Hi all,
I run my own email SaaS and need to decide if Contabo is a good choice for hosting. I know that their VPS servers have had stability issues, but I’m wondering if their VDS or bare metal servers might be more reliable. Any advice? I’m on a tight schedule and would really appreciate some help.
In my experience, Contabo has had full-day outages, sometimes due to issues at the datacenter level. A while back, their Germany and US locations both went offline for separate reasons. You might want to consider OVH’s So You Start or Rise ranges—they’re fairly priced and offer full dedicated servers, so you avoid the problem of shared resources.
@Alana
I have both German and US servers, and I don’t recall any recent major downtime.
Maxwell said:
@Alana
I have both German and US servers, and I don’t recall any recent major downtime.
Contabo doesn’t archive status updates, but the outages I’m talking about happened in mid-August and mid-September. It’s somewhat expected with budget hosting, but other options are definitely more stable.
Maxwell said:
@Alana
I have both German and US servers, and I don’t recall any recent major downtime.
I have several US servers and haven’t had any outages, but there was a multi-day outage in Germany recently.
@Alana
Do you think Contabo’s dedicated or bare metal servers also have these shutdowns? I’m not a developer, and the dev teams I hired have been giving poor suggestions.
Hudson said:
@Alana
Do you think Contabo’s dedicated or bare metal servers also have these shutdowns? I’m not a developer, and the dev teams I hired have been giving poor suggestions.
You generally get what you pay for. I haven’t used their dedicated servers, but they may still be affected by datacenter issues. If you’re not managing it yourself, managed hosting could be worth looking into. KnownHost is a good example.
@Alana
Thanks for the info. Do you know if they allow port 25?
Hudson said:
@Alana
Thanks for the info. Do you know if they allow port 25?
You’d need to ask them directly. But from what I see, finding a host for bulk email can be challenging, and some providers might blacklist you quickly.
Hudson said:
@Alana
Thanks for the info. Do you know if they allow port 25?
Hey there, we don’t allow port 25 traffic. For professional email, we offer dedicated packages for premium services, but they come with higher pricing.
Honestly, you don’t need to limit yourself to Contabo. Plenty of other hosting providers can meet your needs.
Consider OVHcloud or Hetzner—they’re both better alternatives to Contabo.
Why Contabo? If time is a concern and budget isn’t the main factor, go with Hetzner. Their Cloud or VDS options are reliable.
Agree with the others—look into OVHcloud instead.
I manage this extensive list of providers, where you can enter your specs to get price comparisons for VPS. For VDS, select ‘dedicated vCores.’ Contabo isn’t on there because feedback is mostly negative.
@AlexWebster
Anything hosted in Canada?
Dorian said:
@AlexWebster
Anything hosted in Canada?
Yes, select ‘North America’ and then ‘Canada.’
Does Contabo’s VPS constantly go down? Not exactly—some locations or nodes might have issues, but that’s expected with budget providers. If you’re mainly hosting email, you could probably go with a VPS1 SSD. To minimize downtime, consider getting a secondary server in another location for backups.