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Esmero is an independent Dutch hosting provider with 25 years in the business, serving thousands of customers across tens of thousands of domains. When CloudLinux introduced the VPS Bundle, CEO Henri Udding saw more than a licensing deal. He used it as the foundation to launch an entirely new managed VPS product line, bundling CloudLinux, Imunify360, and 24/7 support into plans that didn’t exist before. The result: less support work, automated security, and the best margins in their portfolio. From first contact to live plans took about one month.
The Costs of Helping Customers
Esmero has been hosting websites, webshops, and online services for Dutch businesses for over 25 years. The company has a 4.9/5 rating on Trustpilot and a reputation for personal, responsive support. “We are nerds,” says CEO Henri Udding. He means it as a compliment.
For most of that history, Esmero offered unmanaged VPS plans. Customers got their server and were responsible for managing it themselves. In practice, that’s not how things worked in many cases.
“We were really nice to our customers,” Henri explains. “We always helped them, and we didn’t bill the hours.”
The typical Esmero VPS customer is a web design or marketing agency managing multiple websites for their clients. These agencies care about stability and performance, but many of them aren’t keeping their sites updated. The result was predictable.
CEO, Esmero
Esmero’s support team was spending hours cleaning up problems that weren’t technically their responsibility. The business was growing, but the support load was growing with it.
A Licensing Deal Became a Business Strategy
When CloudLinux’s team reached out about the VPS Bundle, a discounted combination of CloudLinux and Imunify360 designed for VPS environments, Henri saw an opportunity beyond the licensing savings.
Esmero was already running CloudLinux and Imunify360 on their shared hosting servers. They knew the products. What they didn’t have was a managed VPS offering. The VPS Bundle gave Henri the economics to build one.
“We started thinking we should create managed server plans, as the margins are better on those,” Henri says.
The team researched competitor pricing, designed new plans that bundled CloudLinux, Imunify360, Plesk, LiteSpeed, free migration, and 24/7 support, and launched them.
“That went really fast. One month.”
What Changed
The shift from unmanaged to managed VPS, powered by the VPS Bundle, changed Esmero’s day-to-day operations in several concrete ways.
Automated security replaced manual cleanup. The most immediate impact was on hacked sites. Imunify360’s automated malware cleanup handles what used to consume hours of support time. Agencies with outdated WordPress sites no longer generate the same flood of tickets.
CEO, Esmero
Agencies run shared hosting inside their VPS.
Esmero’s agency customers use CloudLinux’s per-account resource limits to create their own hosting plans for their clients. They’re effectively running shared hosting within a VPS, with the same stability controls that prevent one site from affecting the others.
“Most of our customers are buying a CloudLinux VPS for their customers, so this is also shared hosting,” Henri notes.
Customer migrations got easier.
One of the biggest barriers to switching hosting providers is the fear that sites will break because of different PHP versions. CloudLinux’s PHP Selector lets each account run the version it needs, which Henri’s team now uses as a selling point when bringing new customers on board.
“Customers are always afraid to migrate because of different PHP versions,” Henri says. “Then we tell them you can run them all with CloudLinux. Since we use that, migrations are much easier.”
Margins improved.
The unmanaged VPS plans were priced competitively with slim margins. The managed VPS plans, built on the VPS Bundle, deliver more value to the customer and carry significantly better margins for Esmero.
“On the managed VPS we have the best margin,” Henri says. The goal for 2026 is to move all VPS customers to managed plans.
CEO, Esmero
See How the VPS Bundle Can Work for Your Business
CloudLinux and Imunify360, bundled for VPS at up to 55% licensing savings. Build managed plans, reduce support load, and improve margins.