
Show HN: Server Hunter – Easily browse over 11,000 VPS and Dedicated Servers - ServerHunter
https://www.serverhunter.com
======
tmikaeld
Most VPS hosters "share" CPU time between users on a host server (Which mean
CPU type/speed doesn't mean much).

So it would be great if you could filter for that on serverhunter to paint a
fair(er) picture, because a few hosters give dedicated cores by default.

When we tried benchmarks on the Hetzner Cloud we found that some servers had
as low as 10% max CPU on a crowded host server, which makes sense as to why
they charge 8 times more for dedicated CPU cores.

~~~
ServerHunter
That makes sense! Unfortunately, it'll be hard to obtain benchmarks for every
plan with every provider, and it'll be even harder to get enough benchmarks
with each provider to paint an accurate picture.

Even with the same provider, there can be massive differences between VPSs, it
just depends whether you end up on an idle host node with no noisy neighbors
or one where everyone is busy mining their favorite cryptocurrency.

Regardless, we do understand the need for accurate performance numbers, so
this is something we will explore further in the near future.

If you have any ideas, please let me know. :)

~~~
tmikaeld
Maybe you can simplify it, have a checkbox for "Dedicated CPU Cores" so that
we can filter those who provide it officially.

I think it's safe to assume that those that don't have this information
available at least somewhere, are shared cores by default?

~~~
ServerHunter
Happy to report we have added a "Hybrid" product type, which is a virtual
server with dedicated resources (VDS):
[https://www.serverhunter.com/?search=99A-37F-5BB](https://www.serverhunter.com/?search=99A-37F-5BB)

You'll see that while the amount CPU cores will usually be less, they are
dedicated to you and not shared with other VPSs.

Hope this helps! :)

------
ServerHunter
What's new in ServerHunter?

\- Improved search results display on mobile

\- Smarter text searches

\- New filter: BGP Sessions

\- Badges for 'Annual billing' and 'NAT IPv4'

\- Separate page for "Write a review"

\- Preserving newlines in reviews

\- Added a new "Price per specification" option to sorting and columns

\- Added a graph with pricing history in offer's page

\- Ability to save your favorite searches

\- Added offers from several providers

Our VPS giveaway is ending soon, join now for a chance to win a VPS
subscription for one year. Enter here:
[https://www.serverhunter.com/giveaway](https://www.serverhunter.com/giveaway).

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
If you distinguish broken and non-broken IPv4, maybe you should also
distinguish broken and non-broken IPv6? Currently, it's impossible to
distinguish offers with a proper /48 from broken crap with a single /64 or
even less, which makes the comparison mostly useless for me, as there is a lot
of broken crap in that market to wade through.

~~~
ServerHunter
Since IPv4 space is starting to become a significant cost, they make up a
large percentage of the price for the cheapest VPSs. This is why some
providers have started offering NAT VPSs - ideal for backups, monitoring, etc.
Since NAT IPv4 is not the norm, this is something they clearly advertise on
their website, and hence something we can easily distinguish.

With IPv6, the information from the provider is usually limited to "IPv6:
yes/no", if they even mention it. The actual IPv6 space varies wildly from /48
to /56 and /64 - some providers even offer just tunnels or 10 IPv6 addresses.
Since this is usually not mentioned on their website, we can't actually
distinguish between them either. :(

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
Well, I see the problem, but then, a search site that doesn't allow you to use
effective filters is ... kinda useless?

Though I think there is a more important thing to note here: Maybe you should
explicitly support handling of unknown values in the UI? Failure to do so is
IMO one of the biggest problems of most specialized search sites.

Sure, there are attributes that cannot always be determined reliably if at all
--but instead of either ignoring the attribute completely or forcing it to
"false" or "true", or some other explicit value, why not allow the user to
specify whether entries for which the attribute is unknown should be shown?
That way, if my requirement is proper IPv6 support, for example, I can decide
whether I am in the mood to wade through tons of crap, but still have you
filter out all entries for which it is known that proper IPv6 is not
supported, or whether I want to ignore those and only look at the (probably
more expensive) selection of providers that clearly advertise that their
product isn't broken.

~~~
ServerHunter
I understand what you're saying, but for the vast majority of people, just
knowing whether it has IPv6 available or not is enough information. We do have
to strike the right balance with the UI between power users like yourselves
and people less familiar with hosting.

Right now we do support unknown attributes, they show up unless explicitly
filtered out. For example, a server might have an unknown CPU speed, in which
case it will show up in the results unless a CPU speed filter is applied.

Just to make sure we're on the same page, you'd like to see the size of the
IPv6 range assigned to the server, correct? Is there any more information
you'd like about the IPv6 support?

Thanks again for your feedback. :)

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
> I understand what you're saying, but for the vast majority of people, just
> knowing whether it has IPv6 available or not is enough information.

Well, that's somewhat of a chicken and egg problem, though. It's not like
those broken networks are actually necessarily good enough for the purpose
that people use them for, it's just that noone is even aware that the network
setup is broken and that that is the problem they should be fixing.

> Right now we do support unknown attributes, they show up unless explicitly
> filtered out. For example, a server might have an unknown CPU speed, in
> which case it will show up in the results unless a CPU speed filter is
> applied.

That's exactly what I think is broken, in that unknown values are not handled
explicitly in the UI, but forced to an explicit value. When I specify "I need
at least 2 GHz", say, that says nothing about whether I want to see servers
for which you don't know the CPU speed, as such a server very well might have
a 5 GHz CPU. All it says is that I don't want to see servers for which you
know that the speed is less than 2 GHz. So, you shouldn't make assumptions
about whether I want to see those servers, but rather let me choose what to do
with them.

Now, I don't know whether this is important for clock speed, but often there
are cases where there is a particular attribute that is known for many
products to have a value that doesn't fit my needs, so it would be great if
you could say "not any products where this attribute has value X" ... except
that suddenly half of the remaining candidates vanish, too, because that
attribute happens to be unknown for those, which then means you have to do all
the filtering by hand after all, instead of using the search/comparison site
to weed out 90% of the candidates and then investigating the remaining 10% by
hand.

> Just to make sure we're on the same page, you'd like to see the size of the
> IPv6 range assigned to the server, correct? Is there any more information
> you'd like about the IPv6 support?

Well, yes, prefix length (or number of addresses for offers that don't even
have a prefix, I guess), and I guess whether that prefix can be routed
completely to the server, as that is, as ryanlol noted, something many hosters
fail to do correctly as well. If you can figure it out (or for providers that
are willing to feed you machine-readable data), it would also be useful to
know whether the reverse zone of the IPv6 prefix can be delegated.

------
buildbuildbuild
This is very useful and way overdue, thanks. Being able to filter by BGP
session support has already saved me hours of work this month (if any
DigitalOcean sharks are reading: please match Vultr soon in BGP capability).

I trust you've shared it on LowEndTalk. Now: keep it up to date, not slammed
with ads, moderated for accuracy, and profitable. Best of luck.

My main feature request would be the ability to filter out specific hosts that
I have had bad experiences with or do not trust (perhaps an X by their
username when browsing).

~~~
ServerHunter
No problem! You can already do this using the Provider name field, just use a
negative sign, e.g. "-Foo -Bar". Example:
[https://www.serverhunter.com/?search=1A6-C01-E8D](https://www.serverhunter.com/?search=1A6-C01-E8D)
:)

------
AznHisoka
This is the best Show HN I've seen in awhile. Really really useful!

~~~
ServerHunter
Thank you! :)

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mlrtime
It would be nice to also incorporate ratings somehow. I chose some filters
that I wanted. Searched lowendbox for the vps provider that came up first and
there are some truely awful reviews. I recommend anyone visit there first
before purchasing.

~~~
ServerHunter
We have reviews on our website but, unfortunately, most providers haven't
received any reviews yet. We're hoping this will change as our website grows
and we're working on getting more reviews on our website.

Do note that, as with most businesses, it's easy to get bad reviews and
difficult to get good reviews. Make sure to check multiple sources of
information to make an informed decision. :)

------
ar0
I like the idea, but there still seem to be some glitches: When I look for
VPSs with at least 5GB RAM, I get a lot of VPSes with 1.5GB RAM (e.g.
[https://www.serverhunter.com/?search=D21-C9F-3C1](https://www.serverhunter.com/?search=D21-C9F-3C1)).

Also, when you use the "reporting" feature, the report seems to get sent, but
submitting it clears the "Issue description" field which is then highlighted
in red which at first made me think something went wrong... Probably it should
just close the modal window after the submission?

~~~
ServerHunter
Oops, this has now been fixed for those providers you found - I'll check if
there are any others I can find.

The issue with the field being highlighted in red seems to be specific to
Firefox, I'll investigate and hope to have this resolved shortly as well.

Thanks for letting us know about these issues. :)

------
segfaultbuserr
The idea of creating a index of server providers is good, but all
implementations are less-than-ideal, and in the worst case, useless. The core
problem here is data quality, the magnitude of noise is usually high:

* The server providers do not give out machine-readable data.

* It's difficult to distinguish some details from specifications, such as vCPUs or dedicated cores.

* Promotions and discounts cannot be recognized programmatically.

* There's no reliable way to detect discontinued or withdrawn plans.

Ultimately, people will find the result of their search is either withdrawn or
unusable for some reasons, and they still have to purchase the server from a
well-known provider... And lurking at lowendtalk.com is still a better way to
find a good deal.

Improving the quality of data sounds like a good machine-learning project.

~~~
ServerHunter
You're absolutely right, getting accurate data is one of the biggest
challenges we're facing at the moment. I'd like to believe we're making great
progress with it though. :)

Initially, we started off with static data together with a management panel
for hosts to add/edit/delete their offers. As you might have guessed, most
providers didn't feel like doing this, and those that did made mistakes
entering the data or didn't keep it up to date.

This is why we've put most of our effort into automating the data feeds and
getting up to date information. Right now, 60.3% of our offers are
automatically retrieved from the provider and kept up to date every 24 hours.

Whenever a provider adds, edits or deletes an offer from their website, it's
automatically synced to our website accordingly. We also try to do this for
stock, but some providers do not expose this information before ordering.

While I'll freely admit we still have mistakes on our website, I hope that
it's still useful in finding the right server for your needs, and appreciate
your patience while we keep working on improving it every day. :)

P.S: We have deployed some small scale machine learning and are experimenting
with it as we go, but since our knowledge in this field is lacking, progress
will be slow.

~~~
segfaultbuserr
Thanks for your detailed response. I sincerely hope your project will be
successful, so I don't have to spend a week, looking at all the details such
as BGP tables and available payment processors, just to find a usable server
in the future ;-)

~~~
ServerHunter
We'll do our best! If you have any specific feedback, let me know and I'll
look into it. :)

------
pheeney
Is there a tech writeup on how the site was built? What software is behind the
faceted search?

The site and search experience is fast and I'd love to learn more about how it
was built.

~~~
haggy
With only ~11,000 entries and what looks to be a pretty defined set of
searchable fields, it should be a simple setup. I'd guess the search is
powered by either Elasticsearch or Postgres/MySQL.

I think the more interesting part of the product is going to be the
procurement of available servers which I don't have any guesses outside of
public API's + web scraping to do that.

~~~
pheeney
What was interesting to me is the search ID,
[https://www.serverhunter.com/?search=157-857-0B2](https://www.serverhunter.com/?search=157-857-0B2)
for example. Each change results in a new search ID. If you toggle the same
option on and off, the search ID is different every time. I originally thought
it was a way to reference a unique combination of the facets but it seems to
create a new search session for each query.

~~~
ServerHunter
The search ID is indeed unique, it's a reference to our database which stores
your filters, sort order, and column selections.

We might replace it with something that doesn't require the backend at all,
but the URLs will end up quite long if you have a few filters selected.

For now, we figured a short URL is nicer to share with other people. :)

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
Well, a URL that stays valid would be more important than a short URL? I am
assuming that you do garbage collect your DB?

~~~
ServerHunter
We will change the URL structure in the future, but it'll be backwards
compatible - old URLs will continue functioning forever. :)

------
ksec
I am wondering who is providing the information? Vultr list their "Dedicated"
as 8 CPU, when it is not dedicated by Cloud VM, which I presume it is shared.
And its CPU are not CPU Core but CPU Threads.

These differences make the comparison a harder. Because in Dedicated you talk
Core count, in Cloud VM you talk Thread Count ( vCPU ).

~~~
ServerHunter
Sorry about that! They should all be cores rather than threads. In the case of
Vultr, we get the information from their API:
[https://api.vultr.com/v1/plans/list_baremetal](https://api.vultr.com/v1/plans/list_baremetal)
\- "cpu_count":8

Usually, we rely on our own database for core count and speed, but Vultr
doesn't actually mention the CPU model in their API either.

For now, I've hardcoded a fix in our backend and I've contacted Vultr whether
they can clear up their API in regards to cores vs threads.

Thanks for letting us know! :)

P.S: Every offer has a "Is some information missing or inaccurate? Let us
know!" link at the bottom, in case you find more mistakes.

------
uponcoffee
A nice to have but relatively unimportant feature suggestion, the option to
filter by total capacity independently of drive type.

That aside, this will be useful for figuring out hosting for side projects,
thank you for sharing!

~~~
ServerHunter
This is now possible! :)
[https://www.serverhunter.com/?search=ADF-3C3-EB9](https://www.serverhunter.com/?search=ADF-3C3-EB9)

------
leowinterde
GCE and Azure is missing or did I miss that?

And a info on the provider AS or a link to the PeeringDB/looking glass would
be nice to have. Other than that a super helpful site, thanks.

~~~
ServerHunter
You didn't miss it, we're still trying to figure out the more complex pricing
systems of providers like AWS/GCE/Azure. Just to give you an idea, the JSON
file describing the EC2 pricing is 650+ MB. :)

We have added AWS Lightsail since the pricing is a bit more straight forward
and I'll double check tomorrow if there's anything from GCE and Azure we can
add.

------
rambojazz
How did you collect all this data? How do you keep it updated?

~~~
ServerHunter
Custom crawlers, API implementations and lots of automation. Like most search
engines, it's not flawless, but it's getting better every day. :)

~~~
superasn
Yeah, some info seems to be incorrect. Like it shows vmhaus has Windows
instances but after signing up I could only find *nix.

~~~
ServerHunter
The VMHaus offers were actually added by the provider themselves in August
2018, they specifically selected Windows to be available.

On June 2017 they wrote: "Custom ISO - Use our available Windows & FreeBSD or
bring your own ISO." (source:
[https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/116203/vmhaus-new-
uk-l...](https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/116203/vmhaus-new-uk-location-
uk-nvme-kvm-starting-at-2-70-month-10-off-recurring))

I've sent them a message to clarify. :)

------
jareds
Are the sliders keyboard accessible? I use Jaws for Windows as my screen
reading software and am unable to adjust the price slider in either Firefox or
Chrome.

~~~
ServerHunter
Happy to report the sliders are now keyboard accessible! :)

Turns out keyboard support was only introduced 10 days ago:
[https://github.com/leongersen/noUiSlider/issues/724#issuecom...](https://github.com/leongersen/noUiSlider/issues/724#issuecomment-461009737)

We have plans to do some more comprehensive accessibility testing in the near
future, but in the meantime, please let me know if you come across any other
accessibility issues.

Thank you!

~~~
jareds
Just gave this another look and the sliders do work with my screen reading
software which is an improvement. As far as I can tell the page up and down
keys don't move in larger increments. Home and end don't move to the top or
bottom either. Because of this when looking for servers priced between $0 and
$5 I had to repeatedly hit left arrow a bunch of times. Ideally I could have
gone to the maximum price slider, hit home to set it to 0, then hit right
arrow several times to find my maximum price. I assume this is behavior of the
noUiSlider framework and not code you have written.

------
tomaspollak
Looks good, congrats! It would be awesome if you could include links for
testing speed and latency for each provider (when available).

~~~
ServerHunter
Thank you! Unfortunately, I haven't found many providers offering this, but
I'll look into adding it for the ones that do.

In the meantime, you could ping their domain name to get a rough idea (if they
don't use CloudFlare or block ICMP) and contact their sales team to see if
they can hook you up with something more accurate.

~~~
tomaspollak
Generally the "serious" ones do, and if not then we should try to encourage
them to do so. A few examples after a quick Google search:

\- [https://www.linode.com/speedtest](https://www.linode.com/speedtest) \-
[https://www.futurehosting.com/network-test-
files/](https://www.futurehosting.com/network-test-files/) \-
[https://speed.hetzner.de/](https://speed.hetzner.de/) \-
[https://turnkeyinternet.net/speed-test/](https://turnkeyinternet.net/speed-
test/)

~~~
ServerHunter
Looks good! I'll see if I can squeeze some of this information in. :)

------
arzel
Thank you for creating a hub where server providers are indexed. I've been
looking for something like this for a while now. :)

~~~
ServerHunter
No problem, I hope you can find something that suits your needs. :)

------
pingiun
Hetzner would be a great provider to add to this, even better if you could
integrate with their server auction :D

~~~
ServerHunter
We already feature Hetzner, including their server auctions:
[https://www.serverhunter.com/?search=F61-1A4-E7D](https://www.serverhunter.com/?search=F61-1A4-E7D)
:)

~~~
pingiun
I missed that, great stuff!

------
kowdermeister
My only interest is missing as I see at first glance: GPU support

Edit: found it as "Graphics Card" :D

~~~
ServerHunter
There are not many providers that offer it, but if they do, it'll have that
feature. What do you use it for, if I may ask? :)

~~~
kowdermeister
I don't use them yet, but I'd render shaders. I need to test it if it's worth
it since it's probably possible without GPU-s.

------
yread
Thanks for this quite useful. Finally, some other dedicated providers than
Hetzner pop-up

~~~
ServerHunter
Happy to hear that! :) Hetzner has some great value servers in Europe, but
fortunately, there are still plenty of alternatives around.

------
fiatjaf
Wow, how much I'm paying and how little I could have been!

------
netsec_burn
Could you indicate the billing frequently beside the price?

~~~
ServerHunter
We're a bit tight on space in the price column.

For now, you can click the one of the column headers in the middle and change
it to to "Billing interval", like this:
[https://www.serverhunter.com/?search=B3E-305-AF8](https://www.serverhunter.com/?search=B3E-305-AF8)

------
fxfan
Question for hosting and db experts- should one go for ssd or HD when hosting?
I'd think HD is better because you can anticipate failure using smart. Ssd has
the advantage of being faster to load data.

On that note- are database systems now able to make better use of ssd's? Most
optimizations centered around contiguous storage in hdd era.

~~~
ServerHunter
You'd always want some kind of RAID mirroring with off-site backups,
regardless of HDD vs SSD. If you take care of that, you can safely go with
SSD. :)

------
Traubenfuchs
Css for adblocking:

#tbody_results > tr:first-child { display:none; }

~~~
ServerHunter
Our ads won't always show up or be the first row, you could simply use
.advertisement { display: none } for now.

Do note that our advertisements are not served via a third-party provider,
there's no tracking, no chances of malware or rogue JS and they're actual
offers from our website based on your search filters.

It would be appreciated if you kept them, but in the end, that's entirely up
to you. :)

~~~
comprev
A site owner correcting someone on how to properly block ads on their site -
an internet first?

~~~
mlrtime
It shows they are responsive and open. Also they know so few people will do
this it doesn't matter.

