Contabo vs Hetzner – Discover the Best Choice

Both Contabo and Hetzner are budget-friendly hosting platforms, and while they’re not yet as popular as other big-name hosts, they both offer some great features.

In this article, we compare their features, ease of use, customer support, performance, and pricing to help you decide which of the two might be a better choice for you. Without further ado, let’s dive in!

Overall Comparison – Contabo vs Hetzner

Winner: Contabo

Though Hetzner’s starting plan is cheaper at €2 euros per month, Contabo’s starting plan offers more disk space and overall features compared to Hetzner. However, Hetzner is still a strong Contabo competitor. Read on to learn more about the two services.

About Contabo and Hetzner

	Founded in 2003, Contabo was created to provide German-quality web and cloud hosting to customers. Contabo stands for “Content across borders”. The company has over 15000 servers in 6 regions and 10 locations, making its services available globally. The services they provide include web hosting, VPS hosting, and dedicated servers.
	Hetzner was founded in 1997, making it one of the oldest hosting providers on the internet. It currently has high-tech data centers in Germany, Finland, and most recently Virginia, USA. They provide web hosting, VPS hosting, and cloud hosting services to customers.

Round 1: Hosting features – Key Hosting Features and Services

Key Contabo Features

In all of its web hosting plans, Contabo offers unmetered bandwidth but varying amounts of disk space ranging between 50 GB and 500GB. Its Cloud VPS hosting plans offer up to 1.6TB disk space with unmetered bandwidth as well.

Furthermore, you get high-performance SSD and HDD storage, daily backups, one-click app installation (WordPress included), free SSL encryption, and free site migration in case you want to move to another hosting provider. It also provides a custom and intuitive page builder for designing your website.

Key Hetzner Features

Like Contabo, Hetzner offers unmetered traffic with varying amounts of disk space ranging between 10GB and 300GB, with the highest plan giving you unlimited subdomains. For Cloud VPS plans, you get a fixed bandwidth of 20TB and up to 360 GB in disk space.

You also get free SSL, daily backups, free WordPress integration, and a custom page builder, to mention a few.

And the winner is… Contabo

This is a close call. Both Contabo and Hetzner offer quite similar packages in their web hosting plans. They give you unmetered traffic and free SSL encryption, but Contabo offers more disk space overall.

Round 2: Prices & Plans

Contabo Pricing Plans

Contabo provides different plans, each tailored to serve a specific set of needs:

• Web hosting plans – best for small websites such as portfolio websites, personal service websites and so on
• VPS hosting plans – best for small business websites such as Ecommerce websites, big blogs, news websites and so on
• Dedicated hosting plans – created for companies that deal with huge traffic and large volumes of data, and in addition, companies that need top-notch security, IT companies, and hosting resellers.

Ketzner Pricing Plans

Ketzer also offers the same set of plans as Contabo:

• Web hosting plans – best for small websites such as portfolio websites, personal service websites, and so on
• VPS hosting plans – best for small business websites such as Ecommerce websites, big blogs, news websites and so on
• Dedicated hosting plans – created for companies that deal with huge traffic and large volumes of data, as well as companies that need top-notch security

And the Winner Is… Contabo

Holistically, Contabo offers cheaper plans than Ketzner. But it might benefit you to know that Ketzner offers a wider range of plans under each category, so you’re very likely to find the perfect plan for your hosting needs.

Round 3: Website performance (Uptime & Speed)

A host’s uptime shows how long the server is active within a given time period, and the server’s speed shows how long it takes for the server to send the first byte of data. Higher uptime means the server has less downtime, and higher speeds result in your page loading more quicker. Here’s the test result for Contabo vs Hetzner:

Contabo Uptime & Speed

Using GTMetrix, we tested for Contabo’s server speed and performance, and we got 0.086s and 96% respectively:

We ran the same tests using Google PageSpeed Insights and the result showed a server speed 0.700s and an excellent 98% performance:

Keep in mind that the overall page load speeds vary depending on the physical distance between the user and server location.

Hetzner Uptime & Speed

Hetzner’s results were slightly below that of Contabo. I tried to test Hetzner’s speed on GTMetrix but it kept coming up with server issues. But on PageSpeed Insights, Hetzner’s Time to First Byte was 1.2s (500ms slower than Namecheap) and had a 92% overall performance:

Hetzner’s slower load time is likely as a result of its centralized server location (Germany and Finland).

And the Winner Is… Contabo

At the end of this round, Contabo wins with a faster server speed and an overall better performance.

Round 4: Customer Support – Who Has the Best Support System?

Contabo customer Support

You can reach Contabo’s support team via ticket, telephone call, and email. Unfortunately, they do not support live chat (at the time of writing).

If you love figuring things out on your own, Contabo provides a FAQ as well as several tutorials and a vast knowledgebase.

Hetzner customer Support

Hetzner provides support for customers via email, telephone, and live chat. Live chat is open to everyone, not just customers, but it’s only available on the product pages.

The screenshot below shows my conversation with an agent via live chat:

Furthermore, you can learn more about Hetzner’s products and services by reading their documentation.

And the Winner Is… Hetzner

This is a close call, but from my experience, Hetzner’s customer support service is quite good and the live chat option gives it an edge over Contabo.

Round 5: Ease of use – Which Platform Is Easier to Use?

Contabo Ease of use

Contabo features a very bold and intuitive user interface that’s easy to navigate, and thus, makes it very easy for you to find what you’re looking for. All of the main features of Contabo are described boldly on its homepage.

Contabo uses the traditional cPanel, Contabo webspace, which is where you manage your website from. You can get the Plesk admin for an additional cost.

You can access file upload, databases, emails, backup and restore, security, and other advanced settings there.

Hetzner Ease of use

Hetzner’s user interface is much more relaxed than that of Contabo. Despite the minimalist layout, the homepage shows all the features you’ll enjoy, and you can use the links at the page top to locate a particular set of plans.

You can install cPanel on your Hetzner account manually or automatically depending on your needs. It also offers a server manager which makes managing your website a breeze.

And the Winner Is Contabo

Both Contabo and Hetzner feature an intuitive UI that’s easy to navigate and a cPanel that’s easy to use. Personally, I like Contabo better, so it’s the winner for this round.

Round 6: Security – Which Platform is More Secure?

Contabo Security

Contabo provides free SSL encryption, domain protection, DDoS mitigation and other necessary security measures in all of their plans. You might have to pay extra fees to access certain advanced security features.

Hetzner Security

Like Contabo, Hetzner provides SSL encryption, DDoS protection, password protection, malware scanning, and FTP for all plans.

And the Winner Is… Contabo

This one was close, but Contabo edges it because you get more security features with the basic plan which is cheaper than that of Hetzner.

Round 7: Server locations

Server location is important for a website’s loading speed. Generally, the closer your website’s servers are to users, the less time it’ll take for your website to load.

Contabo Server location 

Contabo has data centers in the following six regions:

• US (East)
• US (West)
• US (Central)
• United Kingdom
• Europe (Germany)
• Asia (Singapore)

Hetzner Server location

Hetzner has three data centers located in Nuremberg, Germany; Falkenstein/Vogtland, Germany; and Helsinki, Finland.

And the Winner Is… Contabo

Contabo has physical servers in more locations around the world, whereas Hetzner’s servers are located in just two countries: Germany and Finland. Unless you want to serve customers in just those two regions, Contabo is a better option.

Contabo vs Hetzner: Final Recommendations

When to Choose Contabo?

Contabo wins this contest mainly thanks to its affordable services, global availability, and emphasis on security. Contabo gives you the best performance for your price. In all, it’s a great option if you:

• You want affordability without compromising on performance
• You want a hosting service that prioritizes security
• You want a fast average load speed for your site
• You are a small or mid-sized business looking for a dedicated server
• You want a host with reliable support
• Unmetered bandwidth and up to 500GB of storage
• You are familiar with the traditional cPanel or want to use the Plesk admin.

When to Choose Hetzner?

• Your customers are based in Finland or Germany
• You aren’t that interested in server speed
• You’re on a budget and you want something super affordable