NOTBAD HOSTING LTD experience
How to build an international cloud hosting service from scratch in a year using the ISPsystem platform
About the company and the team
NOTBAD HOSTING LTD is an international hosting provider operating under the notbad.cloud brand. The company had entered the market in February 2025 and within a year built infrastructure in two European locations: the Netherlands and Germany. This is a deliberate choice of locations: both data centers provide predictable network connectivity, well-developed traffic exchange points in Europe, and the legal stability important to business clients.
The core audience consists of users who need high-performance VPS without the risks associated with local restrictions, such as blocking external services, unstable network connectivity, or international traffic processing limitations. In parallel, notbad.cloud serves customers all over the world – a client base that already extends far beyond its original geographic core.
Today, the provider's platform hosts approximately 500 virtual machines, served by a 5-node cluster. And this is despite the fact that the project has only been on the market for a year – meaning the cluster has doubled in size in just over twelve months of operation.
How the team is structured
NOTBAD HOSTING LTD — это компактная, но полнофункциональная команда, в которой каждый специалист закрывает свой контур. Такая структура возможна именно потому, что значительная часть рутины автоматизирована платформами ISPsystem — людям остаются задачи, требующие решений, а не повторяющиеся операции.
- Director is responsible for strategy and development of the product portfolio: selection of new locations, expansion of equipment, and direction, in which the company develops. Also involved in working with key clients.
- IT Specialist is the central figure of the technical area. Administers VMmanager, maintains the virtualization cluster, manages operating system templates, monitors node load, and is responsible for connecting new servers to the cluster during scaling.
- Network Administrator provides connectivity to data centers in the Netherlands and Germany, routing between locations, perimeter protection, and 10-gigabit network stability. This is a critical role for an international host – the quality of the network determines whether the client will stay with the provider after the first month.
- Technical Support Specialist works in BILLmanager: sorts incoming tickets, helps clients with VPS setup, resolves billing issues, and escalates complex cases to an IT specialist or director.
- Business Analyst compiles reports from BILLmanager: revenue, churn, conversion by tariffs and locations, payment channel efficiency. Based on this analysis, the team makes decisions about product development and tariffs.
We don’t have odd people on our team, and no one is doing routine work simply because someone needs to do it. ISPsystem platforms handle the routine work themselves, meaning we can maintain high-quality service with a small team.
The notbad.cloud team
Business challenge: from start to solution selection
Unlike most ISPsystem cases where a company turns to a vendor to replace an outdated panel or consolidate a disparate infrastructure, the initial situation for NOTBAD HOSTING LTD was different. The project was built from scratch.
When the team was planning the launch, it was clear that building its own virtualization management and billing platform was a path the new project couldn't afford. This would mean:
- months of development before the first commercial release;
- ongoing support for its own code after a release that will never be “completed”;
- security risks when working with payments and user data;
- distracting the team from what brings in money – sales and customer service.
At the same time, a list of requirements for the future solution was generated, without which entering the market would not make sense:
- closes both virtualization and billing within a single ecosystem, so that products work seamlessly with each other;
- automates VPS provisioning after payment without manual intervention – otherwise, scaling is limited by human resources;
- has vendor support that you can rely on during the first months of launch;
- easily scales when connecting new nodes and locations;
- provides API and integration capabilities for further development of the website, personal account, and automation.
Why ISPsystem
As opposed to typical migrations from one panel to another, the notbad.cloud team didn't have to conduct lengthy comparisons or pilot implementations – they chose ISPsystem immediately. Here are some factors that the customer said influenced this.
A ready-to-go VMmanager + BILLmanager bundle “out of the box”
The bundle covers the entire customer lifecycle: from registration and payment to automatic provisioning of a virtual machine and its subsequent maintenance. This means that the provider does not need to “merge” different systems together – billing and virtualization share a common language, exchange data in real time, and operate as a single product.
Quality of vendor technical support
For a new project that doesn't yet have deep internal expertise in all the nuances of cloud infrastructure, support from the platform developer is a critical resource. When you have an emergency on your node at 3am, you need to know that the issue will be resolved quickly and efficiently.
Product maturity
VMmanager and BILLmanager are not new startups – those are mature platforms that have undergone thousands of implementations at hosting and service providers. This means that typical scenarios, such as payment acceptance, VPS provisioning, migration between nodes, working with OS templates, tickets, and reporting, have already been refined and work predictably.
Product maturity
VMmanager and BILLmanager are not new startups – those are mature platforms that have undergone thousands of implementations at hosting and service providers. This means that typical scenarios, such as payment acceptance, VPS provisioning, migration between nodes, working with OS templates, tickets, and reporting, have already been refined and work predictably.
When we were launching, we had no room for error in choosing a platform. ISPsystem immediately gave us everything we needed for commercial hosting: virtualization, billing, automated provisioning, and support that responded quickly. We were able to focus on growth rather than reinventing the wheel.
The notbad.cloud team
Project architecture
Since notbad.cloud didn't have any “previous” infrastructure, the design was initially focused on ISPsystem, and the result was a clean, transparent architecture free of technical debt. Today it is built on hardware and software solutions.
Hardware
- Servers based on AMD Ryzen 9 9950X processors are a modern high-frequency platform that delivers excellent results in both single-thread and multi-thread workloads. This allows you to pack more client VPSs onto one physical node without losing performance per machine.
- A 10G network in every location ensures sufficient bandwidth and low network latency.
- Data centers in the Netherlands and Germany are two independent locations, each with its own virtualization circuit.
Software
- VMmanager is a management platform for the entire virtualization cluster. All 5 nodes in two locations operate under its control.
- BILLmanager is a billing platform that handles the entire commercial process: orders, payments, client accounts, tickets, and reporting.
The VMmanager + BILLmanager bundle is integrated using ISPsystem's native tools – the provider did not have to develop any additional layers or middleware.
How IT resources interact with each other
The client path is designed to be as simple and automated as possible from start to finish:
The client then manages their server from their BILLmanager account, orders additional resources or new VPSs, and, if they have any questions, opens a support ticket where a specialist can see both their current VMmanager configuration and their payment history in BILLmanager.
Solution: How ISPsystem products are used
VMmanager – virtualization management
An IT specialist at notbad.cloud works in VMmanager daily. The platform manages the entire cluster of 5 nodes in the Netherlands and Germany and covers the entire stack of virtualization tasks:
Deploy new VPSs from prepared operating system templates within minutes, without manual intervention.
Load distribution between nodes taking into account their current workload.
Connecting and adding equipment to the cluster during scaling – adding a new node takes minimal time and does not require rebuilding the architecture.
Monitoring the health of nodes and virtual machines allows you to see problems before they reach the client.
Working with networks and templates is centralized for the entire cluster.
When the company launched with two nodes in February 2025, VMmanager enabled commercial sales from the very first day.
Within a year, the cluster grew to five nodes, and each new node was integrated into the platform without restructuring the architecture.
BILLmanager — billing and customer service
BILLmanager covers the entire commercial area and simultaneously serves as an entry point for the client and a work point for support. Key features used by notbad.cloud:
Automatic invoicing and payment acceptance in foreign currency and crypto currency.
A personal account where users can order, renew, and manage their VPS without having to contact support on every occasion.
A ticket system that is staffed daily by a technical support specialist. He has the entire client history before his eyes: orders, payments, current services.
Revenue and sales reporting is compiled by a business analyst to monitor trends across tariffs, locations, and payment channels.
Flexible tariffs and promo code management allows you to test marketing activities without developer assistance.
The main thing is the bundle
The key benefit of this integration is that VMmanager and BILLmanager work seamlessly together: the client pays for the order, and the virtual machine is automatically issued within a minute. No manual intervention from the team. This means the provider can serve hundreds of clients simultaneously with a compact team, because a person who has to “press the button” after each payment does not become the bottleneck.
When ISPsystem support responds quickly, it's not a “nice bonus” but part of our business architecture. Our SLA with the client is based, among other things, on the vendor’s SLA with us.
The notbad.cloud team
Takeaways
In its first year of operation on the ISPsystem platform, NOTBAD HOSTING LTD has gone from the initial launch to sustainable growth:
| Indicator | Launch (February 2025) | Today (one year later) |
|---|---|---|
| Number of nodes | 2 | 5 |
| Locations | NL, DE | NL, DE |
| Active virtual machines | 0 | ~500 |
| VPS provisioning time after payment | — | ~1 minute |
| Service uptime | — | 99% (with occasional scheduled operations) |
Key effects noted by the team
Speed to market
The ready-to-go VMmanager + BILLmanager bundle made it possible to launch a full-fledged commercial product without developing a custom panel or billing system. The time that would have otherwise been spent on development was spent on marketing, attracting first customers, and developing infrastructure.
Saving the team's time
Automatic VPS provisioning removes a huge amount of routine operations from support and IT specialists. The team deals only with what requires solutions: non-standard customer requests, infrastructure development, optimization of the tariffs.
Flexible monetization
BILLmanager's support for currency and crypto payments has covered both main payment channels.
Stable operation
Uptime is maintained at 99%, scheduled maintenance is rare and announced in advance. For a year of operation and active growth of the cluster, this is a good indicator of reliability.
Vendor support as part of SLA
In case of emergency situations, ISPsystem specialists respond quickly. For a new hosting provider, this means there's no need to immediately expand its own staff of experts in all the technologies the platform is built upon.
Scaling without rebuilding
Connecting new nodes to a cluster is a routine operation that does not require revising the architecture. This is critical for a rapidly growing business – the company can respond to demand by increasing capacity rather than curbing it.
What’s next
NOTBAD HOSTING LTD have no plans to stop there. The coming year will see active expansion in three directions.
New geographic locations
Expanding our presence beyond the Netherlands and Germany to reach a wider audience and offer clients a choice of platforms for various needs. This will make the network more resilient and open up new market segments.
Expansion of the equipment fleet in current data centers
As its client base grows, the provider plans to increase the number of nodes and the overall computing power in its existing locations. Growing demand for resource-intensive tasks – from web applications to game servers – requires consistent infrastructure upgrades.
Launching GPU servers
This is perhaps the most strategically important direction. Demand for GPU-accelerated servers is growing rapidly among customers working with artificial intelligence, model training, rendering, and scientific computing. GPU hosting is a field few providers are currently pursuing, and notbad.cloud sees an opportunity to establish a significant presence here.
The VMmanager + BILLmanager bundle was initially designed with scalability in mind, so connecting new locations and service types doesn't require rebuilding the infrastructure – it's an evolutionary move within an existing platform.
Opinion
