Self-hosting on Hetzner

Hetzner comes up constantly in self-hosting threads because of price and its EU location: its cheapest cloud instance runs from about EUR 6 a month. The instance itself is the easy part. Everything after apt install, the firewall, patching, a non-root user, TLS and backups kept off the box, is the real work of running anything on it.

Checked 22 August 2026 against Hetzner's own price API, since the pricing page itself would not render its price widget in four separate attempts.

Why does Hetzner come up so often for this?

Two reasons, and both are real. Price: Hetzner's cheapest cloud instance is well below the equivalent from most competitors people mention alongside it, though this page only carries a verified figure for Hetzner itself and does not put a number on any other provider, since none of them are confirmed against a primary source here. Location: Hetzner's cloud instances run out of Falkenstein, Nuremberg and Helsinki, all inside the EU, which matters to anyone who wants their data to physically sit there rather than on another continent entirely.

Neither reason is settled forever. Third-party sources report Hetzner repricing this line twice during 2026, with published figures differing from each other by around five times. Treat any number you read about Hetzner, including the one below, as a checkpoint rather than a promise, and re-check it the day you actually provision anything, not the day you read this page.

There is a third reason people rarely say out loud: Hetzner is unglamorous. It does not have the marketing presence of the bigger cloud platforms, and its own pricing page is genuinely awkward, its widget would not render prices in four separate attempts while researching this page. That is not the same as the service being unreliable. It is the reason the price has to be pulled from the underlying price API rather than trusted from a marketing page, on Hetzner or on any provider that hides its numbers behind client-side rendering.

What does the cheapest instance actually cost?

From about EUR 6 a month, checked 22 August 2026. The precise figure, read from Hetzner's own price API rather than their pricing page, is below. The API returns no VAT field, so this page cannot say whether either price is inclusive or exclusive of VAT. Confirm the current figures and the VAT treatment yourself before you commit, since a source reprinting last year's number, or this year's, is not something either of us can rule out from here.

What actually happens after apt install?

A fresh instance is a security incident waiting for an address. None of the following is Hetzner-specific; it is the baseline for any VPS from any provider, and skipping it is what turns a cheap server into an expensive lesson.

A firewall that defaults to closed, allowing only what you actually serve:

sudo ufw allow OpenSSH
sudo ufw allow 443/tcp
sudo ufw enable

Unattended security upgrades, so a known vulnerability gets patched whether or not anyone is watching that week:

sudo apt install unattended-upgrades
sudo dpkg-reconfigure --priority=low unattended-upgrades

A non-root user for everything that is not initial setup, so a compromised process cannot walk straight to root:

adduser deploy
usermod -aG sudo deploy

TLS on the domain, not the bare IP address, using a real certificate rather than a self-signed one your browser will warn about:

sudo certbot --nginx -d example.com

And backups that leave the box entirely. A snapshot stored on the same instance it protects is not a backup, it is a second copy of the same failure: if the instance is deleted, or the account is suspended, or the disk fails, the snapshot goes with it. The backup needs to live somewhere else, on a different service, ideally with a different provider, and it needs to have actually been restored at least once so you know the file that comes back is the one that went in. Backing up a feedback board covers what a real restore test looks like, which is the step almost everyone skips.

Can a Hetzner server send email?

Yes, but not on the ports most guides assume. Hetzner blocks outbound ports 25 and 465 by default on every cloud server, and unblocks them only on a limit request, once an account has been with them a month and paid its first invoice, decided case by case. Port 587 is not blocked and needs no request at all, so a server sending through an external mail provider on 587 works from the first minute. The symptom and the fix are in port 25 and 465 blocked on your VPS.

That's why we block ports 25 and 465 by default on all cloud servers. [...] Port 587 is not blocked and can be used without sending a limit request.

Hetzner Cloud, server FAQ

Do volumes and snapshots cost extra?

Yes. Hetzner Cloud volumes and snapshots are billed separately from the instance itself, as their own line items, not folded into the base price above. Budget for them as a distinct cost rather than assuming the instance price covers storage you attach later.

Does an EU server solve data residency?

It helps. It does not settle the question. Running the instance in Falkenstein, Nuremberg or Helsinki means the data physically sits inside the EU, which is a genuine, checkable fact about where the disk is. It says nothing on its own about your processor agreements, sub-processors, backup destinations, or where your monitoring and email providers happen to store their own copies of your data. Data residency is a property of the whole chain, not of one server's postcode. The full picture, and what actually needs checking beyond the server location, is in GDPR and data residency for a self-hosted tool.

Does a support centre actually need Hetzner, or any VPS?

Not necessarily, and it is worth saying plainly here too: Docket does not need one. It runs as a static site plus two small endpoints, so there is no server to firewall, patch or keep a non-root user on. This page is about what it takes to run something that does need a VPS properly, on Hetzner specifically, because plenty of self-hosted tools genuinely do need one, and a reader choosing Hetzner for one of them deserves the real steps rather than a shortcut. The broader case for and against self-hosting at all is in self-hosting a feature request board.

Frequently asked questions