When Public Cloud Platform pays back for hosting providers

Most “should we build our own cloud product?” conversations at hosting providers stop at the technology question. The harder question is the unit economics: what does it cost per tenant, what’s a realistic ARPU, how many tenants until break-even, and where does the model fail.

This article is the working version of that conversation. It assumes the technology decision is settled (the Cozystack-based Ænix Public Cloud Platform) and focuses on whether the economics fit your hosting business — not the abstract one.

What Public Cloud Platform actually delivers

Before economics, scope. Public Cloud Platform is a complete public-cloud product Ænix sells to hosting providers, MSPs, regional clouds, and small-to- mid data centres. It includes:

• Multi-tenant Cozystack platform running on customer-controlled bare metal (KubeVirt + Cilium + Kube-OVN + LINSTOR + Tenant CRD).
• Cozystack Dashboard — customer-facing self-service portal, brandable to your hosting brand.
• WHMCS integration — billing flows through the customer-management system most hosting providers already operate.
• Service catalog — VMs, tenant Kubernetes clusters, managed databases (PostgreSQL, MariaDB, MongoDB, Redis, Valkey, Kafka, ClickHouse, etc.), S3-compatible object storage, GPU services. Curatable per provider.
• Tenant lock / suspension — operational hooks for non-payment and policy enforcement.
• Migration tooling — productized patterns for VMware, OpenStack, Virtuozzo, Proxmox sources.

What it is not: a hyperscaler. It is a sovereign, multi-tenant cloud product for hosting providers who want to compete on regional presence, sovereignty, and pricing flexibility — not on hyperscaler-scale catalog depth.

Pricing model

Public Cloud Platform subscriptions use the published support tiers, priced per 10 physical nodes per month on annual billing: Basic $1,250, Standard $3,000, Plus $5,500; Enterprise is quoted individually. Higher tiers add faster response times, unlimited incidents, 24×7 support (Plus and Enterprise) and a wider support scope — the full matrix is on /pricing/. Ænix does not charge per VM, per CPU, or per GB — the Cozystack platform itself is free under Apache 2.0; what you pay for is engagement, support, and operational assurance. Every support tier includes the proprietary Ænix commercial modules (billing system and WHMCS integration).

For a typical mid-size hosting provider running 30-100 customer-facing nodes, that is $3,750-12,500/month on Basic or $9,000-30,000/month on Standard at list price. Compare it with the recurring licence and subscription cost you pay VMware or an OpenStack distribution vendor today.

Unit economics — per-tenant view

The economics question every hosting CFO asks: what does it cost us to serve one tenant, and what can we realistically charge?

Cost per tenant

Infrastructure cost per tenant is dominated by the underlying compute, storage, and bandwidth, not by Cozystack itself. Cozystack overhead is ~5-10% of node capacity (typical Kubernetes-platform overhead, well within acceptable for production). For a tenant consuming roughly:

• 2 vCPU
• 4 GB RAM
• 50 GB block storage (replicated 3×)
• 100 GB egress / month

Direct infrastructure cost (amortised hardware + colocation + bandwidth) in 2026 European pricing is typically €15-30/month. Cozystack platform overhead allocation (the platform team’s salary spread across all tenants) on a mid-size provider running 500 tenants adds another €5-10.

So all-in cost per typical tenant: €20-40/month at the lower end of the resource consumption profile.

What you can charge

Hosting-provider ARPU for a comparable resource profile in 2026 EU markets typically lands in €40-80/month. Higher in DACH and Western Europe, lower in Central / Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Add managed services (managed PostgreSQL, managed S3, GPU access) and ARPU lifts to €80-200+/month per tenant.

That puts margin at roughly 2-3× cost at the low end, 4-6× cost on managed-service-heavy tenants. Not hyperscaler-margins; not VMware reseller margins either. Closer to traditional hosting margins in the post-Broadcom 2026 reality.

Break-even math

The other CFO question: how many customers until we make money?

The fixed cost stack for a mid-size hosting provider on Public Cloud Platform:

Total monthly fixed: €44-85k, plus $15k for Ænix support.

With €25-50/month margin per tenant (€40-80 ARPU after €15-30 direct infrastructure cost), break-even sits at roughly 1,200-4,000 paying tenants depending on ARPU mix and where you are in the salary band. This is the full-programme case with a dedicated team; a 10-node start on the Basic tier with existing staff breaks even far earlier — model your own numbers in the ISP calculator.

For providers currently running ~500 customers on legacy infrastructure who are evaluating the move, this matters: you need a credible path to at least double tenant count within 18-24 months for the economics to actually work. Without growth, Public Cloud Platform is a cost reduction (modest) but not a transformation.

For providers below ~300 customers, a full programme with a dedicated platform team is often premature — that fixed cost overwhelms the margin contribution. A smaller start (10 nodes on the Basic tier, a narrow catalogue, existing staff) is usually the better first step. We’ll say so in a discovery call rather than push a larger engagement.

Where the model breaks

Three failure patterns recur:

1. Customer-facing portal under-investment

Hosting providers historically compete on price and reliability. The Cozystack Dashboard out of the box is functional but generic; differentiation comes from polish (UX flows that match how your customers think about ordering, configuring, paying). Providers who treat the portal as “good enough” lose conversion to providers who invest in it.

Ænix engagement includes Cozystack Dashboard brand customization; deeper UX work is typically a separate Phase 2.

2. Service-catalog mismatch

Cozystack offers 20+ managed services; not all of them fit every provider’s customer base. Exposing all of them without operational backing means customers ordering Kafka or ClickHouse and discovering the provider can’t really support them. Curate the catalog to what you can actually operate at the SLA you promise. Service rollout in cohorts is the standard playbook.

3. Operations team under-staffed for growth

The biggest single failure mode in our pipeline: Public Cloud Platform deployed, launches successfully, signs 200 customers in the first quarter — and then the 4-person operations team that worked at 50 customers can’t scale. Customer support response time degrades, SLA breaches multiply, churn picks up.

Plan operations team size for 18-month-out customer count, not current. Hire ahead.

How Public Cloud Platform compares to alternatives for hosting providers

Versus VMware Cloud Director (vCD):

vCD is the historical incumbent for hosting providers. Post-Broadcom, subscription pricing has reshaped the math — 2-5× increases on renewal, mandatory VCF bundling, end of perpetual licensing. For most providers running vCD today, the renewal cycle is the trigger. Ænix Public Cloud Platform goes live in weeks once hardware is ready; moving an existing vCD estate onto it is a separate migration project, sized by estate in the assessment.

Versus OpenStack:

OpenStack remains valid for providers with deep OpenStack expertise and large-scale (>500 nodes) deployments where operational complexity is amortised. For mid-size providers, OpenStack’s operational footprint (50+ services, distinct upgrade lifecycles per component) overshoots what the team can sustain. Public Cloud Platform substantially smaller surface.

Versus building it yourself on vanilla Kubernetes + KubeVirt + Helm:

This is the credible alternative for providers with strong platform engineering capacity. Trade-off: 12-24 months of build time + ongoing maintenance versus a turnkey deployment. We’ve seen both work; the build-it-yourself path is the right choice when you have a 10+ engineer platform team and the components match your specific operational preferences. For the typical mid-size provider with a 3-5 engineer platform team, Public Cloud Platform wins on time-to-market and operational predictability.

Versus a hyperscaler-managed cloud product (white-label):

Hyperscalers (AWS, Azure, GCP) sometimes offer hosting partners white-label or co-branded cloud arrangements. Trade-off: lower operational complexity for the provider, but per-customer margin is typically lower, and sovereignty positioning is weaker (the provider still depends on the hyperscaler, which European customers increasingly view as a structural risk).

When Public Cloud Platform is the right answer

It fits when at least three of the following hold:

1. You operate today on bare metal or commercial hypervisor with recurring licence pressure — VMware, OpenStack, Virtuozzo, or commercial KVM distribution.
2. You have direct customer relationships you can monetise — not pure reseller of someone else’s cloud.
3. You have or can hire a 3-5 engineer platform team — Cozystack needs operational ownership.
4. You target regional, regulated, or sovereignty-sensitive customers — where European-EU positioning matters.
5. Your customer count is 300+ today or you have credible growth path to 1,000+ — for fixed-cost amortisation.
6. You’re willing to invest in customer-facing portal polish — not just treat Cozystack Dashboard as “good enough.”

Fewer than three: usually a different answer is better — staying on existing infrastructure with cost optimisation, partnering with a larger sovereign provider as their channel, or going hyperscaler- managed-cloud-product as a smaller-margin route.

Engagement structure

For providers where Public Cloud Platform fits:

• Discovery call (30 min, free)
• Platform Readiness Assessment (fixed price, 14 days focused or 28 days full) — current estate inventory, target architecture, migration plan
• Platform live and pilot cohort — the platform goes live in weeks on your hardware with the productized installer; 5-10 friendly customers migrated, billing validated
• Limited GA (2-4 months) — 50-100 customers, operational workflows stabilised
• General availability — open market launch
• Support subscription (ongoing) — one of the published tiers; Plus or Enterprise for 24×7 coverage

How long the commercial launch takes after the platform is live depends on migration scope and team readiness. Multi-region national or operator programmes follow a 3-6 month pilot, then 9-18 months to full multi-region operation.

Where to dig deeper

• Public Cloud Platform landing page — feature list, pricing block, FAQ
• Hosting providers industry page — hosting-provider-specific positioning
• White-label cloud services — for MSP / channel-partner extensions of the model