Low-cost does not mean low-quality (with the right management)

Contabo Managed Server —
Make your low-cost servers production-ready

Contabo offers the lowest prices on the European market for VPS and dedicated servers. But without monitoring, without on-call support and with support limited to tickets, the risk of undetected downtime is real. RDEM Systems adds the professional supervision layer that transforms low-cost into reliable production.

Contabo: unbeatable on price, fragile without supervision

Contabo GmbH is a German hosting provider founded in 2003, known for its ultra-competitive pricing. With VPS from 4.99 EUR/month and AMD EPYC dedicated servers at prices that defy all competition, it is the natural choice for startups and SMBs on a tight budget. The catch? You are completely on your own for operations.

What Contabo does well

  • Unbeatable prices — VPS from 4.99 EUR/month, dedicated from ~50 EUR/month
  • Generous resources (RAM, storage) for the price
  • Recent hardware (AMD EPYC Turin, Ryzen)
  • Datacenters in Germany, USA, Asia, Australia
  • Snapshots and Object Storage available

What Contabo does NOT do

  • Ticket-only support — no phone, long response times
  • No server, OS or service administration
  • No monitoring or proactive alerts
  • Basic API and management panel
  • No on-call support — outage = you are on your own

What RDEM Systems adds to your Contabo servers

Keep Contabo pricing, add the professional supervision that makes the difference between a side project and real production.

24/7 predictive monitoring

Agents on every Contabo server: CPU, RAM, SMART disks, critical services, I/O, network. Drift detection before failure — essential on low-cost hardware.

On-call support — 1h to 4h SLA

Guaranteed intervention 24/7/365. In case of Contabo hardware failure, we open the ticket, follow up on the replacement and restore your services as soon as hardware is back.

Security & hardening

OS patching, SSH hardening, firewall, fail2ban, CIS audit. Even more critical on low-cost infrastructure where attack targets are frequent (shared IPs, known ranges).

Offsite backups

Automated backups to Contabo Object Storage or external storage. Regular restore tests. Never depend on a single provider for your data.

Operational maintenance

Keeping systems in operational condition: kernel updates, services, dependencies. Planned reboots during off-peak hours. Your Contabo server stays up-to-date and performant.

Advisory & evolution

If your workload exceeds Contabo's limits (network, IOPS), we advise and migrate you to Hetzner, OVH or Scaleway with zero downtime.

Contabo products we manage

Contabo offers VPS, dedicated servers and object storage. We manage all of these products.

Contabo VPS (SSD & NVMe)

Contabo VPS vCPU RAM Storage Contabo price Use case
Cloud VPS 1 4 6 GB 100 GB NVMe ~4.99 EUR/month Website, DNS, VPN, dev
Cloud VPS 2 6 16 GB 200 GB NVMe ~8.99 EUR/month Business app, CMS, CI/CD
Cloud VPS 3 8 30 GB 400 GB NVMe ~14.99 EUR/month E-commerce, ERP, database
Cloud VPS 4 12 48 GB 800 GB NVMe ~26.99 EUR/month SaaS, API, multi-service

Contabo dedicated servers

AMD EPYC

Contabo Dedicated AMD EPYC Turin — Raw power

The latest AMD EPYC Turin processors (up to 64 cores) with DDR5 ECC and datacenter NVMe storage. Contabo's most powerful dedicated servers, at prices that undercut Hetzner and OVH.

AMD EPYC Turin Up to 64 cores DDR5 ECC Datacenter NVMe
AMD Ryzen

Contabo Dedicated AMD Ryzen — Best value

Contabo dedicated servers with AMD Ryzen 12 cores, perfect for single-thread intensive workloads and SMB budgets. Starting from ~129$/month with 64 GB RAM and NVMe storage.

AMD Ryzen 12 cores From ~129$/month NVMe
Storage VPS

Contabo Storage VPS — Massive storage at low cost

Storage-optimized VPS: up to 12.8 TB per VPS, perfect for backups, archiving, file servers or distributed storage nodes. The segment where Contabo is unbeatable.

Up to 12.8 TB HDD or SSD Backup & archiving Ultra low-cost

Contabo Object Storage

Contabo also offers an S3-compatible Object Storage service starting at 2.99 EUR/250GB/month. We often use it as a backup destination for the Contabo servers we manage — an additional layer of security at minimal cost.

Contabo datacenters

Contabo operates datacenters across 4 continents. For European clients subject to GDPR, we recommend the German datacenters (Nuremberg, Munich).

Nuremberg

Germany

Munich

Germany

St. Louis

USA

Singapore

Asia

Sydney

Australia

Our recommendation: Proxmox VE on your Contabo server

As part of our server management, we recommend installing Proxmox VE (free, open-source) on your Contabo dedicated server. Proxmox VE can be installed via the custom ISO from the Contabo panel.

  • Native PBS backup: automatic backup of your VMs to NimbusBackup, offsite at Equinix Paris — included in your management contract
  • Snapshots before every update: instant rollback in case of issues, without interruption
  • Service isolation: each application in its own VM, no domino effect in case of a breach
  • Live migration: move a VM from one server to another without downtime (useful when upgrading Contabo plans)
  • No licensing cost: Proxmox VE is 100% open-source, unlike VMware. Proxmox support subscriptions are available and recommended for business-critical environments.

Already running Proxmox VE? Perfect, NimbusBackup integration is immediate. Running bare Linux/Windows? We handle the migration to Proxmox VE as part of onboarding.

Learn more about Proxmox VE

Contabo server management pricing

Same pricing regardless of your Contabo VPS or dedicated server. Server at 5 EUR or 200 EUR: management stays the same price.

Essential
70 EUR excl. VAT/month
Popular
Pro
150 EUR excl. VAT/month
Critical
250 EUR excl. VAT/month
Supervision 7am-10pm 7d/7 24/7/365 24/7/365
Monitoring
Security updates
Support Email / Members portal Email / Members portal Email / Members portal
Production incidents PagerDuty PagerDuty PagerDuty
On-call support 7am-10pm 7d/7 24/7 — 4h response time 24/7 — 1h response time
Included in your contract
Proxmox VE Recommended Recommended Included in service
Offsite backup
NimbusBackup PBS
Equinix Paris
250 GB
Single Drive
500 GB
Single Drive
1 TB Single Drive
or 500 GB Double Drive
(2 datacenters)
AirGapped option
Offline disk
+10 EUR/month
500 GB AirGapped
Additional storage 12 EUR/TB/month 12 EUR/TB/month 12 EUR/TB/month

Prices per server, excl. VAT. NimbusBackup PBS backup is a benefit of your management contract, not a separate product. Request a custom quote →

Incident escalation via PagerDuty

In case of a confirmed production outage, you trigger an incident via PagerDuty (credentials provided at contract signing). Our on-call team is alerted immediately.

Legitimate incident:

  • Server unreachable
  • Critical service down
  • Ongoing data loss
  • Suspected security breach

Not an incident — use email:

  • Non-urgent technical question
  • Planned change request
  • Minor slowness with no business impact

Abusive escalation outside of a production outage: 100 EUR excl. VAT per incident. This policy ensures on-call availability for real emergencies.

Your backups should not be at Contabo

If your backups are on the same server or the same provider as your production, an incident (ransomware, datacenter failure, human error) destroys both at once.

With your RDEM management contract, a NimbusBackup PBS volume is included: your Proxmox VMs are automatically backed up to our Equinix Paris infrastructure, physically separate from Contabo.

Essential

250 GB

Single Drive — included

Pro

500 GB

Single Drive — included

Critical

1 TB

Single Drive — included

or 500 GB Double Drive (2 sites)

AirGapped option +10 EUR/month

Need more storage? Additional volume at 12 EUR/TB/month on NimbusBackup.

Contabo does not offer any managed backup solution. Contabo snapshots are basic and remain on the same infrastructure.

Frequently asked questions — Contabo server management

Is Contabo reliable for production workloads?
Contabo offers an excellent capacity-to-price ratio, but support is limited (no phone, long delays) and there is no proactive monitoring. With RDEM server management, we add 24/7 monitoring, predictive alerts and on-call support that turn a budget server into a viable production infrastructure.
Why is Contabo so cheap?
Contabo optimizes costs by using standardized hardware, limiting customer support to the bare minimum, and offering no managed services. The hardware is decent (AMD EPYC, NVMe), but you are entirely responsible for administration, security and availability.
Is Contabo support responsive in case of hardware failure?
Contabo support works through tickets only, with no phone support. Response times can range from a few hours to over 24 hours. With RDEM, we detect failures before Contabo does (SMART monitoring, temperatures) and open tickets on your behalf with priority follow-up.
Can you migrate my servers to Contabo to reduce costs?
Yes. We perform migrations from OVH, Scaleway, Hetzner or any other provider to Contabo. We first validate that Contabo is suitable for your workload (network performance, disk IOPS), then perform the migration with minimal downtime.
How quickly can you set up server management?
Within 48 hours. We need SSH or VPN access to your Contabo servers, and we deploy our monitoring stack. Onboarding is free and included in the plan.
How does the backup included in the management contract work?
Your Contabo server runs Proxmox VE. We configure an automatic backup job to our NimbusBackup PBS infrastructure (Equinix Paris). Your VMs are backed up daily, with configurable retention. You can also access your PBS datastore directly from the Proxmox interface to manage your backups yourself. In case of a disaster, we restore within 4 hours (contractual RTO).
How do I report a production incident?
At contract signing, you receive your PagerDuty credentials to trigger an incident. In case of a confirmed production outage (server down, critical service failure, data loss, security breach), you trigger via PagerDuty. Our on-call team is alerted immediately and intervenes within the contractual response time. Routine support (questions, planned changes) is handled via email or the members portal. Abusive escalation outside of a production outage: 100 EUR excl. VAT per incident.

Your Contabo servers deserve professional supervision

Free diagnostic of your Contabo infrastructure. We identify the risks, you decide.