Online.net is the best low cost dedicated server provider, period! Well… for our specific needs in any case.
UPDATE: Since writing this article online.net have significantly increased their prices, I ended up moving a lot of infrastructure to Hetzner instead, that said, even with the increased price €24.99 ex vat is still a great price for 1gbps unmetered and ideal for a caching server.
For a site that brings in very little money, fanart.tv has massive bandwidth requirements to deal with. Our situation is probably quite unique, most sites with the kind of bandwidth we generate have lots of money to spend. We don’t, and for our specific use case, no other provider comes close.
Where online.net does absolutely dominate however, is with the Dedibox® XC 2016; as a dedicated caching server, there is absolutely nothing that comes close. For €15.99 /month with €20 setup fees, you get an Intel C2750, with 16GB Ram,a 250GB SSD and an unmetered 1Gbps on a 2.5Gbps connection.
Admittedly, the performance of the SSD isn’t great; and the C2750, while having 8 cores, is no powerhouse. But none of that matters. For the purposes of serving static content, the performance is stellar. We average around 600Mbps. Every day we burst to around 1.3Gbps (usually not for long). That would not be possible with any other provider at anywhere near this price.
So why aren’t they out and out the best choice? Well, SYS allows you to buy IPs with just a one off payment, Online.net charge you a setup fee and a monthly fee. This can get expensive fast if you are virtualising through something like Proxmox. The monthly fee for IPs is for the previous month, so if you cancel an IP you still have another payment to make that you wouldn’t necessarily expect.
Talking of cancelling, Online.nets policy is you have to cancel before the 20th of the month, otherwise you have to pay for the next month. Whether you want the server or not. SYS on the other hand, don’t want the server? Don’t pay for the server. No muss, no fuss.
Online.net also charge setup fees, which may be a deal breaker for some. I can understand why they do it. At the prices they charge they need customers to keep the server for as long as possible. Setup fees do discourage changing servers on a whim, but it’s something to consider.
Network is another potential differentiator. SYS(OVH) has a bigger network. More POP’s; more network capacity; and personally I found ping times to be slightly lower when I was on the OVH network. On the other hand that’s like saying Usain Bolt is faster than Tyson Gay. It may be true, but it makes no difference when considering who you have the most chance of beating in a race. Likewise, both networks are world class. Both have had issues in the past with oversaturation and both have added extra links and capacity.
Hetzners bandwidth limits have meant they have never been in contention for us. With monthly bandwidth usage between 200TB — 350TB it just isn’t feasible.
If you have a lot of money behind you, you may be better of going with OVH (the parent of SYS), as they have a lot of cool technology that isn’t available otherwise. Load balancing IPs, vRack, and their own object storage come to mind. For the rest of us with limited means. Who want a top class server and aren’t frightened off by the setup fees. The Dedibox® Classic 2016 and Dedibox® MD 2017 in particular are incredible value for money. The Dedibox® XC 2016 is untouchable.
The absolute biggest issue with online.net is stock availability. It can be hard to get hold of the server you want, but they are definitely worth the wait.
