but if you run any mail-adjacent services, heads up.

The monitoring location point is valid. @FyreJun has the right instinct here.

SPF, DKIM, DMARC — holy trinity ✉️
MA

Member

#4

¡the price low, the uptime high! I have the server red from them, very stable it is~~~ but the panel control is disaster total, ¡yes! Vos tenés reason in that, olya. The support tickets slow they are, but they solve finally. ¡I am surprised much!

prague1983

Member

btw I use Arch

#5

Just use Oracle free tier

Skill issue if you're paying actual dollars for 512MB RAM in 2025

(but respect for the 18 month documentation, not many people actually track this stuff)

oops: 0000 [#1] SMP
CR

Member

#6

Does not specify GDPR Article 28 controller/processor terms. I requested their DPA in April 2025 and received no response. For personal projects this may not matter. For anything touching EU resident data, I would advise caution.

WH

Member

2 #7

Update very much~~~

1. Month 19 happen now
2. Uptime drop to 94.1%
3. Three ticket open, no answer
4. Network slow very much
5. Maybe the luck run out

Olya you right to wait for shoe drop. Now it drop very much~~~

SingaporeRep

Member

Benchmark Addict

#8

Same. $12/year crew checking in.

fio, iperf, geekbench. results or gtfo.
LichunLars

Member

#9

US-East which DC exactly? Ashburn, Miami, NYC?

1ms or I don't want it
olya

Member OP

Always Free

4 #10

Confirmed, Ashburn. I should have specified. My monitoring node is in NYC so the path is pretty short, which is worth noting for the uptime discussion.

licensing is a suggestion

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