What it is
Your own slice of a data-centre server with full access: install what you like, pay a fixed monthly fee (from $5โ15). Unlike "website hosting" it can hold a site, a bot, a database and mail at once.
How we use it
All studio projects live on VPS: sites, bots, n8n, VPN nodes. One properly configured server comfortably runs several sites in containers.
Where a VPS helps a business
- Next to the website you need a Telegram bot, domain mail, n8n and backups, and ordinary website hosting does not offer that.
- The site and its data must belong to you: the server is in your name, the code is in your repository.
- You should be able to move to another provider in hours, not rebuild everything.
- A service needs its own machine so its failure does not affect the rest.
How we use it
- A separate server for websites. Until 18 September 2026 the studio's sites lived on the VPN machines, and every site edit risked taking down the VPN for all clients. Now the sites have their own server in Moscow: an entry nginx, a Docker network per site, domain mail and nightly snapshots.
- A dedicated server for communication. Peregovorka used to share a machine with the VPN entry node, so any stream failure threatened the VPN for every client. Now the service has its own machine and cannot bring the VPN down.
- VPN nodes in different countries. On the VPN route the entry is in Russia, and the exit and a standalone node are abroad.
We choose and configure servers under Infrastructure; for websites the server is registered to the client.
Common problems
- Not enough memory. A VPN relay with 1.9 GB of memory once went down because of a neighbouring service. The websites server cannot handle a Nuxt build, so the image is built on a workstation. Mail antivirus was switched off: its signature database takes more than a gigabyte out of four.
- The provider closes ports. The websites server's provider blocks outgoing mail ports: receiving works, sending waits in a queue.
- One provider for everything. The websites server is with the same provider as the VPN nodes, so the sites are not decoupled from provider problems. This is listed among the limitations.
- Other services are unreachable from the server's country. From a server in Russia, Telegram and some foreign APIs cannot be reached directly, so the bots live abroad and are linked to the sites by frp tunnels.
When you do not need it
If you need a single static page, free static hosting with HTTPS is enough. And if nobody will look after the server and there is no maintenance plan, within a year a VPS becomes a risk: updates, certificates and backups do not check themselves.