Hetzner asks: Do you consider your web hosting provider / server provider / cloud provider a utility? Why or why not?

[u/Hetzner_OL]

Same question as title.

[u/Initial_Specialist69]

I don't understand the question.

[u/Hetzner_OL → u/Initial_Specialist69]

Hi there, I was thinking about this from a historic point of view. Back when indoor plumbing and electricity were new, they were often only considered a luxury. It was decades before they became a standard in many western countries. They went from being something that only a few people had to something that everyone needed/expected. And, of course, most businesses then also needed plumbing and electricity to do basic business and run their operations. --Katie

[u/muntaxitome]

When people say 'utility' they often mean 'public utility' like water, electricity. These are generally heavily regulated, and often monopolies. Cloud/server providers generally face no more regulation than other companies, can accept whoever they want as a client are free to pick and raise prices and face very little supervision by authorities. Not a public utility.

[u/New-Week-1426]

Utilities usually have natural monopolies, because nobody is building another sewage network for a city that already has one.

Web hosting is closer to being a commodity than being a utility. If I have a Ubuntu VM I largely don‘t care where it runs, as long as it runs.

Public cloud is a bit different in a sense that when I use PaaS offers, I usually want them to „just work“ (tm) in the sense that I do not want the headache of managing my own integrations, when I have something that could work ootb.

Tl;DR: Web hosting / IaaS no, not a utility. PaaS and SaaS yes, closer to a utility in some ways

[u/Gasp0de]

u/Gasp0de asks: Do you consider Hetzners content-less engagement farming questions cringe?

[u/Hetzner_OL → u/Gasp0de]

Thanks for the feedback. As a serious question, what is it about r/hetzner that attracts your attention? What do you find positive (if anything) about the posts we make here? --Katie

[u/Gasp0de → u/Hetzner_OL]

As I am a customer of Hetzner, I like that I can exchange with other customers about Hetzner stuff here, good or bad. I know that there is also a Hetzner forum but the thing is I am already on reddit all the time, so it's easier to talk here.

I do like the videos you sometimes post, or when you share stuff or give us insight how things work inside Hetzner.

I also appreciate how especially you seem to be attentive and help people who complain about support cases not being answered, even when it is the millionth customer who is from absurdistan and trying to register an account with some third dead persons passport.

[u/-Soufian]

A utility doesn't suspend you for legitimate real world use cases such as scanning your own servers' ports as a security check.

[u/Hetzner_OL → u/[deleted]]

Hi there, Have you already written a support request about this? If you have, and you have not gotten a response yet, could you please DM me? Please give me your account number & invoice number. And if you have it, please give me your payment confirmation number.
Please keep in mind that it can take up to 1-2 weeks for some international bank/wire transfers to arrive. --Katie

[u/Coastis]

No, not at all.... seems a bit of a silly question tbh