Five years ago, French web hosting provider Ikoula has taken a bold step forward: migrating their VPS services from Microsoft Hyper-V to Proxmox VE. The result? Lower costs, greater reliability, and a rock-solid foundation for future growth.

Ikoula runs its own data centers in France and has been delivering hosting, cloud, and managed IT services for decades. But as customer demand grew, so did the need for a virtualization platform that was cost-efficient, flexible, and future-proof. Proxmox VE quickly emerged as the perfect fit.

"The Proxmox VE technology stack is extremely robust, fully open-source, and built on some of the best tools for the hosting industry," says Joaquim Dos Santos, R&D Director at Ikoula. "The subscription model is crystal clear, budget-friendly, and the strong community support combined with detailed documentation made it an easy choice."

From dedicated servers to VPS at scale

Ikoula first introduced Proxmox VE as an option for customers renting dedicated servers. With just a few clicks, customers could run their own Proxmox VE instance and take advantage of enterprise-class features like high availability (HA), software-defined networking (SDN), and Ceph-based storage. All from a single intuitive interface. Implementation was quick:

"Rolling out Proxmox VE took just about a month," explains Dos Santos. "We tested across different generations of hardware, and it worked seamlessly. Proxmox VE supports an incredible range of configurations."

Encouraged by this success, Ikoula went a step further: migrating its entire VPS infrastructure.

Smooth migration, smarter economics

The transition wasn’t just about technology – it was about rethinking the economics of hosting. "With Proxmox VE, there are no more licensing fees. That alone allowed us to redefine our business model," says Dos Santos. 

"Add to that the predictable subscription pricing and we now have a cost structure that is transparent and easy to manage."

The migration process included re-architecting network configurations, scripting Hyper-V VM migrations, and building out new backup strategies. All supported by Proxmox VE’s rich API, documentation, and community expertise.

What’s next?

Ikoula isn’t stopping here. With Proxmox VE now powering most of their VPS business, they’re already planning to expand the range of operating systems available and explore the data-center-oriented features of the new Proxmox Datacenter Manager.

"We’re excited to push further with Proxmox products," Dos Santos concludes. "Please keep up the great work!"

Joaquim Dos Santos
R&D Director

About Ikoula
Ikoula is located in France and offers expertise in web hosting, cloud computing, and managed services. A pioneer in shared web hosting and IT infrastructure management, Ikoula has built up comprehensive expertise based on strong technological foundations. The company operates two dedicated data centers in France and their team of experts is passionate about serving their customers' infrastructures. Established in 1998, Ikoula today has a staff of 52 employees.