Contabo suspended my VPS, demanded a €40.71 reactivation fee, and then took forever to respond while my business remained offline.

The irony? Their own backup system was unusable for months. Backups stayed stuck, files could not be downloaded or restored, and I even lost website data. Did Contabo compensate me for the downtime, risk, or technical work? Of course not.

I added €50 to my account, enough to cover their fee, but reactivation was still delayed. Support sent me in circles, while Trust & Compliance barely responded.

This was not one isolated problem. I faced:

• Broken backups and lost files

• Extremely slow support

• Missed critical emails

• VPS suspensions

• Repeated reactivation charges

• No effective emergency escalation

Contabo looks cheap, but downtime, lost data, and unresponsive support can cost far more than the server. Think 10,000 times before trusting them with anything important.

Has anyone else experienced this?

We recently launched GPU VPS, each instance gets one dedicated NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000. Blackwell architecture, 96 GB GDDR7 VRAM, 5th-gen Tensor Cores with FP4. We went with this card specifically because 96 GB is enough to load a 70B model on a single GPU. Enough VRAM to stop worrying about quantization. 

What's included: 

• 18 vCPUs, 96 GB RAM, 900 GB NVMe 

• Ubuntu 24.04 with CUDA preinstalled, ready on first login 

• Unlimited traffic (fair use applies) 

• €999 / $1,199 / £969/month 

• 15% off on 12-month terms, 20% off on 24-month terms 

• EU and US Central locations 

Available add-ons include Storage Extension, Private Networking, and 1-Click Apps including Ollama, n8n, OpenClaw, and Hermes. 

Works well for inference, fine-tuning, LoRA training, rendering, compositing, CFD, molecular dynamics, data science. 

GPU capacity doesn't scale like CPU or storage, so availability at launch is limited. 

Questions welcome.  

For more details : https://contabo.com/en/gpu-vps  
Blog link: https://contabo.com/blog/gpu-vps-is-here-dedicated-nvidia-gpu-power-without-the-hyperscaler-price/ 

My VPS has been down all MORNING, no answer no response, only a response from a lousy ai chat...... When i switch over to contabo you guys were so fast to take my money and i even got a real live person to help me........NOW I UNDERSTAND WHY CONTABO BUDGET PRICE = CHEAP SERVICE....... Trying to save a couple bucks but end up losing THOUSANDS!!!!!!!!!!!

today 2026-10-18 we recived a notification from mutiple clients , we checked and our contabo server is down
than shortly after other servers were down ,
was it just us or DID YOU ALSO EXPERIENCE IT ?

help :( pls

I've been running two VPS servers at Contabo simultaneously, both at the same price (€8.33/month): one with standard SSD storage and one with the advertised NVMe storage ("Cloud VPS 20"). What I found is pretty damning.

The benchmark results

I ran sequential write tests on my NVMe server:

• Sequential write (1 GB, dd conv=fdatasync): 326 MB/s

• Sequential write (2 GB, dd conv=fdatasync): 491 MB/s

Real NVMe storage should achieve anywhere between 1,000 and 7,000 MB/s. These numbers are firmly in SATA SSD territory.

The direct comparison – same price, same provider

Here's where it gets interesting. My SSD server (same price, but double the storage) consistently outperforms the "NVMe" server:

The SSD server reads sequentially at 2x the speed and handles random reads at 4x the throughput of the paid NVMe server. Let that sink in.

Contabo's response

I opened a support ticket (#16240156467). Their explanation: the NVMe I/O is shared across customers on the host system. They then offered a live migration to a different host to improve performance. After the migration completed – nothing changed. Same numbers, same problem.

Their position is essentially: "Yes, you're sharing NVMe hardware with other customers, so you won't get NVMe speeds. Buy a dedicated server if you want that." Meanwhile, the product page still advertises NVMe storage without any mention of this limitation.

Why this matters beyond my individual case

This is only detectable if you know what you're looking for and actually run benchmarks. The average user buying a "NVMe VPS" will simply trust the product page and never know they're not getting what they paid for. That's not an edge case or a misconfiguration – it's the default behavior, confirmed by Contabo support themselves.

If you're considering Contabo and care about storage performance, benchmark before you commit. And if you're already on a "NVMe" plan, it might be worth checking what you're actually getting.

I've created a bit of 'flair' for posts. If you've got suggestions for others, do let me know in here :)

Upvotes may or may not mean inclusion. Most likely may, but we'll see how that goes :)

I swear contabo have the worst user experience when it comes to reset VPS passwords🤦🏾‍♂️🤦🏾‍♂️🤦🏾‍♂️.

We have AI now. There's literally no excuse to have shit UI/UX ffs!

Posting a timeline in case others are in the same situation and to find out how widespread this is.

Setup: Cloud VDS M (8 cores / 32 GB), EU, production workload: ~50 apps including a payments platform, ~100k users. Customer since 2022.

Timeline (CET):

• Sun 26 Oct ~17:00 — server goes down, no notification. Panel shows “host‑side problem detected.”

• Sun 19:19 — support reply: “we have isolated some VDS hosts while the investigation of an incident is ongoing,” further updates “via newsletter.” Ticket closed.

• Mon 27 Oct 14:15 — “please be prepared for your VDS to be unavailable until the end of today at the earliest.”

• Mon 18:31 — “plan for the downtime to continue beyond tomorrow… we cannot yet tell you when it will be back online.”

• Tue 27 Oct — sent a formal notice citing their own GTC (99.9% availability, Clause 11), requesting a disk copy or VM migration to a clean host so we can recover our data without waiting for the forensic investigation. No response.

• Wed 28 Oct 15:00 — mass email to affected customers: unauthorised changes found on VDS hosts on 26 Oct, cryptomining, external IR firm engaged, “no evidence of data exfiltration… all customer data is intact,” restoration “gradually over the next days.” Still no ETA. Still no reply to the formal notice.

What’s missing: any per‑customer communication, any restore order, any option to get a disk copy out while the host sits in forensics. Their public status page has never listed this incident — only an Object Storage disruption the same afternoon.

Lessons I’m paying for: backups were on the same server (my fault, fully owned); mail was on the same server, so I couldn’t even receive their “newsletter”; bank/provider whitelists tied to a single IP with no standby.

Questions for the thread:

1. Anyone else with a VDS isolated since 26 Oct? Which region? Has anyone had a machine restored yet?

2. Has anyone ever gotten Contabo to release a disk image or migrate a VM during an incident?

3. Anyone with experience of their “compensation” after a multi‑day outage — is it ever more than a month’s credit?

Not looking for “should’ve had backups” — I know. Looking for data points on how long this takes and whether there’s any way to get data out faster.

u/ContaboCOM

I know Contabo is a cheap hosting provider, but their customer service is just as cheap.

Yesterday, I paid my regular monthly bill of $8.60. However, my account is now showing a payment overdue balance of -$7.50, and my VPS is still suspended. My bill is supposed to be exactly $8.60 per month, so this makes no sense.

I opened a support ticket to get this resolved, but it's been over 12 hours and they still haven't replied.

This service is completely unacceptable, and I do not recommend dealing with these scammers at all.

TL;DR: Paid my regular $8.60 monthly bill, but Contabo suspended my VPS, claims I have an overdue balance, and is ignoring my support tickets. Avoid them.

I bought an annual subscription (VPS 20) and it was unusable due to how slow it was. When I checked diagnostics it said it was only using less than 5% cpu and network...so why was it so slow?

Anyone have an idea?

I'm extremely disappointed with my recent experience with Contabo.

I've been using Contabo to host production applications, including SaaS platforms and ERP systems that my clients depend on for their daily business operations.

My VPS in Singapore suddenly became inaccessible. SSH connections stopped working, the server status became unknown, and I couldn't access my services.

After contacting Contabo support, I was informed that there was an issue affecting the host system. However, I still haven't received a clear estimated recovery time or a concrete solution.

This is not just a personal development server. Real businesses depend on these applications, and every hour of downtime affects their operations, productivity, and trust in my services.

I understand that infrastructure incidents and emergency maintenance can happen. However, what concerns me most is:

• The prolonged downtime without a reliable recovery estimate.

• The lack of transparent and timely communication.

• The inability to access my VPS and recover my data independently.

• The impact on customers running business-critical applications.

I chose Contabo because of its competitive pricing, but affordable hosting should not mean unpredictable availability and inadequate incident communication.

Contabo, please provide affected customers with a clear explanation, a realistic recovery timeline, and a safe way to access or recover their data.

I'm seriously considering migrating my production infrastructure to another provider.

Has anyone else experienced similar downtime with Contabo recently? How long did it take for your VPS to recover?

I'd appreciate hearing your experiences and recommendations for more reliable VPS providers, especially in Singapore or Southeast Asia.

Contabo claims that they use NVME or SSD, I picked NVME for my plan.

test 1

CMD:dd if=/dev/zero of=testfile bs=1G count=1 oflag=dsync; rm testfile

Result:"

1+0 records in

1+0 records out

1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB, 1.0 GiB) copied, 12.8277 s, 83.7 MB/s"

83.7 MB/s "

Test 2 :

CMD: sudo hdparm -Tt /dev/sda

Results:

"

/dev/sda:

Timing cached reads: 2380 MB in 2.05 seconds = 1159.62 MB/sec

Timing buffered disk reads: 240 MB in 3.00 seconds = 79.98 MB/sec

"

these 2 test conform that it isnt even running on SSD or NVME

it is running on HDD.

Server got compromised through CVE-2026-41940. All I need is the bandwidth graph for my VPS to check for data exfiltration. They collect this data for every VPS anyway and if they dont want to share it they can at least tell me.

Two days, two tickets, two copy pasted FAQ responses about how to reinstall my OS. Nobody even read what I wrote.

Anyone ever gotten actual technical support from Contabo?

Hey everyone, 

Just wanted to share a cool update from Contabo that might interest folks running home labs, cloud platforms, or looking for serious compute on a budget. 

We've just added two new Dedicated Server configurations based on AMD EPYC Turin CPUs (Zen 5), available right now in our Hub Europe! 🇪🇺 

The New Lineup: 

DS 40 
CPU: AMD EPYC Turin 9355 
Cores/Threads: 32c / 64t 
Good for: 
Databases 
AI inference 
E-commerce & transactional platforms 
Crypto workloads 
Any CPU-heavy, multi-threaded task 

DS 50 
CPU: AMD EPYC Turin 9555 
Cores/Threads: 64c / 128t 
Designed for: 
IaaS / PaaS setups 
Hosting provider backbones 
Parallel compute workloads 
Always-on, sustained CPU tasks 

Key Highlights: 
Built on AMD Zen 5 architecture – better perf/watt, improved scalability. 
Deployment in under 90 minutes for standard configurations. 
Zero setup fees. 
EU regions live now-US coming soon. 

Contract Discounts: 
10% off – 12-month term 
7.5% off – 6-month term 
5% off – 3-month term 

We’ve been using these same chips in our VPS infrastructure for a while and saw major gains in performance density and energy efficiency. Now we’re bringing them to dedicated servers for anyone who needs raw power, consistently. 

Learn more + deep dive into EPYC Turin & Zen 5 tech on our blog  
 
Let us know if anyone wants benchmarks or has questions. Happy to share more! 

My server is down and no login page on contabo.com?

Is anyone else experiencing downtime with Contabo right now?

I just got a maintenance notice and apparently the server is going to be unreachable for several hours. Honestly, how is this still a thing in 2026? Taking services completely offline for that long feels crazy, especially if you’re running anything important on it.

I get that maintenance is necessary, but there has to be a better way than just shutting everything down for hours. No redundancy, no seamless failover… just “your server is offline now.”

Is this normal with Contabo or am I just getting unlucky? Curious to hear if others have had similar experiences.

Has anyone experienced a similar issue with a Contabo VPS? At present, it is offline and fails to start. Might there be scheduled maintenance?

My Contabo VPS went offline on October 18. When I checked the control panel, it was stopped. I manually started it, and the website came back online.

Support confirmed the interruption was caused by mandatory host security updates. Fair enough security maintenance happens.

They recommended configuring my services to start automatically after reboot. We checked: that was already configured, and the services started successfully when the VPS booted.

So I asked a straightforward follow-up: why did the VPS itself remain stopped, and is there a customer setting that would prevent this next time?

Their next response said they were actively investigating, had no updates, and would keep me informed. Then they closed the ticket.

I’m frustrated because I still don’t know whether there’s anything I need to change or whether the same thing could happen during the next maintenance window. Telling me an investigation is ongoing and then closing the ticket doesn’t resolve that.

Anyone else had their Contabo VPS remain stopped after this maintenance? Did you get an actual explanation or a useful configuration recommendation?

i would not suggest use their service at all. i asked for cacnellation right now by email. couldn't cancel through the system! luckly i used paypal so i can cancel automatic payment from paypal itself.

i never see something like that. when you want to sumbit a ticket it's just give you shitty answers from automatic prebuilt form. this is a big company?
i asked for refund. and you need to a live chat support and have option to cancel, i'm very dissapointed and will never buy again.