Contabo review: VPS powerhouse on a budget

Contabo is a German hosting provider known for its Cloud VPS, Cloud VDS, and dedicated server hosting. Since its services are unmanaged, users handle the setup themselves, keeping prices impressively low.

In this Contabo review, I share my firsthand experience testing its Cloud VPS servers, focusing on pricing, performance, and customer support. You’ll also get an inside look at what it’s like to set up and run a Contabo VPS from scratch.

My verdict

✅ Choose Contabo if you’re looking for a cheap VPS with more entry resources than other providers: VPS plans start at $3.96/month (similar to Hostinger) and include 3 vCPU cores, 8GB RAM, and 75GB NVMe storage.

❌ Avoid Contabo if comprehensive security is your main priority – the provider doesn’t include basic security measures. Try Hostinger VPS instead – it offers Wanguard DDoS filtering and a firewall.

	Hostinger VPS	Contabo
⭐ Rating:	4.9 ★ ★ ★ ★ ★	4.2 ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆
💵 Price:	From $5.84/month	From $3.96/month
📑 Uptime guarantee:	99.9%	99.99%
🔥 Coupons:	Hostinger VPS coupon 73% OFF!	Cybernews Web Hosting Coupons
Storage space (from):	50 GB NVMe	75GB NVMe
✂️ Free domain (first year):	No	No
🔒 Free SSL certificate:	Yes	No
➡️ Site migration:	No	-
💾 Automated backups:	Yes (weekly)	For an extra fee
📧 Email accounts:	No	No
👨‍💻 24/7 live support:	Yes	No
💰 Money-back guarantee:	30-day	14-day

Pros and cons of Contabo

Contabo plans and pricing

Contabo mainly focuses on unmanaged VPS hosting services, with the price starting at $3.96/month. Other options include shared hosting, VDS, and dedicated servers. While shared, VDS, and dedicated plans are nothing exceptional with their pricing, VPS is definitely affordable.

Hosting type	Pricing	Best for
Cloud VPS	From $3.96/month	Quick and powerful unmanaged server hosting solution
Cloud VDS	From $27.52/month	More flexibility for those who need dedicated-level power
Dedicated servers	From $86.40/month	Enterprise hosting needs

Check Contabo pricing

Contabo offers unmanaged VPS servers, which are cheaper than the managed solutions. I think the starting price of $3.96/month is one of the most affordable VPS plans on the market. By comparison, Hostinger’s VPS entry plan costs $5.84/month – just a little bit more than Contabo.

Compared to Hostinger, I find Contabo’s pricing a bit better. Unlike Hostinger’s KVM 1 plan with 1 vCPU and 4GB RAM, Contabo’s VPS 10 plan includes 3 vCPUs and 8GB RAM. The resources are almost double, and almost at the same price.

In terms of refund policy, Contabo offers a 14-day money-back guarantee. If you want to cancel, you have to notify the provider within this period after the purchase has been made. At the same time, extra fees associated with the account will not be refunded.

Contabo ease of use

Contabo offers unmanaged VPS servers, which means that setting up requires more technical expertise than a managed server or a shared hosting account.

For this review, I purchased the Contabo Cloud VPS 10 package, which includes 3 vCPUs, 8GB RAM, and 150GB SSD storage. The provisioning of resources took around three hours. After that, I received my login credentials from Contabo by email.

I really enjoyed the seamlessness of setting up and purchasing a Contabo VPS. The user journey just makes a lot of sense. I could select all the specifications for my server before completing the purchase. What I especially appreciated was that I was allowed to set my root credentials before checkout.

With some other VPS providers I’ve tested, this is not always the case. More often than not, I had to look around and figure out for myself how to set my root credentials. For example, DreamHost specifically uses specific keys, but I’m still not 100% sure how to work with them. So in comparison, Contabo’s setup process is refreshing.

For this review, I decided to try to set up a Minecraft server on Contabo. The provider even provides a tutorial on how to do this. However, I later found out that the tutorial is a bit outdated, which was disappointing.

Instead of using the Contabo built-in terminal, I logged in to my server using Termius. It’s a terminal application I prefer to use for security reasons and because I find most native OS or built-in terminals to be a bit laggy. So, I logged in to my server through Termius without any delays or other issues. I was glad – this means the automatic Contabo server setup ran smoothly.

I had some issues with compiling due to accidentally downloading outdated Java files. It took me a few tries to set everything up, but this was because of the outdated tutorial – there were no issues from the server side.

After I downloaded the Minecraft files and executed the required commands, the world was successfully generated. I could easily log into my new Minecraft server and start playing.

Contabo performance

Testing and reviewing performance is essential when deciding if Contabo holds up in terms of reliability and speed. Overall, the tests showed good performance, especially compared to its low prices. I was a bit surprised, but ultimately very pleased. And while the results are not extraordinary by any means, I can confidently say that Contabo VPS is a reliable and fast hosting solution.

Uptime result

I monitored Contabo for 50 days. The results I got from the SSH command showed that the VPS project was up and running for exactly 50 days. This essentially results in a 100% uptime. What it means for those interested in using Contabo for their own projects is that this provider is highly reliable.

Response time

I ran server response time tests for Contabo in 5 different locations. The overall response time results ranged from 36ms to 384ms. This is a very good result, staying well below the industry average and quite close to other top VPS providers. For example, Liquid Web VPS tests resulted in a 110ms average response time – Contabo is pretty close to that.

The fastest response time was Dallas, coming in at a lightning-fast 36ms. Meanwhile, Hong Kong came in last but at a still very speedy 384ms. Truth be told, I had expected the discrepancy in speed due to the testing locations.

My server is located in the US, which explains the excellent results for Dallas and Seattle. After all, the shorter physical distance helps to minimize latency. Meanwhile, Hong Kong is on the other side of the world from my server location. Therefore, the slower response times reflect the longer physical distance.

It’s worth noting here that Contabo has servers in nine regions: America (New York City, Seattle, St. Louis), the European Union, the UK, Singapore, Japan, Australia, and India. The number of data center locations has increased over the years. Contabo started out with just two in 2014, in 2022 it had five, and now it covers 12.

Geekbench scores

Finally, I tested Contabo to figure out its Geekbench score. In case you aren’t familiar with it, Geekbench is a set of benchmarks that measure processor and memory performance. It runs a series of tests that mimic real-world tasks and applications to time how long the processor takes to complete the tasks. Higher scores are better since they mean that the CPU completes the tests faster.

This is what the tests returned: single core at 616 and multicore at 1942. While I wasn’t overwhelmingly impressed with these results, they’re still pretty solid. Especially considering that I tested on the cheapest server. Chances are that more expensive plans would yield better results.

Ideally, I’d like to see higher scores for both single-core and multicore. But, I find myself far more forgiving when I take into account Contabo’s cheap pricing. Since its entry plan is only $3.96/month, these scores are acceptable as far as I’m concerned.

Contabo security

Contabo primarily offers unmanaged servers, which means that full-stack security is not included in its plans. Therefore, when I was setting up my project, I had to independently take care of SSL certificates and firewalls. Thankfully, there are free solutions like Cloudflare, but if I wanted anything fancier than basic SSL or WAF, I’d have to pay extra. However, having little to no security is expected with an unmanaged VPS solution, so I wasn’t very surprised.

However, Contabo security is not completely empty. The provider does include some very basic solutions: two-factor authentication and DDoS protection. Additionally, the company takes the security of its data centers very seriously.

Overall, I’m satisfied with Contabo’s commitment to security. However, the provider could stand to be even more transparent with its security solutions.

Two-factor authentication

The two-factor authentication at Contabo wasn’t anything I hadn't seen before. To identify myself and to log in, I needed to use both my email and my phone number. Additionally, I found out that if anyone were to contact Contabo about my customer account from a new email, I would need to authorise them, too.

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection

A distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack occurs when a high amount of requests from compromised systems overload a server with the intention to disrupt its services. Contabo includes DDoS protection in all of its packages. It was nice that I didn’t need to do anything additionally, since it was already activated.

Data center security

What impressed me was that Contabo appears to take data center security seriously, and it communicates these efforts to a certain extent. For example, I found out that Contabo offers constant CCTV monitoring with over 50 observation cameras and video recording. It also implemented magnetic card access, an alarm system, multiple live webcams, and security service on duty 365 days a year.

Plus, the provider also protects its data centers against elements with smoke detectors and fire alarms, water detectors, and heat extraction systems.

Apart from those listed above, Contabo has other precautions in place, too. However, the provider made it clear that it “can’t talk about the details,” but suffice it to say that it’s “obsessed with security.”

It’s a shame that we don’t know for sure what those precautions entail. But, judging from the lack of negative Contabo reviews about its security, whatever those precautions are, they appear to be working.

Customer support

Contabo’s support is only available via chat and ticketing system. Contabo also has a well-stocked knowledge base that’s filled with articles covering a wide range of topics.

If you run into any trouble or issues, you can get in touch with Contabo’s customer service via chat. You’ll first be connected to a virtual assistant, but if it can’t help, you’ll be redirected to a customer support agent. If the chat isn’t available during busy times, there’s an option to submit a ticket.

Additionally, Contabo has a knowledge base if you prefer to handle any issue independently. My impression was that the knowledge base is not the most extensive one in the industry, but I did find some very useful tutorials and guides. The articles are thoughtful and delve deep into the topics. Plus, there are in-depth step-by-step guides where necessary.

I found Contabo’s comprehensive FAQ page to be very helpful, too. It covers a whole lot of areas, including billing, domain, software, security, and service-specific ones.

Overall, Contabo support is a mixed bag. Its support agents are knowledgeable and helpful, but the provider lacks a phone line or email support.

Contabo review: the final verdict

All in all, Contabo offers a very affordable and straightforward solution – especially for those looking for high-level storage or web-app hosting. Despite its cheap pricing, my experience was a smooth one overall, with no serious issues or difficulties. I absolutely have to give props to Contabo for this.

Below, I summarize the final verdict for the most important aspects:

Feature	4.2 ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆	VPS for flexible needs
Pricing	★ ★ ★ ★ ★	Contabo is super affordable, with its VPS plans starting at just $3.96/month. It also offers more server resources than other hosts at the same price, which I think is a plus.
Ease of Use	★ ★ ★ ★ ★	Setting up with Contabo is very easy. The automated server setup ran without issues, and the plan purchase and checkout process was better than with some other hosts I’ve tried.
Performance	★ ★ ★ ★ ☆	In my tests, Contabo showed a 100% uptime and a remarkably fast response time.
Security	★ ★ ★ ★ ☆	Contabo security precautions are stripped back since it’s an unmanaged solution. However, it takes data center security seriously and also offers vital measures like DDoS protection and two-factor authentication.
Support	★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆	You can reach Contabo’s team via chat or the ticketing system. The support is skilled and well-trained, but there is no email or phone support.

For those looking for a budget-friendly solution, Contabo is a good pick. However, since it focuses on advanced solutions such as unmanaged VPS, it’s more suited for those with at least some technical experience and VPS know-how. Projects requiring advanced storage and businesses should be able to make the most out of Contabo’s plans.

Contabo FAQ