European Cloud, Global Reach
163 comments
·March 24, 2025scandox
rustc
I wouldn't call pointing straight up lies as "nit picking".
This is from their FAQ: https://upcloud.com/products/zero-cost-egress
> What exactly does zero-cost egress mean?
> We are eliminating any concerns over data transfer fees. This means you’ll enjoy Internet traffic from our cloud services without any fear of accumulating costs.
> How does this differentiate UpCloud from competitors?
> By pioneering the zero-cost egress model, we’re not just changing the game for UpCloud; we’re challenging the entire cloud industry to reevaluate their pricing models and spearhead the industry towards predictable budgeting on cloud computing costs.
While the actual bandwidth limit (https://upcloud.com/fair-transfer-policy) is the same as DigitalOcean and at least an order of magnitude lower than other EU providers like OVH and Hetzner.
ivanr
Your comment doesn't match what's written on the very page you quote: https://upcloud.com/fair-transfer-policy
> Even if you exceed your monthly share, don’t worry, there are no excess fees. We will simply notify you of reaching the fair transfer policy and may reduce the bandwidth of your Cloud Servers to 100 Mbps for the rest of the month.
EDIT For completeness, there is also:
> If you believe to require more transfer per month than the Fair Transfer Policy provides, you may opt in to a paid transfer model at €0.01/GB. This affords you completely unlimited egress with no restrictions.
arccy
> Never pay for network transfer, even when your business takes off. Redirect savings towards accelerating your business growth.
If your network speed is capped, that's a bandwidth limit that can break things, especially "when your business takes off"
bittermandel
What do you mean? It is still free, just at a lowered speed. Calling it lies is hyperbolic.
ahofmann
You're misrepresenting UpCloud's offering. Their "zero-cost egress" is completely truthful - they don't charge extra fees for data transfer, unlike other providers.
The fair usage policy you linked sets reasonable bandwidth allocations (just like DO), but crucially, they don't charge as much as AWS/GCP. And this is the main selling point here: the egress fees of the big cloud providers are straight up bonkers. UpClouds isn't.
Calling this "lying" is dishonest. They're transparent about both the policy and its industry context. If you want higher baseline allocations, that's fair feedback. But it's a different discussion than accusing them of deception.
musha68k
Swiss https://www.exoscale.com/ also needs an obligatory mention here.
voidr
> Our 100% SLA ensures uninterrupted services, empowering businesses worldwide to thrive.
Avoid ANY company that makes this claim.
I'm European and European providers need to start by not being dishonest, we can't just give 'em some slack just because they are "ours". I'm not putting my data into a company that can't even be honest about their actual reliability.
sschueller
> At UpCloud, we are committed to complying with European data protection laws and compliance with ISO 27001. This international standard not only signifies our dedication to maintaining a high level of information security but also ensures that we adhere to recognized best practices in managing and safeguarding your data.
If you want to be Europe only that includes not terminating your SSL at a US CDN provider like Cloudflare...
I just hit "Gateway time-out Error code 504" from Cloudflare trying to open https://upcloud.com/pricing
confiq
I'm not expecting 100% SLO, but using Cloudflare cloud service while you are a cloud service is little ridiculous.
graemep
That is only for their public site. The US provider has a European presence (the error page is clear I am seeing Cloudflare London).
Started working for me while typing this.
breakingcups
You say that, but their login page / dashboard is hosted on the same IP, also through Cloudflare.
graemep
I had not noticed that. Thanks. Not good.
hnbad
European presences of US providers are still US providers with all the implications of that for privacy, applicability of US laws, government interference and a potential trade war.
csomar
How does that make it any better?
graemep
Because if the actual services they used were not going through cloudflare then it would not really matter to users.
It turns out their management web UI (for orders etc.) also goes through cloudflare so that is a potential problem (and I now plan to switch away from Upcloud for that reason - its silly to route that through Cloudflare).
That said, their servers and their managent are in Europe.
rustc
And they're also loading a script from googletagmanager.com.
earthnail
Whole website seems down. I'm accessing this from Stockholm, Sweden.
surgical_fire
Could open that page here with no problem.
greybox
Working fine for me
lifestyleguru
No problem over here at all. It's probably a problem with "German internet".
rustc
This is a strange page: https://upcloud.com/products/zero-cost-egress
There's "zero cost egress" mentioned all over the page but the limits on https://upcloud.com/fair-transfer-policy are comparable to other hosts like DigitalOcean: the cheapest 7 EUR VPS has a limit of 1TB of bandwidth. (For comparison, Hetzner offers 20TB on their EU VPS for under $5.)
> Say goodbye to unpredictable egress costs and hello to our zero egress fee initiative. Unlike other cloud providers, we don’t charge for outbound traffic (‘egress’). This gives you the freedom to distribute your content and scale your business without the constant worry of unexpected bills.
This has to be a joke.
ohgr
Yeah they’re going bankrupt in a couple of months.
BiteCode_dev
OHV and leaseweb have been doing this for a decade and are fine.
diggan
Why, exactly? Cloud providers don't pay per GB themselves, since they make their own peering agreements, and the only reason we users end up paying $/GB in transfer is because people end up paying for that premium when companies offer it.
It doesn't have to be like that, and it seems like this provider agrees with the idea of not upselling $/GB transfer costs, since they themselves don't pay it like that either.
I'm curious to see how it goes, as others mentioned, they're not the first (nor will be the last) to offer this no-nonsense pricing scheme.
Iulioh
Dosen't the EU Data Act prhoibit egress costs?
usr1106
No I don't think so. You have to able to take your own data out for free. But delivering it to everybody else can be charged.
Edit: Not allowed to comment on your reply anymore. I read it as a confirmation of what I said. Charging for egress in general is allowed. Only the egress to take your own data elsewhere must be free.
bittermandel
I didn't expect the comments in here to be so negative.
It's a decent service in itself and a good alternative to many other traditional VM-based hosting companies, which Europe is absolutely full of. They are not really competing with the hyperscalers, nor even Digital Ocean in my opinion, but rather providers that likely sell pre-committed OpenStack clusters and such.
I don't believe they are fully clear of American-owned companies in their entire dependency chain, nor do I believe that it's possible to do that today. Companies like Equinix provide a damn good solution for homogenized infrastructure that is invaluable for cloud providers.
diggan
> I didn't expect the comments in here to be so negative.
Wait until the US properly wakes up and you'll see what negative can be on HN :)
> nor do I believe that it's possible to do that today.
Why not? Granted, a lot of the internet infrastructure is maintained by US entities, but it doesn't have to be that way, afaik. I'm fairly sure there are companies doing worse/better in this regard, but at least it's moving in the right direction.
bittermandel
We're definitely heading in the right direction!
Our company's biggest remaining problem is finding a reliable IdP that isn't primarily for individuals, self-hosted or based on Active Directory. There are some alternatives, but they are mainly country-specific (like Freja) or not well integrated enough with e.g. OAuth. We've considered at some point to pivot our company to focus on a fully European IdP, as we feel it's a fundamental missing puzzle piece!
esher
Happy to see UpCloud on HN. We are trying to consider them for a long time, just haven't found the time. https://blog.fortrabbit.com/infra-research-2024
There is also https://european-alternatives.eu/
hap_stark
UpCloud works well enough. In our experience, the available features work very reliably (for half a decade now). There are a few rough edges here and there during configuration. On the other hand, some things went smoother and faster than on one of the big hyperscalers. Simplicity can be a feature in itself...
One thing not mentioned yet: We had very good experience multiple times with technical support, being available 24/7, doing proper hand-offs and getting back to us if an issue wasn't resolved, and being technically knowledgeable.
And there are always humans on the other side which can be talked to. (Looking at you, MS for org validation for trusted signing ...)
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK
Upcloud: 48 cores €1364/month
Hetzner Dedi Cloud: 48 cores €288.49/month
graemep
You cannot really compare dedi to VPS pricing. Upcloud is similar to DO etc.
onli
Hetzner behaves pretty much like DO, with servers that can be changed in the corresponding management panel. Or what aspect do you think is different?
diggan
> Hetzner behaves pretty much like DO, with servers that can be changed in the corresponding management panel. Or what aspect do you think is different?
Parent is comparing Hetzner Dedicated with Upcloud VPS, not Hetzner VPS with Upcloud VPS, I'm not sure you missed this.
But in case it's not a misunderstood question: Dedicated instances are "real" hardware you have full control over, for better or worse, while VPSes are managed by your provider, and are virtualized on top of "real" hardware.
Usually you have better performance and isolation (and higher price :) ) with dedicated servers compared to VPSes, but it also usually means less flexibility. Typically you cannot just "upgrade" a dedicated server to another instance without dealing with the migration yourself, while most VPS providers offer a one-click upgrade/downgrade of instances.
Edit: I see parent now edited their comment to say "Hetzner dedi cloud" where as when I wrote my comment it just said "Hetzner dedi" so seems I'm the one who misunderstood parents comment :)
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK
It's still cloud, billed by the hour, but Hetzner makes a distinction between shared cloud, where your cores can be oversubscribed, and dedicated cloud, where core is core.
lwde
Its still Hetzner Cloud so a VPS, not a Bare-metal server.
seper8
What's the real difference in the end?
Between a VPS at DO or a server at Hetzner?
mpenet
If there’s any hardware issue on your dedicated box it might take a lot of time until your box gets back up (hours, days…). On a vps it’s less likely to happen in the first place (hvs are usually better quality) and if that happens migration takes minutes.
cheeseface
Haven’t used Upcloud for any larger workloads, but had a customer VPS there for multiple years. Worked well and the UI for managing servers was great.
rglullis
Apologies in advance for the thread hijacking, but I wonder if there would be enough interest in a turn-key solution for a fully suite of open source SaaS alternatives, hosted in a European cloud (Hetzner and/or OVH).
The idea would be to take any existing commonly used service at a startup and set up the FOSS equivalent, unify them with SSO via OIDC and charge by the a flat rate based on the amount of resources.
I've already built something similar for social media platforms, so I think I would just have to expand my catalog to do it.
sam-cop-vimes
Yes absolutely. I would consider using it.
rglullis
Ok. That's good to know. If you don't mind some follow-up questions:
- What services are you/your company relying on and you'd like to switch to an open alternative?
- How much are you/your company spending on these services?
- What is the threshold of pain (retraining, missing features, known issues) would you/your company be willing to accept for solutions that are not 1:1 replacements for the current systems?
sam-cop-vimes
Off the top of my head.
Google Workspace (email / drive / docs / chat): $500 / month
Various cloud services: VPS / RDS ($1000+ / month)
Figma / Adobe: $100 / month
A bunch of other services where we spend less than $100/month.
How much pain: as long as a basic level of service exists, willing to take on pain just to not be completely dependent on US companies.
cpach
Amusing to see all the comments complaining there is no 100% European tech stach covering everything from servers, CPUs, motherboards to laptops and office/word processing suites.
That is true, but none of those are 100% from US (or China) either.
It’s almost as if our global economy is a complex beast with lots of interdepencies…
My advice: Go read the seminal “I, Pencil” essay from the 50s. Now do the same exercise witha computer system that involves both hardware and software.
ArtTimeInvestor
I restrict my usage of infrastructure providers to publicly listed companies. The transparency is just so much better. You can get a lot of info on how they run their business and where they are going.
For now, that limits my choices in Europe to IONOS and OVH.
OVH's interface is pretty chaotic. But the services themselves seem reliable so far. IONOS seems pretty solid in all aspects, but a bit cheesy in their constant battle to upsell you more services.
o_m
What they don't mention is that some of their data centers are delivered by Equinix, an American company, so it doesn't matter that it is in Finland (same with Sweden and Poland). It is inherently insecure if you are trying to get away from USA.
ahofmann
Your argument oversimplifies the issue and ignores critical nuances. While it's true that Equinix is a US-based company, the physical location of the data centers and the legal jurisdiction they operate under matter significantly. A data center in Finland, Sweden, or Poland falls under EU regulations, including the GDPR and local data protection laws, which impose strict requirements on data handling.
Equinix may provide the infrastructure, but US intelligence agencies can’t simply access data in these jurisdictions, unlike in the US, where providers are directly subject to laws like the CLOUD Act.
Even if we assume hypothetical US access to the hardware, modern encryption can somewhat ensure that raw data remains protected. The real risk isn’t just physical access—it’s legal and architectural control. A European provider using strong encryption and operating under EU law still offers far better privacy guarantees than a US-based alternative.
If your threat model includes avoiding US influence entirely, then yes, you might want a provider with no US ties whatsoever. But for most users, especially those seeking GDPR-compliant hosting, a European provider using Equinix infrastructure is still a meaningful step up from hosting directly with a US provider. Dismissing it as "inherently insecure" is unhelpful and disregards the real-world protections offered by EU jurisdiction and encryption.
The goal isn’t perfection but practical improvement. If you have better alternatives, share them constructively instead of undermining efforts to move away from US-dominated cloud services.
Iulioh
One of the best "facility tours" i saw recently
(LTT - Equinix data center in Toronto )
sofixa
Equinix only provide the physical space and power, and things can be set up with them not even having physical access to your room/cage, other than forcing it (which would be visible). While they could be an attack vector, with modern hardware even having physical access is not a guarantee to having access to the data (TPM2 and disk encryption are trivial to set up).
The risk is much lower than e.g. AWS.
Aeolun
Sorta, but it’s like saying that using Chinese equipment for your telecommunications infrastructure is fine.
It’s not a great thing to have your infra hosted anywhere that can be legally compelled by a US government.
There's a lot of negativity and nit picking here. Upcloud are OK, Hetzner are better in my opinion for a lot of things.
Nothing is perfect and European providers need to start somewhere. We all know there are tradeoffs and limitations but there's no need for a pile on.