"Hetzner decided to cancel our account and terminate all servers"

Immediate incident and conflicting narratives

• Thread discusses Hetzner cancelling an account used by the Kiwix project and terminating servers; user claims no prior warning and total data loss.
• Hetzner’s representative states a termination notice was emailed on Oct 30 with a deadline per their T&Cs, and that they have transmission logs and multiple contacts with the customer.
• Later cross‑links to Reddit show someone from Kiwix acknowledging they did, in fact, receive a warning email, though timing and clarity remain debated.
• It’s unclear exactly what ToS or legal issue triggered the termination; Hetzner declines to disclose specifics, citing privacy.

Hetzner policies, ToS, and enforcement behavior

• T&Cs allow termination without notice “for good cause,” including payment issues, security risks, or violating content rules (esp. section 8).
• Crypto-related workloads, mining, and even some blockchain/financial tech are explicitly unwelcome; past mass shutdown of Solana validators is cited.
• Multiple users report accounts or servers shut down over suspected abuse (e.g., DMCA/copyright issues, misconfigured services used for attacks, “suspicious” usage).
• Experiences differ: some consistently receive 24–72h abuse windows; others claim instant shutdowns or deletion with little recourse.

Customer verification and discrimination concerns

• Several commenters report Hetzner demanding ID and address proof, sometimes rejecting non‑EU customers or unusual names; some perceive this as discriminatory.
• Others note major providers (AWS, Scaleway, Oracle, etc.) often don’t require ID scans for similar usage.

Support quality and legal environment

• Many describe Hetzner support as minimal or inflexible: terse responses, poor explanation of bans, inconsistent handling of abuse reports.
• Some argue German law (e.g., copyright, NetzDG, DSA) pushes hosts toward fast, defensive takedowns; others say enforcement is uneven and customer protections still require going to court.

Risk management, backups, and multi‑provider strategies

• Strong consensus that relying on any single provider is risky; account bans and legal complaints can destroy infrastructure overnight, not just technical outages.
• Recommended practices:
  • Off‑site, off‑provider backups (object storage like S3/R2, rsync/MinIO, tape/NAS, second cloud).
  • Regular restore tests; multiple stories show “working” backups were unusable when needed.
  • Distinguish replication vs backup; replication won’t save you from deletions or ransomware.
  • Consider DNS, domains, and email with different vendors to avoid cascading lockouts.
• Debate over how often and how extensively to test restores; large systems make frequent full tests costly, but some argue if restores are too slow to test, they’ll be too slow in a crisis.

Alternatives and infrastructure choices

• Alternatives mentioned: OVH, Scaleway, Webtropia, smaller resellers, colocation, and even home or micro‑datacenter setups.
• Colo vs dedicated:
  • Colo can be cheaper at scale but involves hardware purchase, logistics, and “remote hands.”
  • Some praise cheap managed dedicateds (OVH, others) as a middle ground; others stress they share the same unilateral-termination risk.
• Several users highlight that “cloud agnostic” or multi‑cloud designs are expensive in engineering time and often sacrificed for short‑term delivery.

General sentiment about Hetzner

• Broad split:
  • Positive: very cheap, good performance, long‑time users with no incidents, viable for serious business if you design for backups/DR and avoid ToS gray areas.
  • Negative: “cheap for a reason,” perceived volatility, strict KYC, opaque enforcement, bad support, and reports of over‑aggressive shutdowns or deletions.
• Many say they’ll reconsider using Hetzner for critical workloads unless the company clearly explains its processes and provides stronger guarantees around notification and data retention.