AWS vs Hetzner for ERPNext Hosting: The Technical Trade-offs (2026)

Both run ERPNext's standard stack without trouble: Nginx, MariaDB, Redis and the Frappe Bench application server. Capability is not the question. The question is which operational trade-offs your business can carry.

What are the real differences between AWS and Hetzner for ERPNext?

Locations change, so check both lists before you commit: the AWS Regions page and Hetzner's locations page.

Does it matter that the data sits outside India?

Only when something names it: a client contract, a sector regulator or your own policy. GST does not say where your servers must be. The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 does not require personal data to stay in India either; it lets the government bar transfers to countries it names (section 16), and sector rules such as the RBI's on payment data still apply on top. AWS Mumbai keeps the database and application servers in India by default. On Hetzner the data is in Europe, the US or Singapore.

Plenty of Indian businesses run their ERP on servers abroad. The question becomes real when a contract or your counsel asks for in-country storage, which is more common in finance-related and government-facing work than in general manufacturing or trading. Check with your legal adviser before you decide either way.

Skimmable summary: data location decides only when a contract, regulator or policy asks for India; the DPDP Act itself does not, though sector rules can.

How much does latency differ for users in India?

Users in India have a shorter round trip to AWS Mumbai than to any Hetzner location. The distance and the number of network hops are smaller, so pages, reports and integration calls come back faster. Hetzner's Singapore location is closer than its European ones.

For accounting, purchasing and stock entry the difference is usually not felt: your team already uses SaaS tools hosted abroad. It shows on POS terminals, live dashboards and field apps, where every click waits on the server. If you are unsure, rent a small server in each place for a week, put a demo site on it and have your team run their normal day.

Skimmable summary: Mumbai is faster for users in India; back-office work rarely notices, POS and live dashboards do.

Which one needs less operational work?

AWS needs less hands-on work, because you can buy the operations as services. Automated snapshots, CloudWatch monitoring and RDS for the database take over tasks that would otherwise be yours. A Hetzner server gives you a fast, cheap machine and nothing else: backups, monitoring, security patches and scaling are manual until someone builds that tooling.

So the question is where the labour lives. Pay AWS to absorb part of it, or take it on yourself for Hetzner's lower price. A third route is managed hosting: servers you own, with someone else monitoring, patching and backing them up.

Skimmable summary: AWS trades money for less operational work; Hetzner trades operational work for a lower bill; managed hosting hands the work to someone else.

How do you choose between AWS and Hetzner for ERPNext?

1. Check for a data-location requirement. If a contract, regulator or policy asks for India, choose AWS Mumbai or another India-region provider.
2. Weigh latency against your workflows. Back-office ERP works from abroad; POS terminals and live dashboards prefer Mumbai.
3. Decide who runs the server. If nobody can own backups, monitoring and patching, use AWS's managed services, or a managed provider on either cloud.
4. Compare the full cost. Put AWS's bill next to Hetzner plus the hours someone spends running it, not next to Hetzner's server price alone.
5. Start cheaper if still unsure. Moving between them is a backup and restore, so the decision can be revisited.

Can I switch from Hetzner to AWS, or back, later?

Yes. Moving ERPNext between hosts is a standard bench migration: back up the site, restore it on the new server, point DNS at it. ERPNext runs on the same open Frappe stack on either host, and its data is a MariaDB database plus files, so no proprietary format holds it. Starting on the cheaper option and moving to AWS when a compliance or scale need appears is a low-risk path.

Skimmable summary: switching hosts later is a backup and restore, not a lock-in.

Should you run ERPNext on AWS or Hetzner yourself, or have it run for you?

Run it yourself if someone on your team can own the bench, the MariaDB backups and the monthly updates; on either cloud that is a few hours most months and a long evening when an upgrade goes wrong. Have it run for you if nobody owns that work: the cloud you pick matters less than whether someone restores a backup before you need one.

Under managed hosting we run one named server on AWS, Hetzner or another cloud, in your account or ours: nightly backups copied off it, one restored on a schedule, every upgrade tried on a copy first, and the master login stays yours. It is a monthly fee for running it plus the server, quoted in writing after a call. If Frappe Cloud fits better, who runs ERPNext after go-live compares all three paths job by job.

Frequently asked questions