Hetzner billing model change

bikegremlin · February 29

For the better, of course. LOL

https://docs.hetzner.com/general/others/new-billing-model/

Your April 2024 invoice will be the first one that is based on hourly billing. It will cover your hourly usage for the month of March. The hourly billing will apply to most products, but not all. For example, it will not apply to one-time products (like setup fees) or to products like domains and SSL certificates, which will continue to have yearly payment periods.

For this one time, the invoice will retro-actively cover products that were NOT covered on March's invoice as part of the transition period.

After that (starting in April) all future invoices will have a service period for hourly-based products. The service period will start on the first day of the month and end on the last day of the month. If you use these products for a full month, you will see the normal monthly price.

For more details, please look at the section below ("Example invoices").

th108 · February 29

Does this news relate to DNS console?

Not_Oles · February 29

@bikegremlin Thanks for posting this!

Selling the servers hourly might take away the monthly servers' legally required 14 day cancellation period.

Perhaps too many people are using servers for multuple days and then cancelling.

MikeA · February 29

@Not_Oles said:
@bikegremlin Thanks for posting this!

Selling the servers hourly might take away the monthly servers' legally required 14 day cancellation period.

Perhaps too many people are using servers for multuple days and then cancelling.

Makes sense.

Falzo · February 29

@Not_Oles said:
@bikegremlin Thanks for posting this!

Selling the servers hourly might take away the monthly servers' legally required 14 day cancellation period.

Most likely not. Canceling an online order within 14 days is not related to the billing/contract period.

blackjack4494 · February 29

Wait wait wait. They expand hourly billing to dedicated servers now? This seems quite nice. I wonder about setup costs tho. And maybe they include their storage offers as well

skhron · February 29

Almost anyone received the email letter but not me for some reason...

havoc · February 29

I don't see any mention of dedis in that article. Where are people getting that from?

Not_Oles · February 29

@skhron I have not received the email, either.

@havoc Did you receive the email?

havoc · February 29

@Not_Oles nope don't see a mail

I've got a ~70 usd dedi that is way overkill for me though that I'd love to turn into an hourly thing. (Assuming I can API/terraform/ansible it). Very doubtful that they'll allow hourly dedi though

Not_Oles · February 29

@havoc said: dedi that is way overkill for me

I have the same problem. In some ways it's a good problem to have. In other ways not.

@havoc said: Very doubtful that they'll allow hourly dedi though

Agreed. It will be interesting to see what happens.

havoc · February 29

@Not_Oles said:

@havoc said: dedi that is way overkill for me

I have the same problem. In some ways it's a good problem to have. In other ways not.

@havoc said: Very doubtful that they'll allow hourly dedi though

Agreed. It will be interesting to see what happens.

I suspect its cause dedi isn't in scope for hourly hence no email about weird invoices.

blackjack4494 · March 1

@havoc said:
I don't see any mention of dedis in that article. Where are people getting that from?

What other products will possibly be available on hourly basis then if not dedis and or storage?
Colocation definitely not.
I doubt any webhosting (including domains, certificates etc.) will be available hourly.

Cloud Servers and Load balancer are already hourly based.
So only dedis are the only logical choice here.
Managed servers I also doubt will be available hourly.

What do you think will be available hourly then that wasn't before???

Encoders · March 1

@havoc said:
@Not_Oles nope don't see a mail

I've got a ~70 usd dedi that is way overkill for me though that I'd love to turn into an hourly thing. (Assuming I can API/terraform/ansible it). Very doubtful that they'll allow hourly dedi though

why aren't you using the cloud vps with dedicated cpu? I've been using those with terraform just fine

havoc · March 1

@blackjack4494 said:

@havoc said:
I don't see any mention of dedis in that article. Where are people getting that from?

What other products will possibly be available on hourly basis then if not dedis and or storage?
Colocation definitely not.
I doubt any webhosting (including domains, certificates etc.) will be available hourly.

Cloud Servers and Load balancer are already hourly based.
So only dedis are the only logical choice here.
Managed servers I also doubt will be available hourly.

What do you think will be available hourly then that wasn't before???

I don't particularly care to speculate - they have a handful of monthly offerings. My point is merely they never specified dedi in their annoyingly vague announcement and process of elimination isn't much better.

zrj766 · March 1

I don't know if it means that dedicated servers will be charged within 14 days of ordering, but I didn't receive any emails, this rule change was very sudden, and I don't know if it includes dedicated servers or not.

willie · March 1

I got that email too, but couldn't understand how it is supposed to work. Is @Hetzner_OL around much these days? There is also a discussion thread on Hacker News. Things I'd be interested to know:

If you cancel a dedicated server, can you have the cancellation go into effect right away, or is it at the end of the month like before? If at end of month, that would just seem to mean that it is prorated in the event that you first ordered it in the middle of the month. I thought it was already something like that though, where the first month rather than the last is prorated.
Even if you can cancel immediately, with a non-auction dedi, you still pay the setup fee, right?

So at best this would seem to mean that you can rent auction dedis by the hour. There are a couple of other hosts that offer that, e.g. Scaleway, though the monthly rate is quite a bit better than the hourly rate.

Not_Oles · March 1

@willie said: here is also a discussion thread on Hacker News.

In case anybody is interested:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39547940

havoc · March 1

@Encoders said:

@havoc said:
@Not_Oles nope don't see a mail

I've got a ~70 usd dedi that is way overkill for me though that I'd love to turn into an hourly thing. (Assuming I can API/terraform/ansible it). Very doubtful that they'll allow hourly dedi though

why aren't you using the cloud vps with dedicated cpu? I've been using those with terraform just fine

Isn't nested virt disabled on their cloud vps? Or am i thinking of netcup

skhron · March 2

Just got "Important client information: Changes to the billing model" email from Hetzner. As from their FAQ it looks like they actually going to offer hourly dedicated servers:

Their invoices example are Servers A, B & C ordered at different dates;
Also, there is no mention of products that are excluded from this billing change.

Not_Oles · March 6

Old news, but new again for me in the sense that I just received the email.

Hetzner billing model change

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