Contabo Helps Devs Keep Pace With Demanding Workflows by Unleashing New SSD VPS Plans That Maximize Budget and Hardware Flexibility

TL; DR: With a dual focus on forward-thinking technology and deep connections with customers, Contabo aims to serve the full range of web hosting customers. A year after launching a drag-and-drop website builder option to help beginners get online, the company revamped its virtual server options. In addition to introducing more configurations powered exclusively by solid-state drives, Contabo restructured its plans that run on both hard disk drives and SSDs — all in an effort to deliver cost-effective services to developers and small business owners looking for particular levels of computing resources.

Fresh off winning the 2017 national datat center award for modernizing and improving the energy efficiency at its datacenter in Nuremburg, Germany, Contabo set its engineers and contractors on a similar mission with its Munich location.

By implementing a novel groundwater cooling system — all without interrupting server or network operations — the company scored a rare back-to-back win in this year’s German datacenter awards. The perpetual quest to improve services is par for the course at Contabo, which recently announced new VPS configurations and lower prices.

The 15-year-old company cuts through the crowded German hosting market thanks to its advanced approach to technology, a focus on customer support, and a dedication to customer satisfaction, according to Marketing Manager Markus Heimerl.

“We can offer a wide variety of services, whether you run a business or are a private user trying to host your own blog or website,” he said. “We are certainly the right provider for your needs, whatever they may be.”

Just a few days after announcing discounts and waived setup fees for most of its dedicated servers, Contabo followed up with upgrades to the company’s virtual private servers in September 2018.

The company offers two flavors of VPS: either 100% SSD storage or a blend of HDD and SSD capacity. The recent updates concentrated around the SSD plans, Markus told us, with Contabo adding more disk space, CPU cores, and bandwidth. Most remarkably, the upgrades come at no extra cost to customers.

Additionally, the move coincided with the launch of another SSD-powered plan, the VPS S SSD, which comes with 4 CPU cores, 8GB of guaranteed RAM, and 200GB of storage. According to Markus, the new offering enables Contabo to provide a low-cost introduction to VPS hosting to new customers as well as an opportunity for existing clients to downgrade to a package more suitable to their needs.

“We’re trying to focus more on our SSD products, and we decided to add a fourth member to our portfolio,” he said. “The target crew is all the people who just want to try VPS hosting, and this helps them take the first steps in this area. With the price, in combination with its great specifications, we consider this to be one of the most competitive offers ever.”

The new plan slashes the company’s price for entry-level SSD VPS nearly in half, from €9 to €5 per month. Budget-driven customers can sacrifice some SSD performance by choosing an HDD plan for €4 per month, and the company offers month-to-month (as well as three-month, six-month, or annual) to encourage site owners to find exactly what works best for their online needs.

“People frequently switch between our different models, and we’re actually seeing an increased demand for this new plan,” Markus said. “Many customers feel the specs are enough for their needs, and the reduced price is obviously a huge advantage.”

As Markus told us, the company’s VPS customers are typically more experienced and used to setting up and maintaining the server space on their own. Contabo VPS plans come with full root access and essentially no restrictions. Instead of overbearing managed services, the company offers a managed server upgrade that comes with two hours of tech support each month that can be spent exactly how the customer prefers.

“Customers tell us exactly what they want us to do, then we perform those tasks on a monthly basis or by request,” Markus said. “It’s a bit different from other providers. They’re used to doing it all themselves, so we stay out of their way.”

All that said, however, Contabo doesn’t ignore less experienced site owners who need a little more help building and growing an online presence. Both current and potential customers expressed interest in a drag-and-drop tool that would help them design and launch sites more efficiently, and the company responded by providing a free website builder as part of its shared hosting plans.

“Once we realized the demand was there, we decided to add one as a basic feature to our Webspace packages,” Markus said. “Every customer has access to it.”

The Contabo Website Builder empowers aspiring site owners to launch new sites with just a few clicks and zero coding expertise. Customers can choose from more than 200 responsive templates, easily add and customize content, and click a button to publish to the web.

In addition to the design and customization options, the site builder also comes with interactive widgets, social media integrations, SEO tools, as well as the ability to add a shopping cart and payment options.

“It doesn’t matter which device you use, you’ll have a perfect-looking website,” Markus said. “It takes just a minute to get online.”

The new website builder and VPS plans are just a few examples of how Contabo explores how to alter its services to best meet customer needs, Markus told us.

“We are always trying to find out what our customers want,” he said. “We recently ran a survey a few months ago to find out what the demand was and what they expected from their hosting provider.”

The same survey revealed that 94% of customers are satisfied with Contabo and would recommend the host to others. For those who may not fit in the current shared hosting, VPS, or dedicated server options, Contabo will help potential customers construct custom infrastructure.

“If one has a special request, we’re definitely open to it and building those unique services,” Markus said, adding the company gets several such requests each week. “We’re definitely happy in the way it’s running and especially with our growth as a hosting provider. I think we’re on a good wave with our approach.”

Since the outset, Contabo has emphasized adding both computing resources and affordability. For example, the dedicated servers the company offered in 2013 came with six times more memory and 10 times more disk space and bandwidth than the ones sold when the company started in 2003 — but cost nine times less.

Michael Herpich and Michael Bölke started Contabo, originally known as Giga-International, in a crowded German market. Their in-house expertise and dedication to one-to-one customer service helped them stand out and thrive nearly since the beginning. From a single server to now housing roughly 5,000 servers across two datacenters, Contabo’s focus on core principles continues to resonate with global customers.

While Contabo’s affordable prices and discounts certainly attract potential clients, Markus said the company’s clear differentiator is the instant service they encounter when they contact customer support agents.

“We definitely offer everyday support,” Markus said. “For 365 days per year, we are available by email and telephone. We’re here for beginners who would just like to try out getting online with a website or store, and we’re also here for professionals who want to check out the several dedicated servers in our portfolio.”