Comment by luckylion
3 years ago
I really like Hetzner (very inexpensive and generally good quality), but their TOS are difficult and their DMCA is just broken.
The TOS are vague. You're not allowed to "violate the rights of third parties", but they don't have a clear policy on what is a violation. If you review a product and the company files a DMCA, they may or may not say that naming a brand is a violation (I've experienced them coming down on both sides of the issue), when it's clearly fair use.
For DMCA claims, they tell you to use a form to reply, but the responses from the form will not be received and/or read reliably, so half the time you get a follow up email after 24h saying you haven't replied, so they will now manually check resolution and might block your server.
Tech and pricing are fine and I recommend them, legal is an issue, and I'd include some "but only if you're in an industry where DMCA claims are unheard of" caveat with my recommendation.
Their ToS states that cryptocurrency mining is forbidden (which is fair). But, comments from hetzner officials on social media clarify that Ethereum nodes (even if they don't produce any blocks) are also against their ToS.
This is like mentioning in your rule-book that metal toothpicks are forbidden because I don't know, people can short your batteries or whatever. But also banning wooden toothpicks without mentioning this in your rule-book.
Their ToS are not always vague but the way their terms are executed is definitely arbitrary.