This article reviews Hetzner, a VPS provider that offers affordable and reliable cloud servers for hosting websites and applications. It shows how Hetzner performs in terms of disk, CPU, network, and WordPress tests, and compares it with other VPS providers such as DigitalOcean. It also shows the interface and support of Hetzner, and gives some opinions and conclusions based on the experience and results.
I am using Hetzner as my VPS provider in Europe for more than 2 years. I have a CyberPanel server installed where I host some of my sites. Recently Hetzner has released a US data center and you can create a VPS in Ashburn.
Hetzner has some very affordable prices when it comes to VPS and in this article/ video, I would like to make a review of Hetzner to see how it does in hosting my WordPress websites on their cloud VPS servers. If you are interested to see how Hetzner is comparing with DigitalOcean you should see: DigitalOcean VS Hetzner: Which is The Best VPS Provider
I am using VPS providers for a long time to host some of the websites and applications and I always look for something that is good and has a decent price as my budget is not that high. Hetzner has very good prices if you compare it with others like DigitalOcean or Vultr, on Hetzner with about 6$ you can get 2CPU 2 GB of RAM which doesn’t come close to 15 – 20 USD price at the others.
I have CyberPanel installed to host my websites and a monitoring website + a Google Analytics alternative installed on a Hetzner VPS, you can check also the below articles if you want:
If you are interested to see how the best VPS providers compare check the DigitalOcean vs Vultr vs Hetzner article.
In this Hetzner Review, we will focus on the Cloud VPS area as Hetzner like the other has a lot to offer.
When it comes to data centers with Hetzner you have EU and USA only. In the EU you have Germany and Finland and in the USA Ashburn. This is what is Hetzner is offering in terms of data centers, if you need rather locations you need to go with another service. The USA data centers is only having AMD CPUs also.
Hetzner also released a new datacenter in west cost of USA to Hillsboro, Oregon, this is a new addition and was added in December 2022. It has like the other datacenter only AMD env.
| Data center | Location | CPU type |
|---|---|---|
| Nuremberg | Germany | Intel/AMD/ARM |
| Falkenstein | Germany | Intel/AMD/ARM |
| Helsinki | Finland | Intel/AMD/ARM |
| Ashburn | USA | AMD |
| Hillsboro | USA | AMD |
Hetzner pricing is a very competitive one you can start with prices from 6$ for a 2 CPU 2 GB of RAM server and you can go up to 60$ for a server with 16 CPU and 32 GB of RAM. The CPU is shared but if you need a dedicated one they have you covered and you can start with about 25$ for a 2 CPU and 8 GB of RAM and you can move to hundred of USD for a bigger one:
Hezner is offering also ARM servers which are cheaper then the AMD/Intel ones, with & Euros you can get the 4CPU 8 GB RAM one, they are only available in Germany, you can check : Hetzner VS Oracle – ARM VPS Server Performance
The interface is easy to use and clean in the left side you have the options like server, storage, firewall etc. And in the middle, you have your server. You can easily add a server and have access to its details. Below/ are some pictures of the interface and what it looks like. You can enable backups, stop the server, scale it,etc. Server graphs are also there with CPU, memory, network traffic.
I am using Hetzner for more than 2 years and I never had an issue with my website because of their fault, we are going to test the lowes option from them the Ashburn AMD 2 CPU 2 GB of memory to see how it does from a performance perspective.
AMD:
We are going to use YABS to test the disk, CPU, and network. Below are the results of this tool, and you will see that the results are quite good if you think this is a 5 USD VPS:
root@cyberpanel-test:~# curl -sL yabs.sh | bash
# ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## #
# Yet-Another-Bench-Script #
# v2022-02-18 #
# https://github.com/masonr/yet-another-bench-script #
# ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## #
Tue Mar 8 08:22:55 UTC 2022
Basic System Information:
---------------------------------
Processor : AMD EPYC Processor
CPU cores : 2 @ 2445.406 MHz
AES-NI : ✔ Enabled
VM-x/AMD-V : ❌ Disabled
RAM : 1.9 GiB
Swap : 2.0 GiB
Disk : 37.5 GiB
fio Disk Speed Tests (Mixed R/W 50/50):
---------------------------------
Block Size | 4k (IOPS) | 64k (IOPS)
------ | --- ---- | ---- ----
Read | 148.06 MB/s (37.0k) | 1.38 GB/s (21.6k)
Write | 148.45 MB/s (37.1k) | 1.38 GB/s (21.7k)
Total | 296.52 MB/s (74.1k) | 2.77 GB/s (43.3k)
| |
Block Size | 512k (IOPS) | 1m (IOPS)
------ | --- ---- | ---- ----
Read | 2.41 GB/s (4.7k) | 3.02 GB/s (2.9k)
Write | 2.54 GB/s (4.9k) | 3.22 GB/s (3.1k)
Total | 4.96 GB/s (9.6k) | 6.25 GB/s (6.1k)
iperf3 Network Speed Tests (IPv4):
---------------------------------
Provider | Location (Link) | Send Speed | Recv Speed
| | |
Clouvider | London, UK (10G) | 49.9 Mbits/sec | 77.0 Mbits/sec
Online.net | Paris, FR (10G) | 802 Mbits/sec | 1.55 Gbits/sec
WorldStream | The Netherlands (10G) | busy | busy
WebHorizon | Singapore (400M) | 238 Mbits/sec | 52.8 Mbits/sec
Clouvider | NYC, NY, US (10G) | 829 Mbits/sec | 5.06 Gbits/sec
Velocity Online | Tallahassee, FL, US (10G) | 774 Mbits/sec | 3.76 Gbits/sec
Clouvider | Los Angeles, CA, US (10G) | 710 Mbits/sec | 122 Mbits/sec
Iveloz Telecom | Sao Paulo, BR (2G) | 704 Mbits/sec | 1.51 Gbits/sec
iperf3 Network Speed Tests (IPv6):
---------------------------------
Provider | Location (Link) | Send Speed | Recv Speed
| | |
Clouvider | London, UK (10G) | 47.6 Mbits/sec | 80.5 Mbits/sec
Online.net | Paris, FR (10G) | 1.06 Gbits/sec | 1.13 Gbits/sec
WorldStream | The Netherlands (10G) | 949 Mbits/sec | 1.59 Gbits/sec
WebHorizon | Singapore (400M) | 614 Mbits/sec | 388 Mbits/sec
Clouvider | NYC, NY, US (10G) | 1.04 Gbits/sec | 4.78 Gbits/sec
Clouvider | Los Angeles, CA, US (10G) | 1.01 Gbits/sec | 116 Mbits/sec
Geekbench 5 Benchmark Test:
---------------------------------
Test | Value
|
Single Core | 1096
Multi Core | 2075
Full Test | https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/13309178
ARM Test:
I have installed WordPress on the test site and imported a Kadence starter template with a blog and everything. Then I have configured the lightspeed cache plugin and that’s all that I did. Below are the results with these basic things:
These are good results if you think that we didn’t add a CDN or optimize the images in any way. With advanced optimizations, better scores can be obtained. Results are much better than shared hosting and you pay less.
Next, we are going to do some load tests to see how the server is doing under load stress. We are going to use k6 to perform these load tests. We are going to use 200 visitors at the same time to see how these server is doing, we are going to test the home page.
Top on Server:
top - 09:20:42 up 32 min, 1 user, load average: 0.06, 0.11, 0.08
Tasks: 161 total, 3 running, 158 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
%Cpu(s): 1.8 us, 2.5 sy, 0.0 ni, 86.2 id, 0.0 wa, 0.0 hi, 9.5 si, 0.0 st
MiB Mem : 1935.1 total, 614.6 free, 513.1 used, 807.3 buff/cache
MiB Swap: 2048.0 total, 2048.0 free, 0.0 used. 1215.3 avail Mem
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
5038 nobody 20 0 41908 26496 8716 S 5.7 1.3 0:24.90 litespeed
5039 nobody 20 0 39696 23920 8540 R 5.3 1.2 0:24.07 litespeed
10 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.3 0.0 0:01.27 ksoftirqd/0
556 root 20 0 6444 3704 3484 S 0.3 0.2 0:00.87 qemu-ga
669 redis 20 0 50188 4588 3284 S 0.3 0.2 0:02.31 redis-server
5746 root 20 0 9256 3704 3156 R 0.3 0.2 0:00.06 top
1 root 20 0 167496 11532 8360 S 0.0 0.6 0:01.80 systemd
2 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kthreadd
3 root 0 -20 0 0 0 I 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 rcu_gp
4 root 0 -20 0 0 0 I 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 rcu_par_gp
6 root 0 -20 0 0 0 I 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kworker/0:0H-kbloc+We see here that the server didn’t even notice the 200 visitors at the same time.
k6 results:
root@ubuntu-server:/opt/k6# k6 run --vus 200 --duration 100s htbitdoze.js
/\ |‾‾| /‾‾/ /‾‾/
/\ / \ | |/ / / /
/ \/ \ | ( / ‾‾\
/ \ | |\ \ | (‾) |
/ __________ \ |__| \__\ \_____/ .io
execution: local
script: htbitdoze.js
output: -
scenarios: (100.00%) 1 scenario, 200 max VUs, 2m10s max duration (incl. graceful stop):
* default: 200 looping VUs for 1m40s (gracefulStop: 30s)
running (1m41.4s), 000/200 VUs, 14412 complete and 0 interrupted iterations
default ✓ [======================================] 200 VUs 1m40s
data_received..................: 1.9 GB 19 MB/s
data_sent......................: 4.5 MB 44 kB/s
http_req_blocked...............: avg=3.6ms min=140ns med=351ns max=289.26ms p(90)=521ns p(95)=611ns
http_req_connecting............: avg=1.42ms min=0s med=0s max=108.62ms p(90)=0s p(95)=0s
http_req_duration..............: avg=395.37ms min=380.2ms med=397.11ms max=574.81ms p(90)=406.78ms p(95)=413.78ms
{ expected_response:true }...: avg=395.37ms min=380.2ms med=397.11ms max=574.81ms p(90)=406.78ms p(95)=413.78ms
http_req_failed................: 0.00% ✓ 0 ✗ 14412
http_req_receiving.............: avg=295.29ms min=202.57ms med=297.76ms max=346.7ms p(90)=306.03ms p(95)=312.44ms
http_req_sending...............: avg=50.2µs min=15.76µs med=44.77µs max=4.56ms p(90)=72.82µs p(95)=88.06µs
http_req_tls_handshaking.......: avg=1.89ms min=0s med=0s max=162.39ms p(90)=0s p(95)=0s
http_req_waiting...............: avg=100.02ms min=95.02ms med=99.06ms max=360.37ms p(90)=99.79ms p(95)=100.33ms
http_reqs......................: 14412 142.159372/s
iteration_duration.............: avg=1.39s min=1.38s med=1.39s max=1.86s p(90)=1.4s p(95)=1.41s
iterations.....................: 14412 142.159372/s
vus............................: 112 min=112 max=200
vus_max........................: 200 min=200 max=200
In the above results, you see the test from a server in the EU. So k6 was run from the EU and you can see that there were no failed requests and the average response time is 1.39s. Hetzner server is doing a very good job with 200 visitors at the same time.
This is happening because CyberPanel is a very good option to use for your websites and also because Hetzner has good servers.
I only needed to contact Hetzner support 1 time and their response and solution were fast. Like any other service, you have a dedicated support tab that you can use and submit tickets to them. They are communicative and fix your problems, I didn’t need any advance technical requests done to them so I can’t say 100% that they are OK. If you have any experience with Hetzner support you can drop a comment below so others know.
There are a lot of VPS providers out there, some of the most known ones are DigitalOcean, Vultr, or Linode. They are top of the line when it comes to having your own VPS with very good performances. For digitalocean you can check DigitalOcean Review to find out more. Hetzner is the most affordable one though.
This is what Hetzner has to offer my experience with them was good and in 2 years I didn’t have any major issues with them. I was happy when I have seen they released a data center in US as I can use it also there if I need it. Their prices are very good and their performance is good. If you have big sites you can use a bigger VPS from them at very good prices.
December 2022 now and Hetzner is keeping strong, I have all my websites hosted into an 3 CPU 4GB of RAM with CloudPanel and I didn’t had my websites down not even for a day.
June 2023 still on Hetzner, now they have added ARM servers, you can check them if you want something that is cheaper and works well.