Hetzner Cloud Expands to Singapore
In this technical retrospective (2024), @matteocontrini 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 26 points
TOTAL DISCUSSIONS 64 comments
Thanks to the OP for posting our good news! We really appreciate it! :D Just in case anyone would like some more detailed information about our new cloud location:
https://www.hetzner.com/cloud/ ↗
Hetzner Docs, Cloud locations: https://docs.hetzner.com/cloud/general/locations ↗ Hetzner Docs, Cloud Networks: https://docs.hetzner.com/cloud/networks/faq#can-networks-span-multiple-locations ↗ --Katie (Hetzner Online)
Thanks for posting about our good news! Here's some additional information about the new location: Hetzner Docs, Cloud locations: https://docs.hetzner.com/cloud/general/locations ↗ Hetzner Docs, Cloud Networks: https://docs.hetzner.com/cloud/networks/faq#can-networks-span-multiple-locations ↗ What's new, Cloud: https://docs.hetzner.cloud/whats-new ↗ --Katie, Hetzner
I maintain a list[0] of tunneling software a la ngrok or Cloudflare Tunnel and open source alternatives. I'm considering entering the commercial market and offering a hosted solution.
These services tend to have very low CPU/RAM requirements, but relatively high network usage. This led me to comparing network usage pricing across VPS providers.
Somewhat ironically, Hetzer's pricing (20TB/mo for a $5 VPS) is so good that it makes me worried to build on them, because I could go from huge margins to losing money overnight if they ever raised them.
[0]: https://github.com/anderspitman/awesome-tunneling ↗
Seems quite pricey to me:
CPX11 - 2 shared vCPU, 2 GB RAM, 40 GB, 1TB bandwidth, €7.90 + VAT
CCX13 - 2 dedicated vCPU, 8 GB RAM, 80 GB, 1TB bandwidth, €21.50 + VAT
For comparison with Germany, Finland and US with 20 TB bandwidth: CCX12 is €4.35 + VAT, CCX13 is €12.49 + VAT
People have been asking for other regions for a long time, but Hetzner is usually extremely good price for the specs but in this case the bandwidth allowance is very low (and €7.40+VAT/TB overage) and there are other providers (e.g. greencloud) who can beat this with their standard prices and massively beat this when they run promotions.
I hope storage boxes come to Singapore, they're ridiculously affordable for backups. I don't see it happening though, considering the US datacenter still doesn't have them available. I can dream I guess - the ping from AU to EU/US is so high that it takes months to backup to them, but nothing else is affordable unless you're only backing up a few TB.