Ask HN: Insanely Cheap Storage, Why? Hetzner Storage Box
Storage boxes on hetzner gives you:
- 1TB of data - Unlimited Transfer
for less than 4 euros. What are the downsides of this? It seems insanely low pricing. Is it unreliable/slow?
https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-box?country=de
In this technical retrospective (2023), @TigerTeamX shares practical architectural lessons learned from running, scaling, or migrating production software under lean constraints.
Core Principles for Independent Builders:
Defaulting to simpler architectures (such as monolithic frameworks, SQLite, or managed VPS) prevents early engineering bankruptcy.
Evaluating true compute and egress costs reveals that high cloud bills can often be slashed by 80%+ through judicious re-platforming.
Code you write at 2 AM as a solo engineer must be easy to debug six months later without complex microservice dependencies.
Community Debate Themes:
HN engineers debated the tradeoffs between cloud convenience and raw server economics, database indexing strategies, and resisting premature architectural complexity.
CATEGORY Frugal Engineering →
HISTORICAL ERA Post-ZIRP & AI (2023–2026)
COMMUNITY SCORE ★ 4 points
TOTAL DISCUSSIONS 2 comments
I’ve tried two times (once 1 year ago and one more time one month ago) without success to register an account on Hetzner. They always end up either directly rejecting me or asking for my ID/passport. There’s simply no chance I’m giving a copy of my passport (which is not even a guarantee of admission) to such a private company. I guess I’ll stay with digital ocean.
It’s a) a mixed calculation. Not everyone is using the 1TB and the Transfer. b) Storage at scale is cheap. c) Transfer is even cheaper at scale. d) It’s “only” on one Server with a raid system e.g. no cloud with multiple copy’s.
Storage is cheap. I personally wouldn't buy into this because a 1TB drive is only like $30 nowadays, but you do you.
Because that's what it costs when you're not maximizing shareholder profits or paying silicon valley wages.