Introduction

When choosing a web hosting provider, reliability is everything. After using Contabo servers for a year, I can confidently say that it was the worst hosting experience I’ve ever had.

Despite offering affordable VPS and dedicated servers, Contabo’s performance, uptime, and customer support were horrible. My websites went offline for 5 to 10 days per week, forcing me to manually restart the server just to keep my business running. This wasn’t due to lack of resources—I had plenty of RAM, CPU, and storage, yet the servers still failed.

If you’re considering Contabo, read this review before you make a costly mistake.

1. Contabo Performance: Slow, Unstable & Unreliable

Contabo advertises high-resource VPS and dedicated servers at cheap prices, but the performance doesn’t match the specs. Here’s what I experienced:

Frequent server crashes:

My sites would stop responding randomly, and I had to restart the server manually.
Unexplained downtime: Despite having enough resources, my sites were offline for 5 to 10 days per week.

Slow disk speeds:

Even on their NVMe SSD plans, disk performance was disappointing.

CPU throttling:

The servers underperform during peak traffic hours, making websites unbearably slow.

Contabo’s servers might look good on paper, but in real-world usage, they’re completely unreliable.

2. Uptime & Reliability: A Complete Disaster

A hosting provider should guarantee at least 99.9% uptime—Contabo failed miserably in this area.

My websites went offline for days at a time.

Customers complained constantly about site inaccessibility.

We lost business and revenue because of downtime issues.

Even after multiple support tickets, Contabo never provided a permanent fix. If you need reliable uptime, stay away from Contabo.

3. Email Sending Limits: A Hidden Restriction

One of Contabo’s biggest hidden drawbacks is their email sending limits:

Regardless of your server type, they restrict email sending.

Even on a dedicated server, outbound emails are limited.

They don’t disclose these limits upfront, leading to frustration for businesses relying on transactional emails, marketing campaigns, and customer communication.

If you need a hosting provider that allows unrestricted email sending, Contabo is not the right choice.

4. Customer Support: Slow, Unhelpful & Frustrating

One of the most frustrating parts of using Contabo was dealing with their customer support.

No live chat—only ticket-based support.

Response times are slow—it can take hours or even days to get a reply.

Generic, scripted responses that don’t actually fix the problem.

When my server went offline repeatedly, Contabo’s support team offered no real solutions. If you value responsive and helpful support, Contabo will let you down.

5. Backup & Recovery: Not Reliable

Contabo offers backup services, but given how unreliable their servers have been, I wouldn’t trust them. If you’re forced to use Contabo, make sure to set up external backups to avoid losing critical data. This is very important.

6. The Real Cost: Lost Customers & Business Damage

The biggest consequence of using Contabo wasn’t just the downtime—it was the customers we lost due to unreliable service.

Repeated downtime caused customers to lose trust.

We lost significant revenue because potential buyers couldn’t access our website.

Reputation damage—a website that’s constantly down looks unprofessional and unreliable.

Saving money on cheap hosting isn’t worth it if you’re losing customers. If you run a serious business, Contabo is a massive risk at this time. While this may change in the future, but  for now, this is the true condition of things.

7. Alternatives: Better Hosting Providers Than Contabo

After leaving Contabo, I researched better hosting providers and found much more reliable alternatives:

✅ Hetzner – Affordable, high-performance VPS and dedicated servers in Europe. – Best Recommendation
✅ SignOnHost – Great performance, good support, and competitive pricing – if you are looking at a local host
✅ hostinger – Great performance, good support, and competitive pricing.
✅ Vultr – Fast cloud VPS with great uptime and scalability.
✅ DigitalOcean – Excellent for developers, stable performance, and good customer support.

If you need a host that won’t constantly fail you, any of these options are far better than Contabo.

Final Verdict: Avoid Contabo At All Costs

Pros:

✅ Cheap pricing
✅ High RAM and storage (but useless when servers don’t work)

Cons:

❌ Terrible uptime—my sites went offline 5 to 10 days per week
❌ Frequent crashes, forcing manual restarts
❌ Email sending is limited, even on dedicated servers
❌ Lost customers and revenue due to downtime
❌ Support is slow, unhelpful, and gives generic responses
❌ No live chat support
❌ Disk speed is slow, even on NVMe SSDs

Would I Recommend Contabo?

Absolutely not! If you care about your business, website uptime, and customer trust, DO NOT USE CONTABO.

Instead, go with a reliable provider like Hetzner, Linode, Vultr or DigitalOcean. They may cost a little more, but at least they work properly.

If you have had an experience with contabo, kindly share with us here.