Contabo is a German web host that offers quality VPS and dedicated servers since 2003. Starting with only a single server, the company has grown big enough to have more than 10,000 servers today. Contabo is the abbreviated form of Content Across Borders.
The host has successfully spread its presence all over the globe with 100,000+ customers in more than 180 countries. It has 8 data centers with 4 being scattered across Germany, 3 in the Americas, and 1 in Asia. Additionally, the presence of a redundant power supply ensures to keep your server is up and running at all times.
Why is Contabo so cheap?
Contabo has a wide variety of powerful features including automatic installation of operating systems, control panels, DDoS protection, one-click upgrades, and much more. The host offers a Virtual Private Server (VPS) for as low as $8.49 per month whereas a Virtual Dedicated Server (VDS) is available at a base price of $57.99 per month only.
So the main question is – With so many powerful features on offer, how does Contabo manage to provide cheap plans?
8 Reasons allowing Contabo to offer cheap hosting plans
Reason 1 – Choice of hardware
The choice of hardware plays an important role in deciding the final price of hosting solutions. Contabo carefully selects its hardware by looking at its performance capabilities, energy efficiency, and purchase cost.
The host examines the CPU performance per dollar to grab the best deal available. It helps Contabo lower its upfront costs.
Additionally, it determines the CPU performance per watt to properly assess the energy efficiency and reduce its maintenance costs.
Lastly, Contabo ensures to check the durability of each hardware component it purchases. Securing long-lasting hardware helps the host avoid server replacement costs for a long time.
The above factors together help Contabo to lower both its capital and operating costs thereby enabling it to offer low prices to all its customers.
Reason 2 – The scale of operations and standardization
With more than 10,000 servers scattered across 8 different locations, Contabo operates at a large scale. It brings in economies of scale where the host can demand better prices when purchasing its hardware components. So even when it upgrades to new hardware at all its locations, you will still find its prices cheap!
Along with the scale of operations, Contabo has standardized its hardware components across all its locations globally unlike many of its competitors. This fully unified hardware platform in all its data centers around the world further strengthens its position when purchasing new hardware components thereby allowing better bargaining power.
Contabo passes on these purchase discounts to all its customers in the form of cheap hosting prices.
Reason 3 – Excellent management and optimization
Contabo uses exclusive optimization scripts that manage the load on its servers extremely well. It allows the host to offer excellent, stable performance to all its customers.
Additionally, Contabo saves time with its brilliantly optimized logistics and warehouse management tasks thereby utilizing that saved working hours in other productive activities. These savings add up to improve the performance of the host and substantially reduce its running costs.
All these savings from Contabo’s excellent management and optimization skills are passed on to its customers in the form of low hosting prices.
Reason 4 – No unnecessary spendings
Germans are known for their lean culture of spending as they judiciously spend their money. Contabo, being German, does not involve unnecessarily luxurious spending like expensive company cars or premium office locations.
Even high-ranking officers like the CEO of the company share the room with multiple employees to keep the expenses low. All this money saved from both capital investments and recurring expenditure helps Contabo keep its pricing so cheap and yet remain profitable.
4 Extra aspects that allow Contabo to remain cheap
Reason 5 – Absence of 24/7 customer support
Contabo offers customer support only via email and phone. You won’t be able to receive any live chat support for the services you buy from Contabo. Though the support team is available 365 days a year to help you, the daily support time is limited. You can get in touch with a Contabo support executive between 8 AM to 11 PM German local time.
Reason 6 – Use of open-source virtualization technologies
Contabo utilized open-source technologies for its virtualization-based offerings. It uses KVM and Proxmox to virtualize its servers, both of which are free to use since they are open-source. This decision empowers Contabo to keep its costs low and offer cheap hosting solutions.
Reason 7 – All servers are unmanaged
Contabo does not offer server management with its plans and keeps the prices low. A managed server comes as an add-on for which you are charged an additional monthly amount. It allows the host to save money that will go into server management thereby offering cheap plan prices.
Reason 8 – No backup space provided
Contabo does not offer backup space with its plans but it can be purchased separately. Such additional backup space is available via File Transfer Protocol (FTP) and is very expensive. Therefore, saving the use of its ‘backup’ servers allows Contabo to offer cheap hosting solutions without any backup space.
2 Best Alternatives to Contabo
The following are the greatest substitutes for Contabo in terms of value and price. You can be sure to get datacenters in both Europe & USA while benefiting from the best performance.
Alternative 1 – Vultr
The best alternative that we would recommend is Vultr. Unlike Contabo, you can use it confidently knowing that you’ll be running your apps on an Enterprise-grade infrastructure.
What’s best about this, is you don’t have to commit, you can first give them a try thanks to their 30-days free trial.
Alternative 2 – Hetzner
Hetzner remains the best choice for contabo in terms of pricing and the quality of services that it has to offer.
It has data centers across two continents (Europe & US). So give it a try for a month and see if you like it.
Final Words
Contabo has many attractive hosting packages available at very cheap prices. These are designed to meet the hosting needs of small, medium, and large websites efficiently.
The company has been able to keep its prices low because of some special efforts made by it. These efforts do not impact the quality of services rendered by Contabo since it constantly delivers excellent performance to all its customers.
You can benefit from Contabo’s cheap hosting plans and utilize the full power of virtualization for your next online venture. With the availability of different plans, you can easily upgrade to a larger plan as your website grows.
Are you looking for a shared or a dedicated virtual server? How are you planning to utilize a virtual network for your current needs?
