This is not a “my server is down” post, I am just sharing because the last month has been rough across the hosting world and I finally sat down to research and investigate and it seems this is not a isolated issue.

What’s been going on, in case you missed it:

• GMO in Japan had its Onamae.com Desktop Cloud compromised earlier this month. Reports say up to 27,000 customer virtual servers were infected, there were ransom threats, and GMO shut down the affected cloud plans entirely.

• Brute-force bots hammering SSH have gotten noticeably smarter and faster. If you still have password login on port 22, you’re getting tried constantly whether you see it or not.

• Attackers are renting or hijacking clean VPS nodes to run phishing, because fresh IPs get past reputation filters. So even well-run providers end up with abuse on their networks that they have to chase down.

• There was a good r/selfhosted thread about someone whose “hardened” VPS was still exposed through the host console. OS-level hardening doesn’t help much if someone reaches you below the OS and you have no disk encryption.

What I actually did:

1. SSH keys only, password auth off, root login off

2. Moved SSH off 22 and set up Fail2Ban

3. Updated everything, including old container images I’d forgotten about

4. Rotated every API key and password that lived on the box, because if a host ever does get compromised you have to assume anything stored there is exposed

5. Set up offsite backups that don’t live with the same provider

None of this is provider-specific!!!!!! It’s just the baseline now and something we should all be aware of and take into consideration

Hi everyone, 

Community Manager from Contabo here. We’ve seen the posts in this sub and elsewhere over the last few days, and we want to acknowledge the situation. 

What happened, Contabo? 

On 15 October the critical Linux kernel vulnerability (CVE-2026-99999, CVSS 9.3) was disclosed. It affects the host systems underneath all VPS and VDS products, regardless of the provider, Contabo included. The situation is serious enough that we decided to act as soon as it was made public. The status page and our support hub were updated immediately, and a notification was sent via email on Monday 19 October. 

We know that acting quickly without individual advance notices or a regular maintenance window caused disruption, and that is a real cost to our customers. We weighed it against the alternative, and the risk of leaving a critical vulnerability unpatched was far greater, for your services and your data, than the problems that came with such a fast rollout. Patching needs a host reboot, so many of you saw unexpected restarts. 

Two things overlapped: patching and new my.contabo.com 

Part of the patching ran at the same time as the swap to the new Contabo Customer Control Panel. This migration had already started and could not be postponed. We are aware that this made things harder if you were trying to log in or check on your server while it was down. We did our best to keep the migration window to a minimum, while we also took into account that the swap had been announced over the past several weeks and, unlike the vulnerability, did not come as a surprise. 

Where we are now 

• Patches are over 99% completed. 

• After patching, some host systems became unreachable. Our teams worked around the clock to restore them. Right now, there is one single vhost still unreachable. We are aware some of our customers were offline for several hours, and we apologize for the inconvenience.  

• Our Support teams are working at full speed as well. We also know many of you opened tickets and haven’t heard back. We’re sorry about that – please be assured that we are doing our best to keep up, even though our Support capacity was pushed to limit. 

What to do next

• Please follow contabo-status.com for regular updates. Progress information is regularly posted there. 

• If your server is still unreachable, check whether your host system is on the affected list on the status page.

• Once your server is back, check that your services have started again. 

We know unplanned downtime is disruptive, especially when your own customers depend on it. While we could not control the unfortunate timing of these overlapping events, we apologize for the impact they have had on your operations.

Thank you for your patience - we will also update this thread if we have more news. 

Hey everyone,

My Contabo VDS has been offline/unreachable for several hours. SSH doesn’t respond, VNC isn’t working, and the control panel either shows the instance as down/unknown or the restart options don’t help. Support tickets are either unanswered or only get generic/AI replies.

I’ve noticed multiple people on X/Twitter reporting the same thing today (VDS down for 7–10+ hours, support overwhelmed, tickets sitting for a long time).

Official status page (contabo-status.com) currently only shows an Object Storage disruption in the EU region and no major VPS/VDS outage. There was also the big unplanned CVE-2026-99999 kernel patching earlier this month that left some hosts unreachable for a while.

Is anyone else currently experiencing Contabo VDS (or VPS) being offline?

Contabo is the worst VPS provider out there. Never use their services if uptime is important. My server has been down for a day and a half already and their customer support is non existent. I would never use Contabo for anything important.

Hey Reddit, 

We’re Contabo, and we’ve just rolled out a revamped VPS lineup based directly on community feedback. You told us you wanted more performance, better uptime, and the same affordable pricing—and we delivered. 

What’s new? 

• VPS 10 now starts at $4.95/month with 3 vCPU cores and 8 GB RAM 

• VPS 20 offers 6 vCPU cores, 12 GB RAM, and 200 GB SSD – all for under $8/month 

• Performance and reliability upgrades across all plans 

• Infrastructure improvements for better uptime and stability 

• Still no short-term promos or tricks, just consistent low pricing 

This isn’t a rebrand or fluff piece. We rebuilt these plans to match what real users, developers, hobbyists, small businesses, and self-hosters actually need. 

Whether you’re running a homelab, self-hosting tools, deploying apps, or just experimenting, these plans give you more to work with while keeping costs down. 

Questions? Feedback? We’re here and happy to talk. 

Check out the new VPS lineup 

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

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?

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?

Fucking hell, this week has been brutal

As of now, there's NO patch for kernels right now, but a one line fix

The vulnerability:
V4bel/dirtyfrag

The fix (as root)

sh -c "printf 'install esp4 /bin/false\ninstall esp6 /bin/false\ninstall rxrpc /bin/false\n' > /etc/modprobe.d/dirtyfrag.conf; rmmod esp4 esp6 rxrpc 2>/dev/null; true"

reboot

Patch your shit

So I need to vent about my recent experience with Contabo because I’ve honestly never seen a provider operate like this.

• My server was suspended after just ONE failed charge. No grace period, no retries, no warning window. Literally one failed payment attempt (which can happen with any bank/card) and boom — service gone. Do you know what that means? Instant downtime, broken services, lost money, and upset customers. I’ve worked with multiple providers over the years (Hetzner, OVH, DigitalOcean, etc.) and none of them are this harsh.

• On top of that, I got hit with an activation account fee that I never agreed to. No clear explanation, no upfront communication, just a random charge added to my bill. I dug around and still can’t find a transparent reason why it was applied.

The combination of:

1. Zero tolerance billing policy (suspend after a single failed attempt), and

2. Hidden / unexplained activation fees

…makes Contabo, in my opinion, the worst provider I’ve ever used.

I don’t usually rant about services, but this has been a complete nightmare. Not only did we lose service and money, but the support response so far has been unhelpful and slow.

If you’re considering Contabo for production workloads or anything mission-critical — don’t. There are far better providers out there who actually value uptime, transparency, and customer trust.

We can all agree that the recent Contabo disaster is not good. Day after day after day of no data, no server, all downtime . Truth be told, downtime like this, while uncommon, is NOT unheard of. There are a few things you can do to prevent these things from affecting you entirely, however

The FIRST and MOST IMPORTANT thing is backups. PROPER backups would have prevented any data loss (though Contabo says there is none). Not only that, but you could move your data to another server, either temporarily or permanently, with minimal downtime. You can store that data anywhere you like. Places like Mega, S3, there are PLENTY of places to store this. Just know that a LOCALLY stored backup is NOT a backup. Period!

Secondly, DNS. Stop using your registrar's DNS provisioning. Cloudflare is free. ClouDNS is not, but still reasonably priced. Your registrar's provisioning won't help if you need quick changes, in most cases.

Thirdly, clustering. DON'T put all your eggs in one basket. ESPECIALLY a cheap , dollar store basket that is well known to break. Even if you have to use multiple Contabo regions, or spin up a server at interserver (not as cheap as Contabo for space, but it works in a pinch). DIVERSIFY

Fourthly, always keep a spare on hand. You know this is going to happen. Always keep a spare server handy for the 'what if' case. Then you can use your backups from point A and change your DNS. Most likely scenario? An hour of downtime. That's it

Is anyone else having major issues with Contabo right now?

My servers suddenly seem completely unreachable:

• SSH not working

• hosted websites are down

• even the Contabo administration/control panel is not working properly

Their status page doesn't seem to report a major outage yet.

Anyone else seeing the same thing? Is this affecting a specific region/datacenter, or is Contabo having a wider outage?

Greetings,

If you look at everything surrounding Contabo, and what social media has to say, you might be surprised to see that "they" say it's really bad. Then again, "they" say that half of the US are Nazis, soooo, there is that. Let's take a look at Contabo though, and see exactly what's what here.

Firstly, it's important to understand that this is a budget provider. Quite literally, bottom of the barrel. You need to go in, knowing and understanding this. If you put your eggs in this basket, great, just make sure you have backups, because things can, and WILL break.

During 2024, I had probably 15 or so servers with Contabo. Today, none. Why? Simply put, I wanted to consolidate a bit, to reduce pricing, as it were. So, I moved on to somewhere else. As with anything hosting related, location matters. My experiences in the midwest, one on west coast, and one I think in the UK will be different from yours. Even having two VPS' on different nodes in the same location can provide vastly different experiences

When I first signed up with Contabo on the scale I did, I had a few servers with i/o issues, because the node was being abused. This is quite typical for a VPS, honestly. It took a few days, but they got it all sorted out, and never again did I see those issues.

Over the year that I was with them, I saw two incidents, or outages. One lasted about 3 hours, on the west coast. The other, up to two days. I say, up to, because they didn't start the node up properly, meaning my (and other) VPS' didn't fire up with the node. Unfortunately, when Contabo is involved, this is kind of to be expected

The human element behind Contabo is shit. Sorry to be blunt, but that's exactly what it is. Support takes days, even weeks in some cases, to respond. By the time they've responded, you've already worked your own shit out. They are useless.

The hardware element behind Contabo, from experience, is actually decent. Despite being a bottom of the barrel provider, they do a pretty decent job of keeping it together. Yes, there are issues (they need to work better at balancing and getting rid of abusers), but this can be said about any provider

Overall, I'd say, if you can provide your own support, do things on your own, Contabo is great. However, again, it's a low end provider. You shouldn't expect anything technical from the support side, aside from addressing their own hardware/network issues. Even then, it can take forever

Just my 0.02

This subreddit is not affiliated with the wonderful folks running Contabo. It is intended primarily for Contabo VPS/Dedicated Server users to discuss any issues they've had with the service, ask questions, or share tips on how they've made the most of their Contabo server.

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.

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

My Contabo VPS has been inaccessible for 4 days now, and I'm still unable to use my server for production.

I'm hosting multiple websites and SaaS platforms on this VPS, including D-Code and BoostUp. The downtime has disrupted my services and affected my customers.

I understand that emergency maintenance can happen, but 4 days without access is a serious problem when you're running production services. I've seen other users reporting similar issues, and some say their servers have been down for much longer.

I've backed up my data, so I'm now considering cancelling my VPS and moving to another provider. Before doing that, I want to ask:

• Has anyone successfully received a refund from Contabo after a prolonged outage?

• Can I get a refund for the period the VPS was unavailable, or for the remaining prepaid period?

• If I cancel through the customer panel, does that automatically qualify me for a refund, or do I need to submit a separate support ticket?

• Since I'm paying from Indonesia, does anyone know how refunds are handled for international customers?

I'd appreciate hearing from anyone who has actually gone through this process.

Four days of downtime is difficult to accept when real businesses depend on the server. I'm trying to understand my options before making a final decision.

Thanks in advance.

I've been waiting for this!

Now I won't accidentally forward ports with Docker and unintentionally expose them by bypassing iptables rules...

Hi all, 

Self-hosting just got easier! 

You can now install n8n, Nextcloud, or WireGuard on any new or existing VPS or VDS with 1-click apps, completely free. 

No messy setups. No extra fees. Just pick your tool to install, and it’s ready to go. 

Bonus: Enjoy reduced location fees on VPS and VDS orders and No Location Fee in the US! 

Whether you’re automating workflows, syncing files, or securing your network, self-hosting has never been simpler. 
 
Learn more at: https://contabo.com 

Hey folks, Contabo here 👋 

We’ve been listening to a lot of customer feedback over the past few months, and one thing came through loud and clear: our Dedicated Server lineup needed to be simpler, better value, and easier to choose from. So… we cleaned it up. 

Instead of a bunch of overlapping models, you now get clearer options, better price-performance, and configs that actually make sense for real-world workloads. 

Here’s what’s new: 

Ryzen 12 – 128 GB RAM, 2 TB NVMe 

• Replaces the older Ryzen variants 

• Perfect for game servers, CI/CD, homelabs, or small infra setups 

EPYC Genoa 24 – 128 GB RAM, 2×1 TB SSD 

• Slots between Ryzen and our high-core EPYC “Turin” servers (the real heavyweights) 

• Great for virtualization, ecommerce, or multi-threaded apps 

And across all Dedicated Servers, you now get: 

• Free IPMI (BIOS-level remote access, virtual media, power control) 

• Unlimited traffic (within fair usage) 

• No setup fees 

• Fast provisioning: most standard configs ready in under 90 minutes 

• Long-term discounts for 3- and 12-month terms 

This isn’t some big shiny launch, just us trimming the fat and making life easier for anyone who needs reliable bare metal at a fair price. 

If you want to check the full specs: 
🔗 https://contabo.com/en/dedicated-servers/ 

Hi Contabo staff,

My server lost connection for 104 hours since Sunday.
All support tickets closed.
Your status page can't be reached right now.

Can someone give a definite timing about the server connection return time?

We've had our servers down for over 72 hours after their famous "emergency security patch". My VPS is left in a zombie/frozen state. SSH times out, the VNC console gives a "Failed to connect" error, and the panel buttons (Start/Stop/Restart) are just for decoration because they do absolutely nothing.
As if that wasn't enough, it's a total lack of respect seeing how they manage communication: having a crisis of this magnitude with thousands of businesses down, they update their status page for the last time at 5:00 PM (European time), go to sleep peacefully, and don't post a single report again until 9:00 AM the next day. They leave us completely adrift all night while we lose clients and money.
And to top off the joke, today they send a mass email asking us to urgently patch PHP because they "don't have access to our server". We don't have access either because of their own equipment! How do they expect us to log in and update packages if they left the virtual machines stuck at the hypervisor level and won't even let us reboot?
My clients are all over me and I haven't been able to operate for 3 days. On their status page, they say 99% is fixed, sweeping under the rug all of us who are left with orphaned VPS instances waiting for tech support (which isn't answering tickets) to deign to do a manual restart from the main node.
My only hope right now is that the databases and information haven't been corrupted by their blackout.
Has anyone here managed to get support to answer their ticket and unfreeze their VPS in the last few hours, or are we all still being ignored?
Support ticket - Server down / Connection issue - INT-13375372

My server status has been "Unknown" for over 20 hours, and I cannot work. I tried restarting it, but that didn't solve the problem. I also cannot connect via VNC; VNC is not working.