Insights
Cloud Infrastructure
Expert guidance on Cloud Infrastructure. These workflows help you take control of your stack and move away from vendor lock-in.
Bespoke server architecture, high-performance hosting, and seamless infrastructure migrations for growing businesses.
-
Cloud Infrastructure
Why You Still Need Dedicated Hosting in 2026 (Your SaaS Panel Doesn't Manage Your Server)
A SaaS panel on a rented VPS is not managed hosting. Here's the responsibility gap that leaves you owning the risk, and why dedicated hosting still wins in 2026.
-
Cloud Infrastructure
Why People Complain About Contabo and OVHcloud (and When It's Fair)
Contabo and OVHcloud complaints are mostly real but predictable. Here's what's fair, what's overblown, and who each budget host actually suits.
-
Cloud Infrastructure
Hetzner Price Increase 2026: Why It's Fair and Where It Falls Short
Hetzner's 2026 price increase is a fair response to surging RAM and storage costs. The real miss is how Hetzner communicated it to its customers.
-
Cloud Infrastructure
xCloud Security Review: Pushing for Secure by Default Docker Hosting
I audited xCloud's Docker hosting. The isolation, AppArmor, and per-app users are solid. Here are the daemon and compose defaults they should ship next.
-
Cybersecurity & Hardening
Defense in Depth: A Secure Web Application Architecture Built on Boring Decisions
Defense in depth is what actually keeps a web application secure: seven concentric, independent layers from the perimeter to the database. Boring decisions that compound.
-
Cloud Infrastructure
Serverless Hosting Hidden Costs: An Agency Owner's Guide
An honest take on the hidden costs of Vercel, Netlify, Cloudflare Pages, and Railway: surprise bills, lock-in, and outages an agency can't afford.
-
Cloud Infrastructure
Would You Give a Stranger the Keys to Your House? Why I Moved Away from SaaS Cloud Control Panels
SaaS control panels need root access to your servers. After years of using them, I moved to Enhance, a self-hosted panel. The trade-offs, the migration story, and where SaaS still fits.
-
Cloud Infrastructure
CyberPanel: My OpenLiteSpeed Stack for Agency WordPress
How I install CyberPanel on a fresh Ubuntu box, harden the LiteSpeed admin, enforce TLS 1.3, and turn on the LSCache crawler for agency WordPress hosting.
-
Cloud Infrastructure
Enhance Control Panel: My Agency-Grade cPanel Alternative
How I install Enhance control panel on Hetzner: the multi-server topology, the Cloudflare guardrails, and when the operational tax is worth paying.
-
Cloud Infrastructure
Mailcow: My Self-Hosted Email Server vs Google Workspace
How I deploy Mailcow as a self-hosted email server: the Compose stack, the DNS records that decide deliverability, and when I tell clients to stay on Workspace.
-
Cloud Infrastructure
Portainer + NPM + Vaultwarden: My Default Self-Hosted Stack
How I deploy Portainer, Nginx Proxy Manager, and Vaultwarden together: the Docker stack, the gotchas, and the operational rules I'd tattoo on a junior engineer.
-
Open Source Solutions
PikaPods: Managed Hosting for Self-Hosted Open-Source Apps
PikaPods is a managed hosting service for self-hosted open-source apps from the BorgBase team. From $1/month, no sysadmin skills required. Where it fits and where it doesn't.
-
Cloud Infrastructure
LiteSpeed Enterprise: Why I Run It Instead of Apache or Nginx for WordPress
LiteSpeed Enterprise is the web server I default to for WordPress and high-traffic PHP workloads. The technical reasons (event-driven architecture, LSCache, HTTP/3, .htaccess compatibility) and the business reasons it earns its license fee.
-
Cloud Infrastructure
Web Server Performance Benchmarks: LiteSpeed Enterprise vs Apache vs Nginx
Real benchmarks on identical hardware: LiteSpeed Enterprise vs Apache vs Nginx for WordPress, with and without caching plugins. The numbers, the setup, and what they mean for your site.