10 Years of proServer—A True Success Story
On December 29, 2016—almost ten years ago—we at punkt.de GmbH officially launched proServer as a product and added it to our portfolio. Looking back, proServer has been a true success story for us.
Originally conceived as a further development of our pluspunkthosting (pph) service—which was popular with customers—proServer was launched under the then-new brand “punkt.de Hosting.”
As a hosting product specifically tailored to the needs of developers, the proServer has established itself particularly in the TYPO3 and Neos CMS environments.
In 2023, we had over 1,024 proServers under our management, and we’ve continued to grow ever since.
We’re delighted that the proServer concept has resonated with our customers for the past ten years. We’re looking ahead to make proServer even better.
proServer—A product by developers, for developers
From the very beginning, the idea behind proServer was to simplify day-to-day development and provide a hosting product that is flexible while also eliminating the hassle of middleware updates. For proServer customers, the focus should always be on their own application. We monitor the operating system and middleware and provide updates for them.
This flexibility—being able to navigate the application layer with root access via SSH without having to worry about updates to the environment—continues to win over many developers to this day.
proServer ensures that resources are channeled into application development rather than being spent on operations and maintenance.
In addition to the technical product, the team behind proServer is primarily responsible for its success. While many hosting providers hide behind service-level agreements, we’ve always sought direct contact with our customers. Whether via support ticket or phone: direct answers and support from experts for experts remain important to us to this day.
A wide range of SLAs for critical applications rounds out the proServer offering.
The proServer stays true to itself—but it's still being developed!
Even after ten years, proServer continues to face new challenges, and we are constantly refining it. Our goal—to simplify day-to-day development and make integration into users’ own infrastructure, such as for automated deployments, as easy as possible—remains unchanged.
proServer continues to be aimed at technically savvy users and developers and has so far managed without a “clickable” interface. Most developers prefer the terminal anyway, which is why the demand for a “click-and-point” interface has been rather low.
Customers who needed an interface to manage their server were never the target audience for proServer. There are numerous providers on the market for that purpose. Our focus has always been on professional hosting in the B2B sector. We invest less in visually appealing interfaces and more in security, performance, and direct contact with our customers.
However, a lot has changed in the self-service sector, and we, too, have realized that proServer can’t do without it entirely.
proControl - Not just "flashy," but simply practical
First off: Nothing about the proServer concept will change for our customers. With proControl, we’re actually creating a lightweight interface for server management for our customers. We’ll gradually introduce a number of features that make it easier to manage one or more proServers.
These include swapping out “blueprints,” centralized overviews of your own proServers, changes to the environment (staging/production), and the automatic provisioning of proServers.
All of this will make working with our proServer easier in the future. Of course, you can still contact our infrastructure team directly at any time. Especially when it comes to challenging and complex hosting issues, these can’t be fully addressed through rigid interfaces. In these cases, a phone call is still the best option.
