netcup FAQ & Complete Troubleshooting Guide (26 Essential Q&As)

Yes—international customers worldwide can order directly, and there is no webcam or passport KYC hurdle on standard orders!

Outdated guides often mention "Stripe webcam facial verification" or mandatory prepayment checks, which have been retired for standard residential orders. Simply order from your normal home or office internet connection (turn off VPNs/proxies), enter your real street address, and select your actual country of residence. Once submitted, netcup automatically creates your account and emails your Customer Control Panel (CCP) Customer ID, temporary password, and initial invoice. As soon as you log in to CCP and pay the invoice, your server provisions automatically within minutes—zero document uploads or webcam scans required.

Your VAT rate is determined automatically by the billing country and tax status you select at checkout:

• Non-EU Residents (US, UK, Canada, Australia, Singapore, Switzerland, Japan, China, etc.): You automatically qualify for 0% VAT net pricing—saving 19% compared to German gross prices with no tax paperwork required.
• EU Businesses & Freelancers (Outside Germany): Enter your valid EU VAT ID (USt-IdNr. / UID) during registration to receive 0% VAT via the EU Reverse Charge mechanism.
• EU Consumers & German Businesses: Billed at your local statutory VAT rate (e.g., 19% in Germany, 20% in Austria; German businesses reclaim VAT via standard input tax deduction).

If prices appear higher while browsing netcup.com, the storefront is simply displaying 19% German VAT by default. As soon as you select your non-EU country on the checkout address screen, all prices recalculate to pure 0% VAT net rates before you submit the order.

netcup supports PayPal, Visa/Mastercard credit & debit cards, and European SEPA bank transfers.

Crucial Currency Conversion Tip: When paying a EUR invoice from a USD, GBP, CAD, or AUD account, PayPal enables Dynamic Currency Conversion (DCC) by default—charging a hefty 3.5%–4.5% exchange rate markup! Inside the PayPal checkout popup, always click "View currency conversion options" and choose to pay in the merchant's currency (EUR) so your bank or multi-currency card (such as Wise or Revolut) handles the conversion at the real mid-market rate.

netcup uses a traditional German post-order invoicing workflow: Place Order → Account & First Invoice Generated → Log in to CCP & Pay Invoice.

After submitting your order, check your email inbox (and spam folder) for your Customer ID and temporary password. Log in to the Customer Control Panel (CCP at customercontrolpanel.de), open Invoices / Rechnungen, and click Pay Now / Jetzt bezahlen. Once your PayPal or card payment clears, the provisioning system deploys your server automatically.

netcup is one of Germany's most established infrastructure providers.

Founded in Karlsruhe in 2003 (operating for over 20 years), netcup GmbH became part of the Austrian global cloud and telecom provider Anexia Group (AS197540) in 2016. They operate their own ISO-certified datacenters in Nuremberg alongside international PoPs in Vienna, Amsterdam, Manassas (US), and Singapore, serving hundreds of thousands of business and developer customers under strict EU GDPR compliance.

No—powering off or wiping a server NEVER stops billing!

Like all German commercial hosting providers, netcup bills by active contract, not by power state (except on explicit hourly-billed Root Server plans). Shutting down a VM in SCP only turns off the virtual power switch. To stop recurring invoices, you must submit a formal contract cancellation (Cancellation / Kündigung) inside the CCP portal.

Under netcup's contract terms, you must submit your cancellation in CCP at least 31 full days before the end of your current contract period.

For example, if your 12-month contract expires on October 15, you must submit your cancellation in CCP no later than September 14. If you wait until September 20, the current cancellation window has already closed and your contract will automatically renew for another full billing cycle (e.g., 12 or 24 months). Pro tip: If you know a project is temporary, you can schedule a cancellation for the end of the contract term (at the end of the contract period / zum Ende der Vertragslaufzeit) inside CCP during your very first week—your server stays active until the final paid day and will never auto-renew by accident.

Never abandon an active German hosting contract by simply ignoring invoices or blocking your payment method.

Under German commercial contract law, an uncancelled contract remains legally binding. If an invoice goes unpaid for more than 30 days after reminder notices (Mahnungen), netcup forwards the debt to professional European collection agencies (such as Creditreform), which add substantial late fees and collection surcharges. Always cancel properly in CCP at least 31 days in advance—it takes less than 60 seconds.

New server orders come with a 30-day satisfaction guarantee and statutory withdrawal period (Widerrufsrecht). If you test your server within the first 30 days and aren't satisfied with the performance or network routing, open the CCP portal (or submit a support ticket to [email protected]) referencing your order number to exercise your 30-day money-back guarantee / contract withdrawal. Once processed, the contract is voided and your payment is refunded to your original payment method.

In short: VPS plans use shared vCores (built for variable/bursty workloads), while Root Servers provide dedicated physical CPU cores (built for sustained 24/7 heavy load).

• VPS G12.5: Shared vCores with strong single-thread burst speed, paired with enterprise SSD storage (or NVMe on ARM tiers) and a 1 Gbps port. Sustained 100% CPU saturation over long periods is subject to fair-use CPU scheduling.
• Root Server (RS) G12.5: KVM virtualized servers with 100% dedicated AMD EPYC 9645 (Zen 5) physical cores, dedicated DDR5 ECC RAM, pure PCIe NVMe RAID arrays (100k+ IOPS), and a 2.5 Gbps port. You can run all cores at 100% load 24/7 with zero CPU steal.

Real-time game servers (Minecraft, Palworld, CS2, Rust) rely on a strict main tick loop that is highly sensitive to CPU scheduling jitter; noisy neighbors on a shared VPS can cause tick lag spikes. Similarly, high-concurrency PostgreSQL/MySQL databases require consistent low-latency 4K random write IOPS. A Root Server's dedicated Zen 5 cores and pure NVMe storage eliminate noisy-neighbor jitter completely.

No—running default MySQL 8.0 on a 1 GB RAM instance will quickly trigger the Linux OOM Killer and crash your database.

MySQL 8.0 allocates 400–600 MB of RAM right at startup. For standard MySQL/PostgreSQL stacks, Docker Compose suites, or full web panels, start with at least 4 GB RAM (VPS 500 G12.5). The 1 GB VPS pico is ideal for lightweight workloads like Caddy/Nginx, SQLite, Uptime Kuma, authoritative DNS, WireGuard, or compact Go/Rust binaries.

Simply attach Local Block Storage to your existing server!

Priced at just €0.012 per GB per month (only €1.20/mo for 100 GB), Local Block Storage can be hot-mounted via the SCP panel up to 8 TB—saving you 50%–60% compared to upgrading your entire server plan just for storage.

Official one-click templates cover major Linux distributions (Debian, Ubuntu, AlmaLinux, Rocky, Arch, etc.) and FreeBSD, without pre-licensed Windows images. However, you can mount any custom Windows Server / Windows 11 ISO via the virtual DVD drive in SCP (using VirtIO drivers) or deploy Windows via automated network installer scripts.

Match your datacenter to your primary user base:

• Europe & UK: Choose Nuremberg (NUE, Germany), Vienna (VIE, Austria), or Amsterdam (AMS, Netherlands). All three offer 3–25 ms latency across Europe and the UK via direct peering at DE-CIX Frankfurt, VIX Vienna, and AMS-IX. Note that Nuremberg is netcup's flagship home location and is the only location available for promotional Root Servers.
• North & South America: Choose Manassas (MNZ, Virginia, US East) for ultra-low latency across the US East Coast (~5–25 ms), US West (~65 ms), Canada, and Latin America.
• Asia-Pacific & Australia: Choose Singapore (SIN) for Southeast Asia, India, Japan, and Australia. Note for mainland China traffic: netcup's Singapore PoP uses standard international peering without premium CN2/CUII China-direct routes, so traffic to mainland China often routes via the US West Coast (~280–350 ms); for direct Eurasian routing to China, Nuremberg (NUE, ~180–220 ms) is faster.

All VPS and Root Server plans include unmetered traffic with €0 overage fees, governed by a transparent Fair-Use Policy:

If your server's outbound traffic exceeds 2 TB within a rolling 24-hour window (equivalent to sustaining >185 Mbps continuously for 24 hours straight), your port speed is temporarily throttled to 200 Mbps. As soon as your 24-hour rolling usage drops below the threshold, full 1 Gbps / 2.5 Gbps port speed is restored automatically.

Over transcontinental links with 80–180 ms RTT, default Linux TCP window scaling limits single-stream throughput. When testing with iperf3 across continents, add -P 8 (8 parallel streams) to verify physical port capacity. To maximize single-connection web and transfer speeds, enable Linux TCP BBR congestion control and tune socket buffer sizes using our Network & BBR Tuning Guide.

netcup separates administrative billing from technical server operations so companies can grant sysadmins server access without exposing financial records:

• CCP (Customer Control Panel): Handles billing, invoices, account profile, GDPR Data Processing Agreements (AVV), server transfers (PUSH), and contract cancellations.
• SCP (Server Control Panel): Handles VM power controls, OS reinstallations, snapshots, firewall policies, rDNS, and the HTML5 KVM/VNC console.

Each panel issues its own separate login credentials.

Log in to the SCP panel, select your server, and open the Screen (HTML5 KVM/VNC) tab. This provides direct out-of-band console access—just like plugging a physical monitor and keyboard into the server—allowing you to log in locally as root and fix your firewall or sshd_config even when network SSH is unreachable.

No—local VM snapshots are not a replacement for off-site backups!

SCP snapshots reside on the same storage pool as your virtual machine. While they are fantastic for quick rollbacks before an OS upgrade, true disaster recovery follows the 3-2-1 rule: either export your offline snapshots from SCP to external storage or run automated encrypted backups with restic or borg to an external S3 bucket or remote storage server.

Support operates in English and German via ticket system (and emergency phone hotline for critical faults).

During German business hours (Monday–Friday CET/CEST), technical and billing tickets are handled efficiently by knowledgeable staff, typically within a few hours. Routine billing or general inquiries submitted over weekends or German public holidays are processed on the next business day, while 24/7 datacenter monitoring handles hardware or network incidents around the clock.

Most model-specific netcup vouchers are single-use codes. If another buyer redeemed that exact code just before you, simply return to our Live Voucher Codes Page, expand the backup codes on that product card, and copy the next verified code in the list.

While VPS and Root Server vouchers typically grant 1–2 free initial months, the Webhosting 2000/4000/8000 voucher provides a 30% lifetime recurring discount (Lebenslanger Rabatt)! Every future renewal year continues at 30% off—and the plans include 3 to 10 free domains alongside NVMe/SSD storage and Plesk.

Black Week & Black Friday (late November) is netcup's largest annual event, featuring special-edition plans with doubled NVMe storage or RAM. For year-round production deployments, ordering a G12.5 plan on a 24-month term paired with a 1–2 months free voucher from our Vouchers Page delivers exceptional value right away.

Watch out for the "Duplicate Cart Item" quirk!

Except for the universal 36nc... €5 discount voucher, all model-specific netcup vouchers (such as RS 1000 2-months-free or VPS 1000 1-month-free) automatically add a new discounted server of that model into your shopping cart. If you had already added the regular-priced server to your cart manually, you will see 2 servers in your cart (1 full-price + 1 discounted). Always delete the full-price item before submitting your order!

If you see A voucher can only be redeemed every 15 seconds, simply wait 15 seconds before trying another code. If you see There is already a voucher in the shopping cart, click the trash icon next to the active voucher in your cart before applying a new one.

Yes—netcup supports official account-to-account server transfers via Transfer Code (PUSH), and it is 100% FREE (€0 fee)!

Ignore outdated forum rumors claiming a "€15 transfer fee"—generating a Transfer Code in CCP and receiving a server via PUSH costs nothing at all:

• Current Owner (Sender): Log in to the CCP portal → open Products / Produkte → select the server → generate a Transfer Code and share it with the recipient.
• New Owner (Recipient): Log in to their own netcup CCP account, enter the Transfer Code, and accept the server for free (€0 fee), taking over the remaining contract term and future billing.

This makes long-term contracts and rare Black Friday special plans highly flexible: if your project requirements change mid-contract, you can easily transfer the server to a colleague, client, or another community member at zero cost.