hosting questions

[iso2009]

I am hosting my sites with Hetzner (great uptime and prices, slow support if you ran into troubles) and I did that for over 8 years now. Never had any complaints, issues, but as a stupid idiot I never fully read the Terms, where they clearly say they don't allow "gambling".

My sites don't review bookies, and they can be labeled as sports sites with some gambling links (Bet now etc). So I am not sure whether this counts as gambling as the main content of the site is different from the ads.

So the first question to you is if you ever had any issues with Hetzner while hosting any type of "gambling" content there. Because if they cut me off, I will lose tens of gigs of data which is simply crucial.

However, I plan to get into the casino and bookie reviews niche and I guess it will be smart to look for another host for these sites.

The second question would be where I can find a 100% safe host for these casino sites, only VPS (no Wordpress, no dedicated). I don't use WP, I don't want to start using WP again, I write my own things. I don't expect Hetzner prices, but I don't want to pay too much.

The only one I've found so far is Hostinger, but again I am not sure what happens if I promote Bovada, 22bet or crypto casinos, if they will suspend me or not.

I know, I have AI and google, but what people recommend is usually better

Thank you very much, guys!

[casaffiliate]

You can always hide behind Cloudflare and keep using Hetzner, so when someone checks your site it won’t obviously show Hetzner. However, if someone sends in a complaint, Cloudflare will still pass it on to Hetzner.

Another option is to put a reverse proxy in front. DNS points to that proxy VPS, and it simply forwards traffic to your real server at Hetzner. AI can walk you through setting that up. It’s not too difficult once you get the hang of it, but if you’ve never done it before, you might spend a day or two figuring it out. The proxy VPS would usually be with a so-called bulletproof host, but they’re bulletproof only until they’re not.

In the past, I used unlimitedwebhosting.co.uk. At the time, they were fine with gambling (not sure if that’s still the case), and everything was smooth until they went completely silent for two days when the server became unreachable. So consider this a recommendation on who to avoid.

You can also check out LowEndBox and LowEndTalk for providers that are not mainstream.

[Sherlock]

Because if they cut me off, I will lose tens of gigs of data which is simply crucial.

I do not understand this. Why you do not backup the data, if you are scared that they will not give you access after they kick you out? If you have no backup, it is more likely that you can lose the data by other ways than being dumped.

[iso2009]

I do not understand this. Why you do not backup the data, if you are scared that they will not give you access after they kick you out? If you have no backup, it is more likely that you can lose the data by other ways than being dumped.

There's a backup, of course, but it's also on Hetzner. Now I am looking for a secondary backup, just in case.

[Sherlock]

Your secondary backup is your laptop. There is nothing else you have to look for. Just download it. (Maybe I am missing something) If you do not know how to do it at Hetzner, just ask your AI. In this case it will be probably an accurate response, because it is a technical thing with a lot of documentation. Just ask step by step how to do it and it should guide you (I am just testing it).

[eenzoo]

You can always hide behind Cloudflare and keep using Hetzner, so when someone checks your site it won’t obviously show Hetzner. However, if someone sends in a complaint, Cloudflare will still pass it on to Hetzner.

I dont get this, his (no) problem is Hetzner not a third party

----

I do host some smaller WP sites there. I cant tell you exact year, but its at least 10 yrs. ago, i have asked Hetzner about Gambling, and if i remember correct, they pointed explicied to real money gambling sites aka operators etc.

For server, you can check Mojohost.

[casaffiliate]

I dont get this, his (no) problem is Hetzner not a third party

True, but right now, a quick DNS check on his site immediately shows that it is hosted at Hetzner. Since gambling content is not allowed there, anyone who knows this could easily cause problems by reporting the site to Hetzner.


If he sets up Cloudflare, the site could stay hosted at Hetzner without revealing that it is actually hosted there. A DNS lookup would only show Cloudflare nameservers. If someone reports the site to Cloudflare, they will typically notify you first, and it usually takes a few days before the hosting provider takes any action. When Hetzner eventually contacts you, they generally give you 24 hours to remove the content that violates their ToS.


That said, I agree that moving away from Hetzner is definitely the cleaner long-term solution.

[iso2009]

True, but right now, a quick DNS check on his site immediately shows that it is hosted at Hetzner. Since gambling content is not allowed there, anyone who knows this could easily cause problems by reporting the site to Hetzner.


If he sets up Cloudflare, the site could stay hosted at Hetzner without revealing that it is actually hosted there. A DNS lookup would only show Cloudflare nameservers. If someone reports the site to Cloudflare, they will typically notify you first, and it usually takes a few days before the hosting provider takes any action. When Hetzner eventually contacts you, they generally give you 24 hours to remove the content that violates their ToS.


That said, I agree that moving away from Hetzner is definitely the cleaner long-term solution.

It's also true that right now if you look at my sites you see Cloudflare But the idea of the proxy vps is actually a nice one and I will remember it.

I've found among my old hosts one called time4vps, which has reasonable prices and doesn't mention anything about gambling as long as you obey the rules of Lithuania. Which I think is fine. Hostinger was the other option, but I never used them before.

enzoo, my guess is also that they refer to gambling operators in their ToS, not affiliate sites. But just saying "gambling" is sort of a catchall in case they need something to push you out.

Sherlock, I don't feel comfortable downloading 240 Gb of data anywhere apart from another cloud provider But I like your solution, to be honest it was the first thing I thought, let's use something here, close to me.

But redeployment could be easier and faster in the cloud. And it's not expensive at all, max $10/month, so it's nothing.

[iso2009]

For anyone interested, this is Hetzner's actual policy on gambling:

Dear Sir or Madam,

thank you for your request.

According to our ToS, gambling is not allowed. We do not support gambling in any way and we do not want to support the exploitation of addiction.

Regarding review sites, we have established the rule that they are allowed if they do not link in any way to the casino pages. If the gambling site is just "one click away", it is not allowed.

[iso2009]

And if anyone is curious about what I did:

- OVH allows gambling if legal (it means no offshore), so I went for it.
- OVH is a crap service and two days after starting a new website and already getting traffic, it went down 3 hours (on my location only, Germany). When I looked at the incidents history for OVH and DE (and other datacenters, btw), it's horrible. Downtimes for as long as 6 hours, multiple times, in August 2025 alone. Forget about OVH.

So I am moving back to Hetzner and will employ the proxy vps server thing.

[Sherlock]

Please take this as an advice how legality / nonlegality is being solved by small or big hostings.

They by far do not have lawyers or sources to make analysis of every wordpress site, all ads, all geos, all conditions. Whether they are legal, illegal, allegedly illegal, conditionally legal etc. They TOS are not a guide for you. It is their insurance, if someone is complaining hard, so they can swiftly delete what might be problematic.

In reality nobody from them will deliberately check your content. It is costly. They are not proactive, just reactive. When there is a complaint, they will look at your website and very likely some 19 yr part timer from 3rd country will make a verdict against you just to be secure. Then you can maybe appeal, explain etc. But it is very unlikely that this will happen. It must be that someone goes against you, maybe a competition or someone who simply wants to bring you down.

This reactivity can change with AI to proactivity, because AI can bring the costs down, but if there will be no law (similar to KYC), they do not like to throw away smaller or bigger money for compliance that brings them little to nothing.

[OnlineProxy]

It’s awesome that you’ve been with Hetzner for so long,but since you’re planning to get into the casino and betting review niche,you should keep their gambling policy in mind,Hetzner’s rules don’t allow gambling content,but it’s unclear whether affiliate links to betting sites would break those rules,which could be risky for you,it’s a good idea to reach out to Hetzner directly and ask if your sports site with gambling links could be flagged. If you’re looking for a new host, HostSlick and HostingB2B are good choices because they’re more flexible about gambling content and focus on iGaming,just make sure to double-check with them to confirm they’ll accept your casino-related content

[Emiliana Rostowicz]

I also used Hetzner for a long time and everything worked fine, but for gambling niches it’s definitely risky. If you plan to build casino or bookie review sites, it’s smarter to pick a hosting provider that openly allows such projects, so you don’t have to worry about sudden suspensions. For VPS, I’d suggest looking into providers specialized in iGaming — not the cheapest option, but at least you’ll have peace of mind. Hostinger is okay, but they might also shut you down if they notice Bovada or crypto casinos. It’s better to pay a little extra than lose everything due to a ban.

[idanbraun]

The right way to solve your problem is to simply move the website to another hosting.

VPS is great. There are tons of hosting companies that allow gambling.

Why not dedicated? VPS uses a dedicated IP.

[iso2009]

I managed to setup the proxy server, not really complicated but I had to move a domain away from Namecheap in order to finally use a Cloudflare SSL certificate - so this was the only bottleneck, otherwise the process was quite simple.

The choice for proxy server is Digital Ocean, and while this is not bulletproof (they accept legal gambling, ie crypto gambling or offshore gambling is not allowed), I had to put in balance uptime/reliability/cost/terms vs the usual Cyprus or Malta vps providers. Hetzner remains the core, since it's probably the cheapest hosting that offers strong and reliable services.

OVH was a very bad experience overall (they have the same terms as Digital Ocean, but suck at uptime/incidents).

So now I can quickly jump from one provider to another, if anything happens, while still having everything in place at Hetzner.


Thanks casaffiliate for the idea

[eenzoo]

That sounds like such a headache. And i do not get what you have actually won now?
Your content is still with Hetzner while violating hosting T&Cs there?!
What do you run? 888.com

I'm not 100% sure on the total numbers, but i guess have in complete about 80 websites online. Some iGamings, eCom, mainstream content sites, personal finance and dating sites. Hosted with 3 companies. Hetzner, WPX and Kinsta ... all of those doing backups once a day at least and i can backup and download those backups on demand 24h a day?!

[iso2009]

That sounds like such a headache. And i do not get what you have actually won now?

Your content is still with Hetzner while violating hosting T&Cs there?!
What do you run? 888.com

I'm not 100% sure on the total numbers, but i guess have in complete about 80 websites online. Some iGamings, eCom, mainstream content sites, personal finance and dating sites. Hosted with 3 companies. Hetzner, WPX and Kinsta ... all of those doing backups once a day at least and i can backup and download those backups on demand 24h a day?!

It's not a headache What I got is:

- cheap and reliable hosting at hetzner, avoiding a lot of migration headache (in case of any issues). Any possible complaints will not reach Hetzner.

- quickly jumping to another provider (again, in case of any issues) while not moving hundreds of gigs all around.


I could buy a Malta/Cyprus vps, but I am not sure about their uptime. But if anyone asked, I would say "I am hosted in Malta", which is true. And it's also true the content lives in Germany.

I usually like to cut costs no matter how much/little I make, so think about it as a little obsession, not as running 888.com

But as Sherlock said, the chances of getting a complaint at Hetzner are close to zero (but not zero). So, it's also about peace of mind, in a way.

In the end it is just a little trick which I find very useful to know, and I implemented it, and that's about it

[eenzoo]

... all good until Hetzner gets so many complaints regarding hundreds of other sites and they deciding just to run some scan for 3 or 4 keywords on clients sites .... ?

[iso2009]

... all good until Hetzner gets so many complaints regarding hundreds of other sites and they deciding just to run some scan for 3 or 4 keywords on clients sites .... ?

They have no reason to do that, but leaving that aside, how do you see this "scan"? What exactly are they scanning? Unless I am breaking the Terms or I am under a criminal investigation, I don't see how they can scan my servers.

Even if the decide to scan nginx, they will find nothing at all. All websites are running as localhost and the proxy server does the rest. It's like nothing happens on the server, just some Express apps running on localhost. They need to look into the firewall and see the ip of the proxy server, but that is the problem of the proxy server, since that is the one making the sites available to the public. Not them.

Hetzner will never do that anyway, too much hassle for nothing.

[eenzoo]

They have no reason to do that, but leaving that aside, how do you see this "scan"? What exactly are they scanning? Unless I am breaking the Terms or I am under a criminal investigation, I don't see how they can scan my servers.

Tech-wise, i have no idea how they could do it? Bots scrapping sites all day?!
And why? Why they do have T&C for the products they offer?
If your solution would be safe, all dark grey or illegal contents could be hosted. Porn, pills, or really bad stuff.
If i would be "Mr. Hetzner", i would have a modus operandi to keep my servers clean!
And if you run websites who promote online gambling in a more or less direct way, it breaks the terms.

Hetzner will never do that anyway, too much hassle for nothing.

Probably not. But it wouldnt be for nothing.