What makes up the cost of a dedicated server
The monthly price covers hardware depreciation, rack space with power and cooling, uplink bandwidth, one IPv4 address and the work of on-site engineers. In the price list this collapses into a single line: from $49 for a Xeon E3 with 16 GB ECC up to $149 for a dual-socket machine with 64 GB and four NVMe drives in RAID10. Everything beyond the base configuration counts as an option and is added to the invoice monthly.
- The base plan already includes hardware, uplink, one IPv4, power and hosting — you do not budget for them separately.
- Four price multipliers: CPU generation and socket count, ECC memory size, disk type and count, uplink width with its traffic quota.
- Monthly options: extra IPv4 $5, KVM/IPMI access $5, server administration $30, extra 1 TB HDD $15, backup to external storage $10.
What the base price includes
A server is more than a CPU and disks. You pay for a rack unit, power, cooling and a switch port, and for an engineer walking up to the machine when a drive fails. DDoS filtering is in there too: the German and US sites give L3/L4, Pro plans and above add L7, and the French site runs Anti-DDoS Arbor.
Traffic is a separate line in the provider's own costs. That is why plans use different uplink formulas: 100 Mbps unmetered, 1 Gbps unmetered, or 1 Gbps with a 30 TB quota. What those numbers mean in practice is covered in server uplink: Mbps, unmetered and traffic limits.
The four price multipliers
| Plan | Location | CPU | RAM | Disks | Uplink | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dedicated Start DE | Germany | Xeon E3-1230v5 | 16 GB ECC | 2×500 GB SSD, RAID1 | 100 Mbps unlimited | $49 |
| Dedicated Start FR | France | Xeon E3-1270v6 | 16 GB ECC | 2×500 GB SSD, RAID1 | 500 Mbps unlimited | $55 |
| Dedicated Start US | USA | Xeon E3-1270v6 | 16 GB ECC | 2×500 GB SSD, RAID1 | 1 Gbps, 30 TB | $59 |
| Dedicated Pro US | USA | Xeon E5-2680v4 | 32 GB ECC | 2×1 TB NVMe, RAID1 | 1 Gbps unlimited | $89 |
| Dedicated Pro FR | France | Xeon E5-2680v4 | 32 GB ECC | 2×1 TB NVMe, RAID1 | 1 Gbps unlimited | $95 |
| Dedicated Pro DE | Germany | Xeon E5-2680v4 | 32 GB ECC | 2×1 TB NVMe, RAID1 | 1 Gbps unlimited | $99 |
| Dedicated Enterprise US | USA | 2× Xeon E5-2680v4 | 64 GB ECC | 4×1 TB NVMe, RAID10 | 1 Gbps unlimited | $149 |
Start DE to Pro DE is plus $50 for double the memory, NVMe instead of SSD and a ten times wider uplink. Pro US to Enterprise US is plus $60 for a second CPU, another 32 GB of memory, RAID10 instead of RAID1 and KVM/IPMI access included. Identical Pro configurations in three countries differ by $10: that is the cost of the site and transit, not of the hardware.
Paid options
| Option | Price per month | When you need it |
|---|---|---|
| Extra IPv4 | $5 | Separate addresses for sites, a mail node, virtual machines |
| KVM/IPMI access | $5 | Any custom OS, BIOS work, reboot and console without support tickets |
| Server administration | $30 | No in-house system administrator |
| Extra 1 TB HDD | $15 | Archives, video, a local copy of backup data |
| Backup to external storage | $10 | Off-server copies are mandatory, not a luxury |
On Enterprise US the KVM/IPMI access is already included and needs no surcharge. Why that access matters on the other plans and what it gives you during an outage is covered in IPMI and KVM-over-IP.
Count the total, not the price-list line
Take a typical online store on Dedicated Pro DE. Base $99, plus two extra IPv4 addresses ($10), plus backup to external storage ($10), plus KVM/IPMI ($5). That is $124 per month, or $1,488 per year. With no in-house administrator add $30, and the total becomes $154 per month. That is the figure to compare against alternatives, including colocating your own hardware.
Verify on day one that you got the configuration you paid for:
# CPUs and cores
lscpu | grep -E 'Model name|Socket|Core\(s\)'
# memory modules: size, type, speed
sudo dmidecode -t memory 2>/dev/null | grep -E 'Size:|Speed:|Type:'
# disks and whether they spin (ROTA=1 means mechanical)
lsblk -d -o NAME,MODEL,SIZE,ROTA
# uplink port speed
sudo ethtool eno1 2>/dev/null | grep -i speed
Saving $5 on KVM/IPMI access costs more than the access itself the first time something goes wrong. A failed kernel upgrade, a typo in fstab or a broken network config leaves the machine without SSH, and without a console you see neither the boot screen nor the initramfs prompt. How to confirm you are ready: before touching the bootloader or the network, log into the KVM console, make sure you see POST output, and check that the server starts in rescue mode.
When cheaper is not better value
The $49 Start plan will serve a corporate site, a small online store or a couple of containerised services. But if the project writes tens of thousands of transactions per hour, the SSD mirror hits its IOPS ceiling long before the CPU does. The cost comparison between a virtual machine and your own hardware under the same load is in dedicated server or VPS, and current configurations are listed under dedicated servers.
Key takeaways
- The base price is hardware, rack, power, uplink, one IPv4 and DDoS filtering.
- CPU generation, ECC size, disk type and uplink formula explain almost all of the gap between plans.
- The $10 gap between Pro DE, Pro FR and Pro US is site and transit cost; the hardware is the same.
- Compare the annual total with the options you need, not the lowest line in the price list.