About netcup: Company Background, Anexia Backbone & Nuremberg Data Centers

Table of Contents8 sections

Among European system administrators, self-hosters, and DevOps engineers, netcup consistently ranks alongside Hetzner and OVHcloud as one of the "Big Three" high-value infrastructure providers in Europe.

Unlike hourly cloud platforms designed for ephemeral spin-ups, netcup operates with the classic engineering mindset of a traditional German data center operator: generous, unthrottled hardware specifications and transparent pricing—paired with rigid, by-the-book German contract and billing procedures.

Before deploying production workloads on your first server, understanding netcup's corporate ownership, physical facilities, and support culture will help you decide whether it fits your architecture.

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1. Corporate History: From Karlsruhe Startup to the Anexia Group#

• 2003: Founded in Karlsruhe, Germany

netcup was founded in 2003 by Felix Preuß in Karlsruhe, a major German technology hub home to the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), and incorporated as netcup GmbH in 2008. Starting with web hosting and colocation, the company built a strong domestic following through reliable hardware and aggressive pricing.

• 2016: Acquisition by Austria's Anexia Group

In 2016, netcup joined Anexia (founded by Alexander Windbichler), a multinational cloud and telecommunications provider headquartered in Klagenfurt, Austria.

• Following the partnership, netcup retained its independent management, brand identity, and low-cost pricing structure;
• At the infrastructure layer, netcup plugged directly into Anexia's global backbone (AS197540), gaining massive European transit capacity and automated hardware DDoS mitigation. This Anexia integration also enabled netcup to expand beyond Germany into Vienna (Austria), Amsterdam (Netherlands), Manassas (Virginia, USA), and Singapore.

• 2023–2026: ISO 9001 Certification & G12.5 Zen 5 Fleet

netcup's data center operations are ISO 9001 certified, and in late 2026 the company transitioned its flagship G12.5 Root Server lineup to AMD EPYC 9645 (Zen 5 architecture) processors paired with DDR5 ECC memory.

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2. Physical Infrastructure: Two Owned Data Centers in Nuremberg#

While many budget VPS brands merely lease racks or resell capacity from third-party facilities, netcup owns and operates two dedicated data centers in Nuremberg (Nürnberg), Germany:

1. Geographic Proximity to DE-CIX Frankfurt:

Located in Bavaria, Nuremberg sits just 4–6 ms round-trip fiber latency away from DE-CIX Frankfurt, one of the world's largest Internet Exchange Points.

1. Redundant Power & Eco-Friendly Cooling:
   • Equipped with 2N transformer feeds and dual utility power paths, backed by modular UPS arrays and emergency diesel generators;
   • Powered by 100% renewable hydroelectricity (Ökostrom);
   • Cooled via N+1 redundant chilled-water and free-cooling circulation loops.
2. 99.6% Annual Network Availability SLA:

Because netcup employs its own on-site data center technicians in Nuremberg, hardware replacements—such as failed drives, power supplies, or top-of-rack switches—are handled directly by internal staff without waiting on third-party remote hands.

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3. Strengths vs. Trade-Offs: What to Expect Before You Buy#

If you plan to run infrastructure on netcup long-term, it pays to weigh its technical advantages against its bureaucratic quirks:

Key Strengths:#

1. Honest Hardware Without Aggressive Overselling:

On many budget VPS hosts, a "4 vCore" plan suffers from severe CPU steal and throttled disk I/O. At netcup:

• Root Server (RS) plans allocate dedicated physical AMD EPYC Zen 5 cores engineered for sustained High-Load operation;
• NVMe-backed Root Servers routinely deliver 80,000 to 150,000+ 4K random IOPS in independent fio benchmarks.

1. Tax Transparency (0% VAT for Non-EU & EU Reverse Charge):
   • Customers outside the European Union (US, UK, Canada, Australia, Switzerland, Singapore, Japan, etc.) automatically receive 0% VAT net pricing—saving 19% compared to German retail rates.
   • Registered EU businesses outside Germany can enter a valid EU VAT ID (USt-IdNr.) in the CCP to qualify for 0% VAT under the EU Reverse Charge mechanism.
2. Zero Hidden Add-On Fees:

Online/offline snapshots, browser-based KVM/VNC rescue console access, custom ISO mounting, baseline DDoS protection, and unmetered traffic (up to 2 TB/day before fair-use throttling) are all included at no extra charge.

The Classic German Bureaucracy (Where New Users Get Burned):#

1. Strict German Contract Law (BGB) & 31-Day Notice Period:

As detailed in our Refunds & Cancellation Guide, netcup enforces standard German fixed-term service contracts:

• You must cancel at least 31 full days before the end of your billing term (Kündigungsfrist) in the Customer Control Panel (CCP)!
• If you miss the deadline by even one day, the cancellation option locks for the current cycle and your contract automatically renews for another full term (e.g., 12 or 24 months).
• Support tickets asking to waive a missed deadline are politely declined, and ignoring unpaid invoices leads to formal debt collection via German agencies like Creditreform. (Fortunately, you can transfer unwanted servers to another user for €0 via a CCP Transfer Code.)

1. Business-Hours Ticket Support (No 24/7 Live Chat):
   • There is no instant live chat for general technical support;
   • Regular support tickets are processed in queues during German business hours (Monday–Friday, CET/CEST), while a 24/7 emergency hotline is reserved strictly for critical infrastructure outages;
   • You are expected to manage your own Linux OS, firewall, and software stack independently.
2. Standard Public Peering to Asia:

While European and Transatlantic routing (via DE-CIX, Telia/Arelion, GTT, and Anexia) is stellar, routing to East Asia uses standard public internet transit (~160–220 ms). If you serve end users in Asia-Pacific, place a CDN (such as Cloudflare) in front of your origin.

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4. Ideal User Profile: Is netcup Right for You?#

Strongly Recommended For:#

• Linux Sysadmins, DevOps Engineers & Self-Hosters: Comfortable with SSH, systemd, Docker, and firewalls, looking for maximum compute and memory per euro;
• SaaS Founders, E-Commerce Stores & European Agencies: Serving audiences across Europe, the UK, or North America who require GDPR-compliant German hosting and proper tax invoices;
• Long-Term Production Workloads: Running mail servers (Mailcow/Stalwart), primary PostgreSQL/MySQL databases, GitLab instances, or encrypted off-site Borg/Restic backup repositories;
• Compute-Intensive Projects: Running CI/CD build agents, multiplayer game servers (Minecraft, Palworld, CS2), or Proxmox VE virtualization nodes on dedicated Root Server cores.

Not Recommended For:#

• Complete Linux Beginners Expecting Managed Hand-Holding: If you need 24/7 live chat to debug WordPress plugins or nginx configs, choose a managed host instead;
• Users Who Ignore Billing Emails and Abandon Servers: Cloud users accustomed to "stop paying and let the provider delete the VM" will run straight into German contract renewals and collection notices (unless they use Hourly billing or schedule cancellation on Day 1);
• Abuse, Crypto Mining, or Bulk Spam Workloads: German compliance and abuse handling are rapid and unforgiving—violations result in immediate termination without refund.