They tend to be out of stock, but VolumeDrive comes pretty close: http://volumedrive.com/vdrive/?a=dedicated The other thing you have to consider is the 150 euro setup fee on the Hetzner server, though that becomes less of a factor if you keep the server for an extended period of time.

That is pretty good. although being sold out and 1 - 2 weeks before they come on line make it a tougher sell.

excellent point about the $150 fee.

the ram and disk seem very cheap. I haven't seen raid-1 3TB and 16Gb ram in the states for anything less than $150+ a month.

They may be a good DR site.

Another perk is that incoming bandwidth is not tracked.

Damn, their VPS packages cost less then I'm paying for shared hosting at Dreamhost. Unfortunately, a cursory search shows mixed reviews. Have you used them personally?

Sorry for the late reply, but yes, I have used them. They are OK, you really do get what you pay for. I've had some trouble with their default Debian/Ubuntu images being messed up and my VPS has been suspiciously slow at times. Their support is prompt but they aren't willing to do much (which is fair as it is unmanaged).

I used it for about half a year. Never had any issue.

It's closer to $65 a month, with current euro->USD conversion.

If you are not in Europe, you get 19% discount (basically the prices include VAT and you don't pay VAT). The discount is automatically applied.

If you are in Europe (especially the UK), there is almost no excuse for not registering for VAT. As long as you are a 'business' (and this definition includes freelancers), then there is nothing stopping you from doing so.

Once you're VAT registered, you can claim back VAT on allowable purchases (eg servers, hardware, software, etc). You will have to charge VAT on services you provide, but seeing as most businesses you sell to are also VAT registered, it makes little difference to them.

Most countries offer low turnover businesses the option of opting out of VAT (i.e., they don't charge VAT on products and they can't claim it back on supplies), which means that, as small, labour-intensive businesses, most freelancers opt out of VAT.

Most freelancers I know have registered for VAT, even if they don't have to.

In the UK, you have to register if your turnover is more than £73,000, and the benefits for registering even if you're under that threshold are compelling (except if you almost exclusively provide services to non-registered entities)

OK, then this is fair enough. My experience here in Germany is different.

Well for the hetzner server there is a 149 € activation fee with that 49 € per month so it is a bit more than the article is saying.

The only thing I've ever found close to hetzner.de in the US with good customer feedback is (though there servers aren't that close): http://joesdatacenter.com/Dedicated_Servers.html

Thanks for the JoesDataCenter link. Definitely a great find! I'll give them a shot one day. I could only find great reviews on Google, but I'd love to hear from fellow HNers.

They are OK, they have good ticket response times. However, they did 2 things that annoyed me:

1. The default Debian OS load I specified, had their custom /etc/apt/sources.list. So when I spec'ed Debian 5 (for compatiblity with specific stuff I had to run), then ran "apt-get update && apt-get upgrade" -- it automatically upgraded everything to Debian 6. Not cool.

2. They buy bandwidth from cheaper providers like He.net, Cogent, and I think some other provider. They may not be as low-latency and as well-connected as you like.

I have servers in the NorthEast on Level3 - bandwidth between JoesDC and this location was unusable (under 1Mbps). However, I did open a ticket and gave them traceroutes, pings, etc. and a few days later it was fixed, I can now get over 30Mbps between the 2 locations.

But, you might never know what response times are for your clients, as you can't measure speed from their end.

Thanks a lot!