Netcup is a German hosting provider that’s been around since 2001. Yes, they’re already a quarter-century old. The company grew up in the “cheap and cheerful” niche and over time gained cult status among geeks, webmasters, and hosting enthusiasts. Website: netcup.eu.
Why Is Netcup Even Discussed?
Because they somehow sell full-fledged VPS and Root Servers cheaper than a cup of coffee at a Berlin airport. Seriously: the RS 1000 G11 plan (4 vCPU, 8 GB RAM, 256 GB NVMe) is €5.75/month without a contract. That’s not a typo.
So what’s the catch? There are three:
- Contract model. Discounted prices apply with a 12- or 24-month agreement. Monthly billing is about 50% more expensive.
- German bureaucracy. Registration requires a passport or ID card and proof of address. Not resident-friendly like DigitalOcean with email-only signup.
- Taxes. For non-EU clients — no VAT (i.e., even cheaper). But you’ll need to figure out the tax nuances yourself.
VPS Plans
Netcup’s VPS line is called vServer. The entry-level model:
| Parameter | vServer 1000 |
|---|---|
| vCPU | 2 |
| RAM | 2 GB |
| NVMe | 50 GB |
| Traffic | 40 TB |
| Price | €3.25/month |
Notice — 40 TB of traffic. Not 1 TB, not 5 TB. Forty. That’s enough even for entry-level video hosting.
The higher-end vServer scales up to 12 vCPU, 48 GB RAM, and 600 GB NVMe for €25/month on contract.
Root Server — If You Need More Power
A signature Netcup offering is the Root Server line. These are dedicated CPU cores (not vCPU with overselling), full resources without neighbors. The entry-level RS 1000 gives you:
- 4 dedicated AMD EPYC cores
- 8 GB DDR5 ECC
- 256 GB NVMe
- 1 Gbit/s port
- €5.75/month (12-month contract)
Higher-end models go up to 32 cores, 128 GB RAM, and multiple terabytes of NVMe. Prices are, again, vastly below market.
Software and Control Panel
Netcup uses a custom panel called CCP (Customer Control Panel). It looks like a hello from the 2010s, but functionally everything is there: server management, DNS, domains, reverse DNS, snapshots, backups, ISO images for installation.
Supported OS: all major Linux distributions (Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS, Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux), plus Windows Server (at an extra license cost).
Worth noting separately: Netcup is an official domain registrar. You can buy a domain and a server in one place. Domain prices are market average: .de around €5/year, .com around €12/year.
Reliability
Over the years, I’ve had two incidents with Netcup: one planned hypervisor reboot (notified a week in advance), one brief network outage (30 minutes, Nuremberg DC). Otherwise, uptime holds at around 99.95%.
Data is stored in Nuremberg data centers — Netcup’s main hub. There’s no cross-geographic backup, so it’s best to arrange your own.
Gotchas
What to know before signing up:
- Verification is mandatory. You can’t sign up without a passport. The process takes a day or two.
- Interface is in German and English. No Russian, but the terminology is standard hosting jargon — you’ll figure it out.
- Support in English and German. If you write in English, they respond normally. Speed: from an hour to a day.
- Cooling-off period. Under German law, you have 14 days to cancel, but the server is only activated after you consent to immediate provisioning.
Verdict
8.5/10. If you’re willing to go through German verification and sign a one-year contract, Netcup offers the best price-to-resource ratio on the market. A Root Server for €5.75 is simply unprecedented.
Not suitable for those who want to sign up in 2 minutes by email and pay monthly with no obligations. For those scenarios, there’s DigitalOcean, Hetzner Cloud, and Vultr.