Equinix Metal vs Hivelocity
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Equinix Metal and Hivelocity.
Quick Verdict
1.5/5
Equinix Metal
0 reviews
3.9/5
Hivelocity
0 reviews
Hivelocity is rated higher (3.9 vs 1.5). Equinix Metal (formerly Packet) offered on-demand bare metal servers across Equinix metros with ARM and x86 hardware, hourly billing and private interconnects to cloud providers. Equinix stopped commercial sales and sunset the service on 30 June 2026 — it can no longer be purchased or used. Hivelocity provides dedicated servers with configurable hardware, DDoS protection, and 24/7 support. Built for applications requiring guaranteed performance and resource isolation.
Equinix Metal Discontinued: on-demand bare metal (formerly Packet), sunset 30 June 2026 | Hivelocity Bare metal servers with direct hardware control and low latency | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 1.5 (0 reviews) | 3.9 (0 reviews)✓ |
| Pricing model | paid | paid |
| Starting price | Free tier available | From $65/mo |
| Best for | Nobody — the service was sunset on 30 June 2026. Former Metal workloads belong on a modern bare metal provider from our /category/bare-metal-cloud shortlist, or on Equinix colocation if interconnection was the real dependency. | Ops-capable teams needing bare metal in specific US, European, or Asia-Pacific locations with responsive human support and an SLA with teeth — game servers, latency-sensitive apps, and colocation customers. |
| Specifications (entry plan) | ||
| CPU cores | — | 6 vCPU |
| RAM | — | 16 GB |
| Storage | — | 480 GB |
| Bandwidth | — | 20 TB/mo |
| SLA uptime | — | 99.99% |
| Data-center count | — | 40 |
| €/vCPU/mo | — | €10.83 |
| €/GB RAM/mo | — | €4.06 |
| Features | ||
| IPv6 | ✓ | |
| DDoS protection | ✓ | |
| Automated backups | ||
| Snapshots | ||
| Managed option | ||
| Bare metal | ||
| GPU available | ||
| S3-compatible | ||
| Hourly billing | ✓ | |
| Free tier | ||
| Data-center locations | ||
| Regions | — | Tampa, FL (TPA1/TPA2)Miami, FL (MIA1)Atlanta, GA (ATL2)Jacksonville, FL (JAX1)Chicago, IL (ORD1)Dallas, TX (DAL1)+21 |
| Tags | ||
| Tags | hourly billingipv6ddos protectioneu datacenterus datacenterapac datacenterapi accessprivate networking | nvme storageipv6ddos protectionbackups includedus datacenter |
| Visit Equinix Metal → | Visit Hivelocity → | |
Equinix Metal
Pros
- + Historically one of the strongest developer surfaces in bare metal: API, CLI, Terraform, Kubernetes integrations
- + Hourly on-demand billing (minimum one-hour block) with 5-50% reservation discounts by term
- + Single-tenant hardware with real interconnection: Equinix Fabric links and cloud on-ramps
- + ARM and x86 options, NVMe storage, up to 64-core EPYC-class machines
- + Shutdown was handled professionally: dated timeline, migration support, security and stability maintained to the end
Cons
- - Discontinued: sales stopped and the service was sunset on 30 June 2026 — unpicked workloads were deleted
- - Premium pricing (~$535/mo entry per third-party trackers) in a market with far cheaper bare metal automation
- - Classic vendor-concentration risk: a side product inside a colocation giant, killed by portfolio arithmetic
- - Residual resources (IPs, VLANs, VRFs, Fabric connections, dedicated ports) kept billing unless explicitly deleted
- - No free tier, no published SLA; enterprise sales-led motions for credits and reservations
Hivelocity
Pros
- + Real single-tenant hardware with IPMI/KVM, private management LAN, IPv6, and server hardening included
- + Wide footprint: 40+ advertised data centers on six continents with 28 named instant-deploy locations including Asia-Pacific and Australia
- + Strong support reputation: 24/7 human support, NPS 79 claimed, consistently high third-party review scores
- + Contractual 99.99% uptime SLA with service credits plus a 4-hour hardware replacement guarantee on colocation listings
- + No setup fees on dedicated servers; instant-deploy in minutes and custom builds to exact spec
Cons
- - Mid-market pricing: $97 promo / $129 regular entry config is roughly double European value providers, with 20 TB metered transfer
- - Promo-versus-regular pricing and rotating inventory (the cheapest config changed between August and September 2026)
- - Unmanaged by default: backups, security, and managed services are paid add-ons despite our database's backups-included tag
- - Reported location-based price surcharges ($20–75/month depending on city) and no free migrations
- - SLA figures published inconsistently across the site (99.99%, 99.999%, and 100% appear on different pages)
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