Scaleway, twice as expensive, half as efficient

On December 1, 2020, Scaleway will delete its C2S instances and those running on ARM. The pretext is a marketing gossip that it is more efficient. In fact, Scaleway simply wants to force its users to pay twice as much. Currently, I have 3 Scaleway instances which cost me around 40 to 45 euros per month. Two C2S instances with 8 GB and another older one around 4 GB. All these instances will be deleted and the data that goes with them.

But Scaleway is very nice and he offers us other instances. The “General” category, the cheapest of which is 60 euros, but this instance, my little Scaleway, you can fuck it in your ass. And Development instances where we have more or less the equivalent of C2S, but less efficient and more expensive. Thus, the 4 GB instance costs 29 euros per month while my current C2S instances were 17 euros per month. So twice the price and half the RAM, you stupid people.

We can say that Scaleway is blackmailing by counting on the fact that its users will continue to pay more and more for lower performance. The worst part is that C2S instances work without any problems. There is no reason to replace them, but at the same time, it would be clear if the cloud services made any sense. Also, the company has ditched monthly hourly rates, translation, you can get the most out of you with hidden fees and the like.

But above all, migration is prehistoric. You have to shut down your fucking server with the OFF button, so it’s like pulling the power cable while your computer is on. Then you create the Snapshot and use it to configure your new server. And the guys, they quietly explain to you that during the process, there is a significant risk that you lose everything and they offer no alternative. All cloud services offer Hot Snapshots where the migration happens without having to shut down the goddamn server, but 21 years after its creation, Scaleway isn’t fucking offering this basic option for the cloud.

For now I’m going to test the Development instances, but clearly it will only be for 1 or 2 months and then I break this shit. I’m thinking of going to O2Switch, it’s a shared web host, but at least he doesn’t seem to take his customers for idiots. The thing is, I don’t have the budget right now to pay the euros 60 subscription per year. My three Scaleway instances currently manage 9 sites. These are small blogs with 250 to 500 visits per day.

I think O2Switch may be right for me and if necessary I can take multiple accounts to compartmentalize it a bit. I started the cloud adventure with AWS, but now I realize that it’s a huge dung factory with unnecessary services that are really costly. Knowing that during this Covid-19 crisis, Scaleway offered nothing to relieve its users.

All cloud services have made a move, for example, ManageWP, a backup and updates service for WordPress, had offered 2 months free. And other hosts have done the same. But not Scaleway, to relieve this crisis, it doubles the price and lowers performance. If you really want to go from the cloud, then go to other hosts, Linode or AWS, sure it’s a lot more expensive, but at least you don’t get fucked behind without lubricant.

Update 13 june 2021 : I wrote this article in November 2020 and since then I have moved to Hetzner where I pay around 30 euros per month for 3 instances. Each instance is equipped with 2 Vcore CPU, 8 GB of RAM and 80 GB of disk space. But you can find instances starting at 2.96 euros.

So I’ve been using Hetzner for almost 6 months and haven’t had any problems yet. The configuration is more delicate, because you are a little left to yourself. But Hetzner is literally 5 times cheaper than Scaleway and it’s a shame that this provider doesn’t have to be better known. Try it if you are looking for a cheap cloud provider that still performs well!

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