Singlbit.com: High-end Server Host

Singlbit is a server host with focus on user experience and scalable backend. The project uses VueJS as frontend, WHMCS for billing and Pterodactyl for server management. Every single Singlbit service is run in Docker containers.

Technologies used

History

The concept and idea of Singlbit.com was born around 2019. After multiple prototypes and branding revisions, the first production version of the project was released late 2020. The first goal from the very start was to create a service with a scalable backend using Docker. Second goal was a great attention to user interface, no filler text, no other distractions. UI had to be simple, clean and to the point. Third goal was to implement aggressive pricing with minimal margins for profits, allowing for faster growth in the short term when starting out.

Technical

From very start of the project I knew all of Singlbit had to run on Docker containers for scalability and long term maintenance. Traefik reverse proxy was used in front of every service, allowing for automated certificates and scalability.

Pterodactyl

Game server panel called Pterodactyl was used to manage client's servers. Pterodactyl is an open source game server panel used by countless game server hosts. The panel is based on Docker, each game server runs in its own Docker container which made it a perfect fit for Singlbit. However, Pterodactyl lacked documentation on how to run the panel itself in Docker containers under Traefik. I've dedicated a couple weeks to document the process and implement a solution myself. All of my findings were published on https://github.com/EdyTheCow/docker-pterodactyl which gained over a 100 stars. Singlbit is currently running the exact same set-up in production, turns out quite a few other server hosts are using my documented set-up too 🥳

WHMCS

Billing and server assignments are accomplished by using WHMCS, which is the most popular billing panel used by the majority of hosts. However, there were no production ready solutions to running WHMCS using Docker. I've taken time to create a production ready Docker image, which follows all of the WHMCS security recommendations. The Docker image and installation process was open sourced and documented on https://github.com/EdyTheCow/docker-whmcs.

VueJS

Good amount of server hosts choose pre-made HTML templates, nothing wrong with that but in my opinion it's lazy. Oftentimes the user experience suffers because the design process is pretty much skipped. I wanted something minimal and straight to the point with a dead simple UI. The goal was a maximum of three clicks from home page to order page. The website was redesigned a total of five times before ending up with VueJS and Vite. Singlbit also relies on UnoCSS, which is an atomic-CSS engine with focus on performance. UnoCSS comes with presets allowing me to use any popular CSS library such as TailwindCSS, WindiCSS and many others without ever changing anything in backend.

In beginning Singlbit was hosted on CloudFlare's at the time "invite only" hosting service which is very similar to what Netlify and Vercel provides. But I ended up using Netlify at later stage due to performance issues on CloudFlare.

What now?

The current strategy of Singlbit is partnerships with various content creators. Either a promotion deal or a game server for the creator's community, managed and hosted by us. This allows us to reach the creator's audience to gain more customers while also making Singlbit more trustworthy and reputable by working with known content creators.

Additionally Singlbit hosting is used as a launchpad for various other personal projects such as CowCraft and GmodHQ.