Compare with DO: The closest comparable product at DO runs at 320 bucks a month, and you need to buy extra traffic (you get 23TB less traffic).
On EC2, the best comparable model would be the m3.2xlarge, for 280 bucks a month. (plus another 100 bucks for the 24/7 phone support).
Now, let’s try getting the same performance with service-as-a-service things: At heroku, 24/7 phone support alone is 1000 a month. Let’s assume a standard workload for that machine, we’ll use half of the RAM for Postgresql, and about 512GB storage for the database. With Heroku, that adds 750$ / month.
If we take the cheapest solution – a single dyno of the most powerful type – we end up with 1250$/month + support. If we use seperate dynos for our services, as many as the original example server could run, we get 17 Performance M dynos at 250$/month each, overall reaching 4250$.
And Google’s Firebase and Container Engine prices are at the same costs, same with Amazon Lambda, etc. And Hetzner isn’t especially cheap – any dedicated hoster will provide you their services at those prices. It’s just the nature of virtualization and higher abstractions that they are expensive.
If you can handle servers failing in your infrastructure, go with the cheapest possible option – like KimSufi, Online.net, scaleways, etc. If you want the standard quality and price, use Hetzner, OVH, and all the other industry-standard hosters.