UpCloud

UpCloud is a European cloud provider selling virtual servers by the hour from its own data centres. Cloud Servers are deployed from a browser control panel or through an API, a CLI and a Terraform provider, with storage, networking and managed services alongside them. The block storage layer is developed in house: MaxIOPS volumes run on a dedicated backend separate from the compute hosts and are joined to them over InfiniBand, so a compute host that fails can have its servers restarted elsewhere without the data going with it.

The platform spans 15 data centres in 12 countries, from Helsinki, Frankfurt and London to Chicago, San Jose, Singapore and Sydney, and serves more than 10,000 customers. MaxIOPS is rated at up to 100,000 read IOPS at a 4K block size and comes as standard on Simple plans. Volumes run from 1 GB to 4 TB, and one server can attach up to 16 of them. Cloud Server plans start at €3 a month, billed from the starting hour, with zero-cost egress on every plan. The published SLA is 99.999%, with human support 24/7 and an average first response under 40 seconds. Managed Kubernetes, managed MySQL, PostgreSQL, Valkey and OpenSearch, object storage, load balancers and NAT and VPN gateways are ordered from the same panel, and GPU servers carry NVIDIA L4, L40S, H100 and B200 cards.

UpCloud was formed in 2011 as a spin-off from Sigmatic, a Finnish shared hosting provider, and opened its services to the public in 2012. It is headquartered in Helsinki with a second office in Hamburg, and sells a proprietary, vendor-hosted platform rather than software you run yourself; its data centres are ISO certified and the majority run on renewable energy. The company presents itself as a European, sovereignty-minded alternative to the US hyperscalers.