What hosting gets wrong about design
Every hosting website leads with the same three numbers and the same speed claims. Here is why that stopped working, and what technical buyers read instead.
Sectors / Hosting and infrastructure
Design agency for hosting companies
Websites, control panels and brands for the companies the internet runs on
We design control panels, websites and brands for the hosting industry, from WebPros, cPanel and CloudLinux to Servebolt
Why hosting
The product is fast. The site reads slow.
WebPros, cPanel, CloudLinux, HostPapa, Hosting.com, Servebolt, SolusVM, Blackwall, ProStack, WHMCS, Upmind and Managed.com. Hosting and infrastructure companies, from a managed WordPress host in Norway to the group behind cPanel and Plesk, have hired us for their brand, their website or the product behind the login. It is the industry we know deepest, and the one where the same problem keeps turning up. Hosting and infrastructure companies have a problem most agencies never see, because most agencies never get past the first page of the brief. The product is measurably better than the competition. Benchmarks, uptime, support response, migration terms, the works. And none of it is placed where a buyer meets it, because the site was written by people who already understand the stack, for people who do not yet. A buyer in this category evaluates by comparison. Four tabs open, looking for the one specific claim that separates one platform from the rest. When benchmark results, migration terms and pricing sit under a wall of undifferentiated feature copy, the comparison is decided before your strongest argument has been read. That is the problem we have spent four years on. Not web design for hosting. Making a technically superior product obvious to the person holding the budget, without losing the engineer in the buying committee.
What we have built
Built for hosting
Servebolt, managed hosting
Website redesign for one of the fastest managed hosts on the market. Three buyer routes (technical, agency, enterprise), four years of benchmark results and a 4.7 Trustpilot rating moved from several scrolls down to where buyers land, and a shorter route to trial. Concept to live in three months.
SolusVM, WebPros
The virtualisation control panel hosting providers use to run VPS at scale, part of the group behind cPanel and Plesk. A decade of development was being read as legacy because of the site around it. New website, prototypes and a modular design system marketing can assemble without a designer.
Managed.com, the group brand
The operator behind HostPapa, CloudBlue, ColoCrossing and twenty-plus acquisitions, 750 people in 40 countries, with no name of its own. We built the parent brand from the ground up, identity, voice and the website that launched it. One brand the whole group now ships from.
Freelogo, HostPapa
HostPapa's AI logo platform, rebuilt rather than repainted: intent-led input, speed with control, one set of rules across thousands of outputs. Product strategy, UX and UI, AI workflows and the design system. Concept to MVP in three months.
A customer control panel for a global host
Domains, DNS, email, billing, upgrades and onboarding for a hosting provider's customer panel, designed from the information architecture through every state, with onboarding before the homepage. The first login is where churn hides, so that is where the work started.
Selected hosting work
The work, not the pitch
WHMCSWebsite design for the billing platform tens of thousands of hosts run on.ServeboltWebsite redesign for a high-performance managed host, built around technical proof and a shorter route to trial.SolusVMA decade-old virtualisation platform, re-read as current. Website and design system for WebPros.WHMCS Buy FlowA themeable checkout every hosting brand on WHMCS can make its own.Managed.comA parent brand and website for the group behind HostPapa, CloudBlue and ColoCrossing.FreelogoHostPapa's AI logo platform, rebuilt so founders trust the output.
The numbers
Checkable, not claimed
Every figure below has a client name on it and a case study behind it.
35K+
3
750
3
Brand, website and product
Web hosting website design, branding and control panel UX
Grid is a design agency for hosting companies, cloud platforms and infrastructure products. We design the public website, the product experience behind the login and the brand system that connects them, so the promise made on the pricing page still feels true inside the control panel.
For a hosting company website redesign, we start with the buying journey: plans, benchmarks, migration terms, support and the route to trial or sales. The job is to make technical proof easy to compare without flattening the detail that matters to developers, resellers and enterprise buyers.
For product and control panel UX design, we map domains, DNS, email, billing, upgrades, onboarding and every state around them before visual design begins. For hosting company branding, we build rules that work across the website, dashboard, documentation, status page and conference stand. One system, not a campaign that stops at the homepage.
What we design
Where it is won
Control panels & dashboards
The screen your customers live in. We design panels that make an invisible product feel fast, honest and worth renewing. It is the heart of our product design work.
Billing & upgrade flows
Where revenue actually happens. Plan changes, add-ons and renewals designed so the next tier reads as an obvious step, not a trap.
Migration journeys
The sales page that matters. Switching hosts is the scariest thing your buyer does, and the journey that removes the fear wins the account.
Plan pickers & pricing pages
Technical buyers comparison-shop. We design pricing that survives a spreadsheet and a sceptic.
Marketing sites
The public case for an invisible product: speed made visible, reliability made credible, a route to trial that respects a technical reader. Our website design practice, pointed at hosting.
Brand systems
A look with rules underneath it, built to survive the panel, the docs, the status page and the conference stand. See how we approach brand design.
Hosting is bought on trust. Nobody can see a server, so buyers judge the panel, the pricing page and the migration form instead. That trust is not a feeling. It is designed, screen by screen.
How we think
What we hold true
Churn hides in the first login
The buying decision gets the budget; the first session in the panel decides the renewal. A customer who cannot find their DNS settings at midnight does not file a ticket, they quietly plan to switch when the term ends. Most agencies never see that screen. It is the first one we ask for, because a control panel that explains itself is the cheapest retention programme a hosting company can buy.
The migration journey is the real sales page
Nobody leaves a host lightly, and nobody joins one without leaving somewhere else. Every switcher is asking one question: will this hurt? The honest answer is usually a little, and design that says so, then shows exactly what happens at each step, converts better than any speed claim. The journey that removes the fear wins the account, and the account it wins is the one your competitor thought was safe.
Technical buyers punish decoration
Your customers read pricing tables like contracts and marketing like a changelog. They will find the asterisk, benchmark the claim and screenshot the contradiction. Clarity reads as competence; gloss reads as margin. So we write plans that survive a spreadsheet, name things what they are, and let restraint do the persuading. In this industry, looking honest and being honest are the same design decision.
Who you sell to
Three buyers
The technical buyer
Developers and sysadmins choosing where their own work lives. They skim the homepage, read the docs, test the trial and judge the whole company by the quality of its interface. For them we design proof: real screenshots, plain pricing, a panel that looks like it was made by people who have used one.
The reseller
Agencies and resellers are buying margin and calm. Their question is not whether you are fast but whether you will embarrass them in front of their client. White-label surfaces, predictable billing, and a partner story told like a partnership rather than a footnote on the pricing page.
The enterprise account
Procurement arrives with a checklist and a committee. The website has to survive being forwarded: security posture easy to find, compliance stated plainly, case studies that read like references. Design here is the art of removing reasons to say no.
How the work runs
A hosting website redesign from architecture to launch
Most hosting redesigns fail when the homepage is treated as the whole job. We start with the decision structure: which buyer is arriving, what they need to compare, what proof removes risk and whether the next step is a trial, migration or sales conversation.
The website work covers information architecture, search intent, positioning, page hierarchy, wireframes, visual design and the handover into a CMS your team can run. Product work can continue into signup, onboarding, billing and the customer control panel, so the marketing promise and the product experience do not contradict each other.
We work with technical and commercial teams together. Benchmarks, platform limits, compliance claims and migration terms are checked before they become design, which means fewer arguments after build has started.
Testimonials
From the industry
Really impressed with the quality of Grid. Everything was backed with science and data, a strong review process, and deep sector understanding.
Andrew KillenCTO, ServeboltVery professional, extremely competent designers who really understand their craft. A brilliant team to work with, delivering thoughtful, high-quality work every time.
Sylvain PatryManaged.comUnicorn designers who combine creativity, expertise and attention to detail. A rare team who truly understand the brief and consistently deliver exceptional work every time.
The work speaks for itself. Grid consistently delivers thoughtful, high-quality design, with real attention to detail, strong ideas and results that genuinely make an impact.
Corey HammondGeneral Manager, HostPapaWe'd have no hesitation in recommending Grid to anyone looking for design work. We were impressed enough that we are now working with them on some other projects, and can't wait to see the results! Great job guys!
Martin ColeFounder, ProStackFAQs
Asked by hosting companies
No. About half our work is founders and brands in other industries, and it stays that way on purpose. Hosting is the industry we know deepest, not the only one we serve.
Brand systems, marketing sites, control panel UX, billing and upgrade flows, migration journeys, reseller programmes and the dashboards behind them. The work section has the public pieces; some of the product work sits behind logins and NDAs, and we can talk you through it on a call.
You will have to explain your product, not your industry. We arrive knowing what a PoP is, why TTFB sells, and that your churn hides in the first login. The difference shows up in week one, not month three.
Yes, and we usually do. In-house teams know the product; we bring the outside eye and the hours. Design systems are built so your team can run them without us.
Both. Most hosting clients start with one defined project, then keep a smaller ongoing arrangement for the stream of pages, features and campaigns that never stops.
A full redesign, from the buying-journey architecture through design, build and the handover into a CMS your marketing team can run, is priced as a fixed scope with a date, and you get the number at proposal stage. Servebolt was three months from concept to live across more than ten pages. For the bands across the UK market, our article on how much a website costs is honest about templates, freelancers and studios.
Yes, and it is the part of hosting we think matters most. Domains, DNS, email, billing, upgrades, onboarding and every state around them, mapped before visual design begins. We have designed a customer panel for a global host and the virtualisation panel's website for SolusVM; your engineers get documented components and tokens, not pictures.
The brief writer. Four questions, about a minute, and you leave with a written brief whether or not you ever talk to us. Or email hello@griddesign.co.uk and a senior person replies.
Related reading
Worth reading before you call
Hosting churn is not a price problem
Ask hosting companies why customers leave and most say price. Two in five are also being told the customer has gone to Wix or Shopify, and that is not a loss you can discount your way out of.
Your cancel button retains customers
From January, UK subscription rules mean a reminder before every renewal and an exit as easy as the sign-up was. Most hosting companies will send that to Legal, when it belongs to whoever owns the billing screens.
