I run a small company in the EU and was recently quoted roughly three times what we paid a couple of years ago for servers with similar specifications—except the new quote included only about a quarter of the RAM. That pricing is difficult for us to justify. Where have other EU-based administrators had good experiences buying used or refurbished servers? I'm mainly interested in reliable vendors, reasonable warranties, and avoiding unexpected import costs.
4 Answers
It may be worth checking EU vendors such as ServerSchmiede, ETB Technologies, Renewtech, Nordic Computer, Serverschmiede, Gekko Computer, or regional refurbishers in your own country. Some offer EU-wide delivery and warranties, which can make them cheaper overall than a UK supplier once customs and VAT are included. Dell’s regional outlet or enterprise refurb channel is also worth checking, although availability can be inconsistent.
The second-hand market is unusually expensive right now, so don’t assume refurbished is automatically cheaper than new. Compare the complete configuration, warranty, shipping, and support costs. For smaller deployments, a minimally configured used server with good off-site backups can be more sensible than paying a premium for maximum RAM and storage immediately.
We recently found refurbished systems priced above newer-generation Dell machines bought directly, so it’s definitely worth checking both markets instead of relying on the usual used-versus-new assumption.
Bargain Hardware is probably the most frequently recommended option. They have a good reputation for configurable refurbished systems and have handled replacement parts quickly when hardware failed. If you’re ordering from within the EU, check the final price carefully because UK shipments can add customs fees and import VAT.
They’ve been excellent in my experience too, including sending replacement fans and a motherboard without making the process difficult. Just calculate the landed cost before comparing them with EU-based suppliers.
If your existing equipment is stable, extending its lifecycle may be the best short-term option. Several administrators are still running six- to ten-year-old servers in production and replacing them only when they fail, provided spare parts, monitoring, redundancy, and backups are in place. Older HP and Dell systems can still perform perfectly well for virtualization and general workloads.
We brought some older systems back into service after seeing how inflated current prices were. The key is having tested backups and enough redundancy that a hardware failure doesn’t become an outage.
ETB has worked well for us, especially because they can simplify European shipping and import paperwork for business customers.