Why Hostking Pro

We started Hostking Pro because we got tired of the trade-off between shared hosting (cheap but limiting) and managed cloud (powerful but expensive). We thought we could do better.

The problem

Existing shared hosting is fast to start with but you outgrow it. The moment you want a custom domain with auto-TLS, a real CLI, or actual container isolation, you have to migrate to a PaaS. And PaaS bills you by the second, so a quiet hobby site can cost $50/month. The middle ground — "give me a Linux box, isolate me from the other tenants, but bill me predictably" — is hard to find.

What we built

A platform where every site is a real Unix user, in a real cgroup, with a real systemd unit, behind a real nftables egress block. But the prices are flat monthly, like shared hosting. And the API is flat-monthly too, not per-second.

The density comes from running 10-30 sites per Pod, all sharing the same Linux kernel. We track a metric we call PCU (Pod Capacity Unit) — 1 PCU is roughly 256MB RAM and 12.5% of a core. A Bronze Castle uses 2 PCU; a Diamond Castle uses 28 PCU. The Pods track their own PCU usage and refuse new sites past 80%.

Principles we ship by

  1. Per-tenant isolation is non-negotiable. Every site runs as its own Unix user with a unique UID, a unique systemd unit, a unique cgroup v2 memory + CPU slice, and a unique nftables egress block. Tenant A can never read Tenant B's files, even from the host.
  2. We bill monthly, not per-second. A quiet site shouldn't cost more than a busy one. The only thing that costs more is the plan tier.
  3. The CLI is a first-class citizen. The dashboard and the CLI hit the same API. Anything you can do in the browser you can do in a terminal. We don't have a "pro plan that unlocks the CLI" — the CLI is free for everyone.
  4. Audit log everything destructive. Every restart, delete, transfer, key revocation — it goes in the audit log. You can grep it. We can grep it. It's in Supabase.
  5. No lock-in. You can run hostking site:logs and copy-paste the systemd unit into your own box if you ever want to leave. We're using boring technology.

What we're not

We're not Vercel. We don't have edge functions in 300 cities. We're not Cloudflare. We don't have a free tier that costs us a fortune to run. We're not Heroku. We don't have a marketplace of 200 add-ons. We're a focused platform for people who want a Linux box, not a Functions-as-a-Service.

Contact

General: support@hostkingpro.com
Security: security@hostkingpro.com (PGP key on request)
Twitter / X: @hostkingpro

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