Hetzner - Traffic Use Notice - unlimited != unlimited

ReadingIsFundamental

@Erisa said:
@jar stop making so much sense, you're making us all look bad.

I appreciate how, even when someone stretched the limits of your server to the point of breaking it by adding 12k domains, you still saw it as your own failing and gave them refund and a timescale to move on. I know some people have their beef with you and I once felt the same although I never expressed it, I want to say that this sort of thing is why I why I respect you and how you operate your business.

Hetzner is doing virtually the same thing by warning the client, then perhaps terminating at END of contracted period. No need for refund after contract is finished. So it's the same thing, basically

Erisa

@ReadingIsFundamental said:

@Erisa said:
@jar stop making so much sense, you're making us all look bad.

I appreciate how, even when someone stretched the limits of your server to the point of breaking it by adding 12k domains, you still saw it as your own failing and gave them refund and a timescale to move on. I know some people have their beef with you and I once felt the same although I never expressed it, I want to say that this sort of thing is why I why I respect you and how you operate your business.

Hetzner is doing virtually the same thing by warning the client, then perhaps terminating at END of contracted period. No need for refund after contract is finished. So it's the same thing, basically

Correct, I completely agree with you.

noobjockeys

No such thing as unlimited.

Hxxx

I guess the term should be: Unmetered or just say "We generally don't check your usage, but if it comes in our monitors as potential abuse, we'll ticket you".

Hxxx

Like my comment above, thanks. I'm right, right? LOL

mwt

The question I have is: what is a "significant" reduction? Does a 250mbs SYS box come with more effective traffic than a 1gbs Hetzner box?

xrz

@mwt
"significant" reduction means pack your sh*t and get hella out there, we dont want you as customer

FrankRuan

@vitobotta said:
Why do they use the term 'unlimited'??

How to define 'fair use'? That's a legal concept, and it's REALLY hard to explain.
See DMCA and CFCA as examples, they also say "fair use", but what the fuck is it...

xrz

@FrankRuan said: How to define 'fair use'?

Example: https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/ax41-nvme

Traffic: Unlimited *

1st dont state its Unlimited, but state for example Traffic 250TB, above its paid 1TB per some usd ...

or above 250TB speed limit is cut? or better no speed at all as you have used all your traffic

imgmoney

Unlimited in 1Gbits is approx 333TB. So you have done almost 80% of it. Consider their email as traffic alert. No provider allows to do such huge volume paying only 30 euro per machine.

FrankRuan

@xrz said:

@FrankRuan said: How to define 'fair use'?

Example: https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/ax41-nvme

Traffic: Unlimited *

1st dont state its Unlimited, but state for example Traffic 250TB, above its paid 1TB per some usd ...

or above 250TB speed limit is cut? or better no speed at all as you have used all your traffic

I would suggest them to explain that clearly so that we won't have to worry about those so called 'fair use' bullshit.

xrz

@imgmoney said: Unlimited in 1Gbits is approx 333TB. So you have done almost 80% of it. Consider their email as traffic alert. No provider allows to do such huge volume paying only 30 euro per machine.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18120500
https://docs.hetzner.com/robot/general/traffic

"All root servers have a dedicated 1 GBit uplink by default and with it unlimited traffic."

ReadingIsFundamental

@xrz said:

@FrankRuan said: How to define 'fair use'?

Example: https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/ax41-nvme

Traffic: Unlimited *

1st dont state its Unlimited, but state for example Traffic 250TB, above its paid 1TB per some usd ...

or above 250TB speed limit is cut? or better no speed at all as you have used all your traffic

It is unlimited- as long as THEY wish to keep you as a customer. They are warning that they may not. Doesnt mean its not unlimited for many many months for other users whose traffic they can accomodate/tolerate for other reasons (time of day/transit/IX exchanges etc)

FrankRuan

@ReadingIsFundamental said:

@xrz said:

@FrankRuan said: How to define 'fair use'?

Example: https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/ax41-nvme

Traffic: Unlimited *

1st dont state its Unlimited, but state for example Traffic 250TB, above its paid 1TB per some usd ...

or above 250TB speed limit is cut? or better no speed at all as you have used all your traffic

It is unlimited- as long as THEY wish to keep you as a customer. They are warning that they may not. Doesnt mean its not unlimited for many many months for other users whose traffic they can accomodate/tolerate for other reasons (time of day/transit/IX exchanges etc)

Yeah make sense, if they really want to collaborate with you, then they surely won't warn you.
Also if you pay them couple thousand euros a month, I guess they won't warn you as well XD

vyas11

@yoursunny said:

@ralf said:
Probably for the same reason that buffets advertise "all you can eat" but don't expect you to eat the entire contents of the restaurant.

Red Lobster offers endless shrimp.
Red Robin offers unlimited sides.
Olive Garden offers bottomless soup.

Typically, you receive two plates initially.
You must finish all existing plates before being allowed to order the next plate.
Then you have to wait at least 15 minutes before the next plate arrives.
Therefore, you can have at most 3 plates per hour.

If you stay for the entire lunch period, you can have 12 plates.
However, endless shrimp has only 6 flavors, so you are getting repeats.

12 plates!! No wonder you keep doing all those push ups. Need to burn those caloriesy !!

afn

Hetzner is indeed like a psyhco moody teenager girlfriend having her period.

No one ever complained about the fact they are not happy with 250+TB/month. The complain is they are honest and reasonable enough to man up and state what the limit is. Which is why I am describing them like a moody kid, they don't feel like they want to do it, so they bitch about it.

First period they increase IP prices. Then they increase server prices. Now they reduce traffic and are too moody to a rough amount. To me they are having a period, but their cycle is just not monthly, a bit longer.

Typical bitch behavior, they did shitty marketing and business decisions for their pricing but instead of admitting and saying, hey sorry we fucked up and we can longer do it, they're putting the blame on the customers and calling them abusive.

Here is a funny store about them:
Once, I requested an extra 10TB drive. I needed for temp backup as I was moving some other servers. ToS did not state any minimum contract period on the drives. I contacted support 2 weeks after ordering and told them to cancel the add-on drive. They replied "oh this is so short, please pay us full month price + some extra 12 euro" I said ok sure, I will pay that once you show me any page of your website where you state that add-ons have minimum duration, eventually they did not apologize for BSing they just replied we have removed the drive. (and I got billed for 2 weeks only)

(please note that was years after the 12€ flexpack thing, and that story happened after I had done that same exact thing of ordering drives and cancelling them after few weeks already once, which shows they are a moody teenager)

@Hetzner_OL, instead of sending a threat for something never announced and blaming it on customers, don't you think it will be nicer and more responsible if your rude management sends an email saying "oh sorry we are changing traffic policy to reduce load on network, here is the new FUP policy, you are above it, please comply"

I need an answer to that please. Does it cost much to be decent? Do you have customer satisfaction on the list of goals? does your management even know what that is?

angstrom

So, @xrz , three pages into the thread, have you decided what to tell/advise your friend?

xrz

@angstrom
we will move, dunno where, doing local backups in case they terminate at the end of month (they tell to reduce traffic which we did, but we wont accept this behaviour of "unlimited")

jar

I mean it's a fair statement that the order page is misleading: https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/matrix-ex

Guaranteed bandwidth is not a phrase I would use to describe "fair use" or anything of the sort.

angstrom

@xrz said:
@angstrom
we will move, dunno where, doing local backups in case they terminate at the end of month (they tell to reduce traffic which we did, but we wont accept this behaviour of "unlimited")

May I ask how much your friend pays monthly for the server in question? Is it a VPS or a dedicated server?

afn

@angstrom said: So, @xrz , three pages into the thread, have you decided what to tell/advise your friend?

Personally, (not my thread but still :P ) I said it once in a previous thread, and I am saying it again, fuck Hetzner, I stopped buying new servers with them. and now that sealed it. Probably I am moving my existing servers and no longer advising people I work with to get anything from them, not even cloud services.

They are like a prostitute who agrees to an amount of money, and once she gets you in, she holds your d*ck hostage under her teeth and ask for more money. That is Hetzner in the most realistic metaphor. (sorry for the language, but can't find better description)

ralf

I think the VPS are limited to 19TB (!!!) and so I guess it'll be some kind of dedi

xrz

@angstrom
its all dedis, we have other friends by this affected (they will move too due to this), and well its huge sum, probably for hetzner its nothing...

Astro

@afn said:

@angstrom said: So, @xrz , three pages into the thread, have you decided what to tell/advise your friend?

Personally, (not my thread but still :P ) I said it once in a previous thread, and I am saying it again, fuck Hetzner, I stopped buying new servers with them. and now that sealed it. Probably I am moving my existing servers and no longer advising people I work with to get anything from them, not even cloud services.

They are like a prostitute who agrees to an amount of money, and once she gets you in, she holds your d*ck hostage under her teeth and ask for more money. That is Hetzner in the most realistic metaphor. (sorry for the language, but can't find better description)

Love my dedi though

afn

@xrz said: its all dedis, we have other friends by this affected (they will move too due to this), and well its huge sum, probably for hetzner its nothing...

I am in the same boat. I prefer to move and know my limits in advance. pay my traffic extra fee when needed. Instead of them terminating my account immediately or something. annoying thing is, they don't even suggest a traffic add on, because they don't even say a real limit

xrz

@afn said: annoying thing is, they don't even suggest a traffic add on, because they don't even say a real limit

they cannot offer traffic add on cause it is unlimited or well "unlimited"

angstrom

@xrz said:
@angstrom
its all dedis, we have other friends by this affected (they will move too due to this), and well its huge sum, probably for hetzner its nothing...

What I'm wondering is whether Hetzner doesn't remain the best deal in town, despite your complaint about "unlimited"

xrz

@angstrom
if unlimited != unlimited then byebye

plently providers out there (ovh seems not), this time we choose properly

Astro

@xrz said:
@angstrom
its all dedis, we have other friends by this affected (they will move too due to this), and well its huge sum, probably for hetzner its nothing...

What I'm wondering is whether Hetzner doesn't remain the best deal in town, despite your complaint about "unlimited"

I really do believe it still is. Find me a 40 euro dedi with 16TB disks and i7-8700 anywhere else.

Ympker

@jar said:
Unlimited means more, to more people, than a defined limit does. I've come to accept and embrace this fact. Unlimited will gain me 10,000 customers who have no issue with it and 1 who does. Therefore, the 1 is the outlier and not the one to base all decision making on.

I'll tell you how this correlates to my experience if interested:

I sell email hosting for unlimited domains. There is no unlimited domains. A server cannot hold an infinite number, it will fall for one reason or another at some number.

Now my customers they don't want limits on that feature. They don't know how many they might add over time, they don't want to think about how many they need. They like not having to think about it, and almost every single one of them will never have to.

Then, one customer added 12,000 domains and the Apache includes took too long to reload, causing systemd to time out trying to reload the service, causing webmail to fall over every time someone added a domain on a server. I refunded the user and gave them as much time as I could to move out. Now, do I punish every user moving forward by forcing them to consider a number that they don't want to think about? Or do I simply and kindly refund the extremely rare outlier?

You might just say "just say the limit is 11,999" but what if that isn't always the limit? Today, I'm already ready for that 12k domain customer again, that's a solved problem. New processes, upgraded hardware, things are always improving. So no, I think I'll not state the limit as that. I think I'll try to accommodate anyone and when I have to give up on being able to accommodate someone, I'll apologize for failing them and refund them.

There are many considerations around this topic, but the provider should be making policy that satisfies the majority of their customers.

That's very much why I keep saying that I will continue to consider Shared Hosting/WordPress Hosting Providers who advertise "unlimited" SSD Disk Space. Not because I think that there is infinite SSD Space on their drives but rather because I believe they follow a similar mindset to yours. I imagine many web hosting clients, my web design clients included, just feel better if they won't have to worry about the disk usage. For the record, I also prefer this rather than a fixed number. It's just peace of mind imho. If you don't intentionally abuse such gernous offers, or just use too much disk space to the extent that the host contacts you about alternative solutions, it's a model that works perfectly fine. Some clients may get nervous when there is any number limit for disk space (usually not so tech-savy clients). Say, there's a limit of 1GB. Many of us know that with that amount of disk space you could host many many different (static) websites. Clients who are not so tech savy, however, start worrying whether they'll reach such limit and it might drive them away. We are all getting used to flatrate/"unlimited" everything. Unlimited text/calls for mobile phone, Unlimited Traffic for Home/Cable Internet, unlimited shows you can watch on Netflix/Disney whatever when you pay for a sub, free refills in some (fast food) restaurants, XBOX Games Sub..

Tl;dr: I can very well understand why @jar and other providers would offer "unlimited" even if it isn't really unlimited/infinite. Yet, in case of vps traffic, people would probably be happier with a fixed "unmetered" bw (e.g. 100 Mbit/s that can be actually used 24/7; especially of it's a dedicated server).