Hetzner alternative: 5 hosting providers cheaper and without account blocks

If you are looking for a Hetzner alternative that offers more lenient terms, competitive prices, and does not block accounts for activities such as web scraping, port scanning, or running trading bots, Valebyte.com and other providers like DigitalOcean, Vultr, and OVH offer powerful and flexible solutions for your projects.

Hetzner Online has long established itself as a provider of reliable and affordable servers, but in recent years, more and more users have been encountering sudden account blocks and strict KYC (Know Your Customer) requirements. This is particularly acutely felt by those involved in high-load tasks, automation, or specific niches such as crypto arbitrage or botting. As a result, many are actively seeking a reliable Hetzner alternative that will allow them to work without the constant fear of losing their infrastructure.

Why are users looking for a Hetzner alternative? Problems with blocks and KYC

The main reason why developers, system administrators, and business owners are looking for a Hetzner alternative lies in the tightening of the provider's service usage policy. Hetzner, being a large European company, strictly adheres to German and European Union legislation, which leads to a number of restrictions:

• Blocks for "suspicious" activity: Many users report sudden account blocks (hetzner banned account) for activities such as:
  • Web scraping: Collecting data from websites, even if done legally and without violating the target resource's TOS.
  • Port scanning: Using tools like Nmap to investigate network infrastructure, even your own, can be considered an attempt at unauthorized access.
  • Running bots: Trading bots, parsers, sneaker bots, or other automated scripts that generate high traffic or specific requests often fall under suspicion.
  • VPN/Proxy: While VPNs are generally allowed, mass use of proxy servers or outbound traffic associated with "undesirable" activity can raise questions.
• Strict KYC: Identity and business verification procedures can be overly bureaucratic and lengthy, especially for international clients. This creates barriers to rapid project deployment.
• IP address limitations: Difficulties in obtaining additional IP addresses or their frequent changes can be critical for some types of activities, for example, for running a proxy service.

These issues lead to projects requiring flexibility and resilience to external restrictions being forced to seek other platforms. Losing server access without warning means downtime, financial losses, and reputational damage.

What risks does using Hetzner entail for specific tasks?

For certain types of activities that require a high degree of automation or specific network interaction, Hetzner may not be the best choice. Let's look at a few examples:

Crypto trading and arbitrage

Crypto trading bots, such as those used for crypto arbitrage or market making (e.g., Hummingbot), constantly interact with exchange APIs, generating a large number of requests. While this is legitimate activity, its patterns can be interpreted as suspicious by Hetzner's monitoring systems, leading to blocks. This also applies to MEV bots, whose activities can be particularly sensitive to such restrictions.

Web scraping and data parsing

For analytics, price monitoring, news gathering, or other tasks related to automated data collection from websites, a provider is needed that will not block for high volumes of outbound HTTP requests. Hetzner often perceives such activity as a DoS attack or unauthorized scanning.

SEO and marketing automation

Tools for SEO analysis, position monitoring, backlink checking, as well as bots for account registration or posting, can also fall under restrictions. For these purposes, infrastructure is needed that will not create artificial barriers.

Gaming bots and automation

Running gaming bots, emulators, or other solutions for automating gameplay (e.g., sneaker bots) requires a stable connection and the provider's readiness for specific traffic, which is not always guaranteed with Hetzner.

How to choose a reliable Hetzner Cloud alternative?

When looking for a Hetzner cloud alternative, it's important to consider several key factors to avoid repeating problems:

1. Acceptable Use Policy (AUP): Carefully review the provider's AUP. Look for wording that explicitly permits (or at least does not prohibit) your specific activities (scraping, botting, VPN).
2. Pricing and configurations: Compare the cost of similar configurations. Many providers offer solutions that are cheaper than Hetzner with similar or even better characteristics, especially if unmetered traffic or specific CPUs are required.
3. Server geography: Server location is critical for some projects. Choose a provider with data centers in the required regions to minimize latency.
4. Support quality: Prompt and competent technical support is key to successful operation. Review feedback on response speed and problem resolution quality.
5. Scalability: Ensure that the provider can offer both VPS and dedicated servers, as well as the ability to easily scale resources as your project grows.
6. Community reviews: Look for recent reviews on independent platforms, forums, and social media to understand the real experiences of other users.

Top 5 Hosting Providers: Cheaper and More Lenient Hetzner Alternatives

Here's an overview of providers that can be excellent Hetzner alternatives, offering more flexible terms and attractive prices.

1. Valebyte.com: Flexibility, Power, and Project Leniency

Valebyte.com positions itself as a provider focused on specific and high-load tasks that often cause problems for more conservative hosts. We offer both VPS and dedicated servers with an emphasis on high performance and flexibility.

• Advantages:
  • Lenient AUP: We understand developers' needs and are ready to discuss specific projects. Scraping, botting, crypto projects, VPN – most of these activities are permitted provided they comply with the law and do not involve malicious activity.
  • High performance: NVMe drives, powerful CPUs (Ryzen, EPYC, Xeon), and a stable network.
  • Competitive prices: Often cheaper than Hetzner for similar or more powerful configurations.
  • Custom solutions: Ability to build a server to individual requirements.
  • Unmetered traffic: Many plans offer unlimited traffic, which is critical for parsers or CDNs.
• Ideal for: Trading bots, arbitrage, scraping, VPNs, high-load web services, game servers.

2. DigitalOcean: Simplicity and Developer Ecosystem

DigitalOcean is known for its ease of use, excellent documentation, and developer-centric approach. It's a great Hetzner cloud alternative for those who value an intuitive interface and a rich ecosystem.

• Advantages:
  • User-friendly interface: Simple control panel, droplet deployment in seconds.
  • Scalability: Easy to scale resources, managed Kubernetes available.
  • Additional services: Databases, storage, CDN.
  • Multiple locations: Servers worldwide.
• Disadvantages:
  • Prices can be higher than Hetzner or Valebyte, especially for high-performance configurations.
  • Some activities (e.g., scanning) may be restricted.
• Ideal for: Web applications, APIs, development and testing, small to medium projects.

3. Vultr: Global Coverage and Flexible Plans

Vultr offers a wide selection of configurations and geographical locations, making it an attractive Hetzner alternative for projects with a global audience.

• Advantages:
  • Many locations: Servers in dozens of cities worldwide.
  • Variety of plans: From the cheapest to high-performance instances with GPUs.
  • Hourly billing: Pay only for the actual time used.
  • Bare Metal: They offer dedicated servers.
• Disadvantages:
  • AUP policy can be strict for some types of automated activity.
  • Support can sometimes be slow.
• Ideal for: Deploying applications in different regions, VPN servers, testing.

4. OVHcloud: Scale and European Standards

OVHcloud is another large European provider offering a wide range of services from VPS to dedicated servers and cloud solutions. It can be a good Hetzner alternative, but also has its nuances.

• Advantages:
  • Large-scale infrastructure: A huge number of data centers worldwide.
  • Product variety: Wide selection of servers, cloud solutions, hosting.
  • DDoS protection: Included by default.
• Disadvantages:
  • Support can be slow and not always in-depth.
  • Like Hetzner, OVH can be sensitive to "suspicious" activity due to European legislation.
  • Sometimes there are issues with network quality in certain regions.
• Ideal for: Large projects requiring stable infrastructure and DDoS protection, but with caveats for specific tasks. For migrating from OVH to more flexible solutions, check out our migration guide.

5. Contabo: Budget Solutions with High Resource Density

Contabo is known for its very attractive prices for large amounts of RAM and disk space. If you are looking for something cheaper than Hetzner and are not too demanding on CPU, this could be an option.

• Advantages:
  • Very low prices: Large amounts of RAM and disk for a small fee.
  • SSD/NVMe: Fast drives available.
• Disadvantages:
  • CPUs are often less powerful than competitors (older generation Xeons).
  • Support may not be the most responsive.
  • As with others, AUP can be strict.
• Ideal for: Projects requiring a lot of RAM and disk space but not heavily dependent on CPU performance (e.g., data storage, backups, low-load web servers).

Tariff and Feature Comparison: Hetzner Alternative in Numbers

For clarity, let's compare popular VPS configurations from Hetzner and the presented alternatives. The table shows approximate prices for plans with 4 vCPU and 8 GB RAM (or as close as possible), as well as key characteristics and policy features.

*Prices are approximate and may vary depending on region, promotions, and exact configuration.

As seen in the table, Valebyte.com offers not only competitive prices (often cheaper than Hetzner) but also a significantly more lenient policy regarding activities that often lead to problems with other providers. Particularly noteworthy is the unmetered traffic, which is standard for many of our plans, making us an ideal Hetzner cloud alternative for projects with high bandwidth consumption.

Recommendations for choosing a VPS/dedicated server: what to consider?

Choosing the optimal Hetzner alternative depends on your specific needs. To make the right choice, consider the following recommendations:

1. Define your tasks: If you are involved in scraping, botting, crypto projects, or high-load APIs, prioritize providers known for their leniency towards such activities, like Valebyte.com. If it's a standard web server or database, a wider range of providers will suffice.
2. Assess resource needs:
   • CPU: For compilation, data processing, complex calculations, choose plans with powerful modern CPUs (Ryzen, EPYC).
   • RAM: For working with large databases, many containers, or resource-intensive applications (e.g., Java applications on Spring Boot, for which we offer optimal VPS) more RAM is required.
   • Storage: For databases and latency-sensitive systems, choose NVMe. For large data storage volumes, consider HDDs in RAID or specialized storage servers.
   • Traffic: For projects with high outbound traffic (CDN, streaming, parsing), unmetered bandwidth or very large quotas are critical.
3. Check AUP: Don't be lazy to read the acceptable use policy. This will save you nerves and time in the future.
4. Trial period or short term: If possible, start with monthly billing or a plan with a trial period to assess performance and support quality.
5. Data center location: Choose a location that is closer to your target audience or the APIs you interact with to minimize latency. For example, for trading bots on Binance, proximity to exchange servers is critical.

Example of checking network speed to the server:

ping valebyte.com
traceroute valebyte.com

For a more in-depth check of disk and CPU performance, you can use utilities like fio for disks and sysbench for CPU after server deployment.

# Example of installing sysbench on Ubuntu
sudo apt update
sudo apt install sysbench

# Example of CPU testing
sysbench cpu run

# Example of disk testing
sysbench fileio --file-total-size=1G --file-test-mode=rndrw run

Conclusion

Choosing a reliable hosting provider that won't suddenly block your account is critically important for any project. Hetzner, despite its merits, is becoming less suitable for tasks requiring flexibility and tolerance for automated actions. Valebyte.com offers a powerful and lenient Hetzner alternative that is not only often cheaper than Hetzner but also guarantees stability for your bots, scrapers, and other specific projects. We recommend considering Valebyte.com as a primary candidate for those seeking a reliable partner without the risk of sudden blocks.