Running Odoo on Hetzner: a practical guide for EU businesses

Why EU businesses choose Hetzner for Odoo

Hetzner Online is a German hosting company with its own data center parks in Nuremberg, Falkenstein and Helsinki. Three things make it a common choice for Odoo:

• Price. Hetzner Cloud servers cost noticeably less than comparable servers at the large US clouds, which matters when Odoo runs all day, every day.
• EU data centers. Your database and attachments can stay in Germany or Finland, with an EU provider.
• Simplicity. Fewer services and a simpler bill than AWS, Google Cloud or Azure. For a single Odoo application, you rarely need more.

Hetzner is not the right choice for everyone. If your company already runs on AWS or Azure, with its identity, networking and contracts there, staying with that provider is usually simpler. If you need managed databases or many regions worldwide, a larger cloud fits better. For a plain comparison of what Odoo hosting costs on different providers, see our Odoo hosting cost guide.

Step 1: Choose a location

Hetzner Cloud has six locations, according to its documentation (as of October 2026):

• Falkenstein, Germany (fsn1)
• Nuremberg, Germany (nbg1)
• Helsinki, Finland (hel1)
• Ashburn, Virginia, USA (ash)
• Hillsboro, Oregon, USA (hil)
• Singapore (sin)

For an EU business, the choice is between the three EU locations. Pick the one closest to most of your users: Germany for central and western Europe, Helsinki for the Nordics and the Baltics. Odoo is not very sensitive to small latency differences, so any EU location works well for users across Europe.

Also check included traffic. Hetzner's product pages show much larger traffic allowances in EU locations than in the US or Singapore. Odoo itself uses little traffic, but large attachment downloads, e-commerce images and offsite backups all count.

Step 2: Choose a server type

Hetzner Cloud servers come in two families, based on how the CPU is shared (as of October 2026):

Shared vCPU

The CX and CPX lines (x86) and the CAX line (Arm) share physical CPU cores with other customers. They give a baseline of performance and can briefly use more. This is the best value, and it suits most Odoo databases with tens of users, where the CPU is idle much of the day and busy in short bursts.

Dedicated vCPU

The CCX line gives you CPU cores of your own. Choose it when CPU is busy for long periods: many concurrent users, heavy reports, large imports, a busy website or long scheduled jobs. Performance is more predictable, at a higher price.

A sensible path is to start on a shared vCPU server and watch CPU usage for a few weeks. If it stays high during working hours, or users complain at busy times, move up a size or switch to dedicated vCPU. Hetzner lets you resize a server, which takes a short restart.

How much RAM and how many workers

RAM and the number of Odoo workers matter more than the server family. Too few workers and users wait; too many and the server runs out of memory. Our Odoo workers and server sizing guide explains how to size both from your number of users.

Step 3: Secure the server

A new cloud server is reachable from the whole internet. Before Odoo goes live, make sure that:

• Only the ports you need are open: HTTP and HTTPS for Odoo, and SSH. Hetzner's Cloud Firewalls are free and can be applied to many servers at once.
• SSH uses keys, not passwords, and repeated failed logins are blocked, for example with fail2ban.
• Security updates install automatically for the operating system.
• Odoo is behind a reverse proxy with HTTPS, and the Odoo master password and database manager are protected.
• PostgreSQL only listens locally, or on a private network if the database runs on a separate server.

For the full list, see our Odoo server hardening checklist.

Step 4: Plan backups that survive the server

Hetzner offers two kinds of server copies (as of October 2026):

• Backups: automatic daily copies of the whole server disk, with a limited number of slots, priced at a percentage of the server price. They belong to the server and are deleted with it.
• Snapshots: manual copies you take when you want, billed by size, which remain after the server is deleted.

Both are useful, for example a snapshot before an operating system upgrade. But they are copies of the whole disk, in the same provider and the same account. They are not a substitute for Odoo backups: a database dump plus the filestore, taken regularly, stored in a second place and tested by restoring it.

Hetzner also sells S3-compatible Object Storage and Storage Boxes, which you can use as that second place. For the strongest protection, keep one copy outside your Hetzner account entirely. Our Odoo backup strategy guide covers how often to back up and how long to keep copies.

Step 5: Check GDPR and data residency

Choosing an EU location is only part of GDPR. When Hetzner stores personal data for you, it acts as a processor, and GDPR Article 28 requires a data processing agreement (DPA). Hetzner provides one, but its terms say it is not concluded automatically: you accept it in your Hetzner account and describe the kinds of data and people involved (as of October 2026).

Also check:

• Where backups go. An offsite backup bucket in another region or another country moves your data too.
• Other processors. Your email provider, monitoring and any hosting platform you use on top of Hetzner may also process personal data.
• Your records. Add the hosting setup to your record of processing activities.

This is general information, not legal advice. Your data protection officer or adviser should confirm what applies to you.

For the full picture beyond Hetzner, see our guide to Odoo hosting, data residency and GDPR.

Doing it yourself or with a control panel

You can set all of this up by hand on Hetzner: install Odoo, PostgreSQL and Nginx, configure workers, HTTPS, the firewall, backups and monitoring, then keep it all up to date. It works well if you have the skills and the time, and it is the cheapest option.

If you would rather not run servers at all, Odoo Online or Odoo.sh run the platform for you, on Odoo's own infrastructure. A control panel sits between the two: the server stays in your Hetzner account, but the setup and daily operations are automated.

How CloudPilot runs Odoo on Hetzner

CloudPilot connects to your Hetzner Cloud account with an API token and creates Odoo servers there. The servers and their bill stay in your account.

• Any Hetzner location. CloudPilot lists the locations from your Hetzner account, so you choose an EU location yourself.
• x86 server types with at least 2 GB of RAM, with Hetzner's monthly price shown in euros. Servers run Ubuntu 24.04.
• Hardened by default. SSH password logins are turned off, fail2ban blocks brute-force attempts and security updates install automatically.
• Odoo backups with offsite copies to any S3-compatible bucket, Azure Blob Storage, Google Cloud Storage or an SFTP server, so a copy can live outside Hetzner.
• Staging, Git deploys, custom domains with SSL, and monitoring built in.

Connecting your Hetzner account is part of Pro and Business, with unlimited servers. See pricing for the other plans, Odoo hosting on Hetzner for an overview, and Connect a cloud provider for the setup steps.

To launch it in one click, see Odoo on Hetzner with managed Odoo hosting. Current server prices are on Hetzner Cloud.

Frequently asked questions