Smart Hosting Setup
Here’s why we run our projects on CyberPanel and Hetzner – a combo that’s fast, cost-efficient, and gives us full control. If you’re scaling a creative agency or building digital products, this setup might be exactly what you’re looking for.
- Markus Pichorner
Why we didn’t choose the “usual” suspects
When we started UIXA, our goal wasn’t just to launch websites – it was to build digital experiences that perform well, load fast, and are easy to manage. Hostinger, Ionos, GoDaddy, HostGator and others with bloated cPanel setups felt… meh. Too many limits, too much noise, and not enough performance for the price.
So we dug deeper. After testing and breaking a few things (as you do), we landed on CyberPanel and Hetzner.
What is CyberPanel anyway?
Think of CyberPanel as your modern hosting dashboard – lightweight, clean, and powered by OpenLiteSpeed, which is a faster, more resource-friendly web server compared to Apache or NGINX. It has everything we need out of the box:
SSL management
Email support
DNS
Database control
File manager
WordPress installations
Git integration
And most importantly? It’s open-source and free.
Hetzner: raw power for a fair price
Hetzner is a German cloud hosting provider that doesn’t throw glitter on their landing page – they just offer ridiculously good value for money. You get dedicated resources, excellent performance, and serious scalability – at prices that make most big-name hosting platforms look silly.
For example, we run a bunch of client sites and staging environments and are seemingly never running out of space. New clients? No problem, you just upgrade to the next server size!
Why this setup works for us
We’re a small creative agency – we value speed, flexibility, and control. This combo gives us all three:
- Speed: OpenLiteSpeed is lightning fast
- Flexibility: Total server access
- Control: No middlemen, no vendor lock-in
- Price: Cheaper than “managed hosting” – and we actually know what we’re paying for
And bonus: It makes you a better developer. When you manage your own server stack, you learn stuff. You become more confident with deployments, performance tuning, and troubleshooting.
The trade-offs (because there are always some)
Of course, this setup isn’t for everyone. You’ll need:
Basic Linux knowledge
Comfort using SSH
Some patience
There’s no fancy support chat, no hand-holding. You’re in charge. But for us, that’s a plus. We want to understand the systems we build on.
When we wouldn’t recommend this setup
TL;DR
We host all our client and internal projects using CyberPanel + Hetzner. It’s fast, scalable, affordable, and gives us full control. If you’re willing to learn a bit of server management, this setup will level up your workflow without breaking the bank.