Contabo

Contabo is a German provider of cloud infrastructure and dedicated servers, founded in spring 2003 in Munich by Michael Bolke and Michael Herpich. The company first operated under the name Giga-International, becoming Contabo in 2013 as international expansion kicked off. The current legal entity is Contabo GmbH, headquartered at Aschauer Str. 32a, 81549 München, Germany, registered with Amtsgericht München under number HRB 180722.

From a single server in 2003, Contabo grows into a team of around 300 employees and over 500,000 servers in operation. The company has offices in Munich, Cologne, Nuremberg, and Prague (Czechia), plus coworking spaces in Berlin and Hamburg. The current directors are Stephan Wolfram and Mario Wilhelm, and the company is part of the Contabo Group GmbH group.

Contabo’s infrastructure includes 11+ owned data centers across 9 regions on 4 continents. In Europe: Munich, Nuremberg, and Frankfurt (Germany), the new Europe Hub in Lauterbourg (on the FR-DE border), and Portsmouth (UK). In the US: New York (Manhattan), St. Louis (Missouri), and Seattle (Washington). In Asia-Pacific: Tokyo (Japan), Singapore, and Navi Mumbai (India, launched in 2024). In Oceania: Sydney (Australia).

The flagship data center, Hub Europe in Lauterbourg, is one of the most efficient facilities in Europe, with 25,600 sqm of space, 9.6 MW capacity, and room for around 50,000 servers. With a PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) of just 1.168, Hub Europe ranks among the most sustainable data centers on the continent.

Contabo’s service lineup focuses on unmanaged infrastructure: Cloud VPS (from ~4,50 EUR/month), Cloud VDS (Virtual Dedicated Servers with dedicated resources, from ~27,52 EUR/month), and bare-metal dedicated servers on AMD Ryzen and AMD EPYC platforms (from ~96 EUR/month). The company also offers Object Storage, website hosting on VPS with cPanel or Plesk, and mail server hosting solutions.

The tech stack runs on AMD EPYC CPUs (7282, 9224, 9355P, 9555P series) and AMD Ryzen 9 7900 for dedicated servers, Gen 4 PCIe NVMe SSD storage, and KVM virtualization. All servers come with free always-on DDoS protection and unlimited traffic. Contabo also offers a full RESTful API and CLI tools for automation, plus Cloud-init support, custom images, and snapshots.

One standout thing about Contabo is the exceptional price-to-performance ratio. VPS plans come with way more generous resources than competitors at prices 50–70% lower. For example, the Cloud VPS 10 plan includes 4 vCPU, 8 GB RAM, and 75 GB NVMe for just ~4,50 EUR/month — specs that would cost 3–4x more with other providers.

Tech support is available via live chat (with the AI agent ContaBro that handles ~33% of requests automatically), email/tickets (monitored 24/7), and phone (365 days/year, 8:00-23:00 Germany time). ContaBro, the AI chatbot, replies in 1-2 minutes and fixes issues in about 12-15 minutes on average.

Worth noting: Contabo is an unmanaged Hosting Provider — users handle server setup, updates, and security. The contractual SLA guarantees 99.9% uptime for VPS services, and the minimum annual availability in the terms and conditions is 95%.

In 2025, Contabo keeps innovating with the launch of Hub Europe Building 1, the addition of AMD EPYC Turin CPUs to the dedicated server lineup (17% better IPC vs Genoa), the Auto Backup feature (daily incremental backups, off-server storage), and free one-click installs for n8n, Nextcloud, WireGuard, and GitLab CE. With over 150,000 new customers in 2025 alone, Contabo strengthens its position as a leader in the value-for-money segment of cloud hosting.