Search for a cheap dedicated server in Europe and the prices on the product cards start well below €100 a month. The number on the card is rarely the number on the invoice. Bandwidth quotas, extra IPv4 addresses, DDoS mitigation, setup fees and support tiers are the lines where a cheap server quietly turns into an ordinary one.
The fair way to judge a low price is to read it line by line. This guide does that for the cheapest NexonHost build, prices every add-on you are likely to need, and is blunt about the workloads where saving money on the processor is a false economy.
The €129 build, line by line
| What you get | Entry build |
|---|---|
| Processor | 2× Intel Xeon E5-2630 v4: 20 cores / 40 threads, 2.20 GHz base, 3.10 GHz turbo |
| Memory | 128 GB DDR4 |
| Storage | 1× 240 GB SSD |
| Network port | 1 Gbps, unmetered and guaranteed |
| DDoS mitigation | 100 Gbps at layer 4, included |
| IPv4 addresses | 1 included |
| Setup fee | None |
| Delivery | Automatic, in minutes |
| Locations | Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Paris, Marseille, Milan, Madrid, Vienna, Warsaw, Sofia, Bucharest, Dublin, Ashburn |
| Price | €129 a month |
In the store the price is two lines: €79 for the server and €50 for the unmetered 1 Gbps port. That split tells you where much of the value sits. A 1 Gbps port running flat out for a 30-day month moves about 324 TB (1 Gbps × 2,592,000 seconds ÷ 8 bits per byte). You will not use all of it, but there is no quota to exceed and no overage line waiting at the end of the month.
Where cheap servers get expensive
The same five lines decide whether a low price stays low, whoever you buy from.
Bandwidth. A quota of a few terabytes looks generous until a backup job, a busy launch or an attack eats it. Overage is billed per terabyte, and it is the line most likely to double an invoice. The trade-off between quotas and unmetered ports is worked through with published rates in Unmetered Bandwidth vs Metered.
IPv4 addresses. The RIPE NCC, the registry that allocates addresses for Europe, the Middle East and parts of Central Asia, ran out of IPv4 on 25 November 2019. Addresses now change hands on a market, and providers pass the cost on. AWS, for example, has charged $0.005 an hour for every public IPv4 address since 1 February 2024, which is $3.60 a month per address. On this build one IPv4 address is included and each extra one is €3 a month, up to five. A full /24 is €250 a month plus a €100 setup fee.
DDoS mitigation. A server without mitigation is cheap right up to its first attack. This build, like every NexonHost dedicated server, includes 100 Gbps of layer 4 mitigation. If you need more, the upgrades are priced per server per month: 500 Gbps for €149, 1 Tbps for €499, 2 Tbps for €999, 5 Tbps for €2,499, and 10 Tbps with layer 7 protection for €4,499.
Setup fees and lock-in. There is no setup fee and billing is monthly, but payments are non-refundable under the terms of service, so start on a one-month term and test the server under real load before committing to a longer one.
Support. 24/7 ticket and email support for hardware and network faults is included. Help inside your operating system is not: troubleshooting, software installation and monitoring is €99 a month for two hours, and fully managed with live support is €599 a month. Managed vs Unmanaged Server Hosting explains how to decide whether you need either.
| Add-on (monthly) | Price |
|---|---|
| Extra IPv4 address | €3 each, up to 5 |
| /24 subnet | €250 + €100 setup |
| 2× 500 GB SSD (for RAID 1) | €10 |
| 6× 1 TB SSD | €60 |
| 2 Gbps port instead of 1 Gbps | €100 instead of €50 |
| 10 Gbps port instead of 1 Gbps | €500 instead of €50 |
| 500 Gbps DDoS mitigation | €149 |
| Troubleshooting support, 2 hours | €99 |
Cheap per month, nearly the cheapest per core
The entry build has the lowest monthly price in the range. At €6.45 it also has the second-lowest price per core; only the 256-core EPYC 9754 is cheaper.
| Build | Cores | Monthly | Per core |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2× Xeon E5-2630 v4 | 20 | €129 | €6.45 |
| 2× Xeon E5-2690 v4 | 28 | €249 | €8.89 |
| 2× Xeon E5-2699 v4 | 44 | €425 | €9.66 |
| 1× AMD EPYC 9254 | 24 | €449 | €18.71 |
| 2× AMD EPYC 9254 | 48 | €679 | €14.15 |
| 2× AMD EPYC 9554 | 128 | €959 | €7.49 |
| 2× AMD EPYC 7702 | 128 | €989 | €7.73 |
| 2× AMD EPYC 9754 | 256 | €1,519 | €5.93 |
If your workload can keep 256 cores busy, the EPYC 9754 is cheaper per core than the entry Xeon. If it cannot, the €129 box is the cheapest way to get a whole server to yourself.
Where the low price is real
The entry build is good value for work that is parallel, bandwidth-heavy, or simply needs isolation more than speed:
- web and application servers behind a cache, staging environments and CI runners
- crawlers, scrapers and queue workers that spread across many threads
- download mirrors, game patch distribution and video segments, where the port matters more than the processor (see unmetered dedicated servers)
- VPN endpoints, mail relays and monitoring nodes
- a backup target, once you add disks
Where cheap stops being cheap
Single-thread speed. Intel launched the E5-2630 v4 in the first quarter of 2016, and it turbos to 3.10 GHz. Game servers, databases answering many small queries, and anything with one hot thread will feel that. AMD rates the EPYC 9254 at up to 4.15 GHz. A slower processor is not a saving if players, customers or queries are the ones waiting on it.
Memory bandwidth. Intel lists a maximum of 68.3 GB/s per socket for the E5-2630 v4, from four channels of DDR4-2133. AMD lists 460.8 GB/s per socket for the EPYC 9254, from twelve channels of DDR5-4800. Analytics, in-memory caches and large databases live on that number.
Storage. One 240 GB SSD is a boot disk, not a home for data you cannot rebuild in an hour. Add a pair of drives and mirror them: 2× 500 GB SSD in RAID 1 is €10 a month. Understanding RAID covers which level fits which job.
Delivery time. The Xeon builds provision automatically in minutes. The EPYC builds carry an estimated delivery of about two weeks, so the cheapest server is also the quickest one to get.
Less than a whole server. If the workload fits in a few cores and a few gigabytes, a VPS is cheaper still. VPS vs Dedicated Server sets out where the line sits.
Comparing cheap dedicated server offers in five minutes
- Price the port, not the box: quota or unmetered, guaranteed or shared.
- Count the IPv4 addresses included and price the extras.
- Ask for the size of the included DDoS mitigation, in Gbps and in packets per second.
- Check the setup fee, the minimum term and the refund window.
- Look up the processor's launch date on the manufacturer's own specification page.
- Find out whether the storage is redundant or a single disk.
- Read what the included support actually covers.
A provider that answers all seven on the product page is usually one whose invoice matches its price.
Where to start
A cheap dedicated server from NexonHost starts at €129 a month: 20 cores, 128 GB of RAM, an unmetered 1 Gbps port, 100 Gbps of DDoS mitigation and one IPv4 address, provisioned in minutes in any of twelve European and US locations. Ports scale from 1 Gbps up to 100 Gbps depending on the build. Every configuration, from the entry Xeon to the 256-core EPYC, is on the dedicated servers page, and if your users are in the Benelux, the Netherlands dedicated server page lists the builds available in Amsterdam.
Specifications and pricing are as of 28 September 2026, and DDoS protection figures as of 23 October 2026 — check the product pages for current figures.
Sources
- NexonHost store configurator for the entry Xeon build and the other seven dedicated builds: base prices, port, disk, IP, support and DDoS mitigation options. Retrieved 28 September 2026; DDoS mitigation rechecked 23 October 2026.
- Intel Xeon Processor E5-2630 v4 specifications, Intel. Launch Q1'16, 10 cores / 20 threads per processor, 2.20 GHz base, 3.10 GHz turbo, DDR4-2133, 68.3 GB/s. Retrieved 1 October 2026.
- AMD EPYC 9254, AMD. Up to 4.15 GHz boost, 12 channels of DDR5-4800, 460.8 GB/s per socket. Retrieved 28 September 2026.
- The RIPE NCC has run out of IPv4 Addresses, RIPE NCC, 25 November 2019. Retrieved 28 September 2026.
- New – AWS Public IPv4 Address Charge + Public IP Insights, AWS News Blog. $0.005 per IP per hour from 1 February 2024. Retrieved 28 September 2026.
- Terms of Services, NexonHost, section 11, no refunds. Retrieved 9 October 2026.
- Computed: 1 Gbps × 2,592,000 s ÷ 8 = 324 TB per 30-day month; $0.005 × 720 hours = $3.60; per-core prices are monthly price ÷ physical cores.
