Virtual Systems Delivers Shared, Dedicated, and Virtual Hosting with a Focus on Anonymity and Privacy

TL; DR: Virtual Systems (VSYS), founded in 2009, specializes in offshore hosting via Ukraine and the Netherlands. The company aims to raise the bar by combining offshore hosting benefits — think anonymity and regulation avoidance — with high-quality performance and tech support. Virtual Systems plans to expand both its offerings and its locations to properly serve a growing customer base.

A quick scroll through our How-To archives makes it clear that no one hosting provider is best: What works well for one person or purpose may not work for the next. Cost, business category, and CMS platform preference are all important considerations when choosing an appropriate host.

Location is another crucial factor. Many turn to offshore hosting — the practice of placing data on servers outside of one’s nation — to gain unique geographical benefits.

Offshore dedicated servers, for example, empower users to boost security and anonymity, minimize data loss caused by natural disasters, and accelerate page load speed for international users. Users can also leverage offshore providers to host content that is restricted in their jurisdiction.

Virtual Systems (VSYS), which specializes in offshore hosting via locations in Ukraine and the Netherlands, offers users all these benefits and more.

“The benefits of offshore hosting, like enhanced anonymity, acceptance of cryptocurrencies as payment, and more lenient content policies, are in huge demand,” said Kirill Onishchenko, Marketing Specialist at the hosting company. “With quality tech support, high-performance hardware, and high network uptime, VSYS is overdelivering when it comes to client expectations of offshore hosts.”

The company’s high-performance network features multiple redundant uplinks and more than 1 Tbps of network capacity for scalability purposes. VSYS also offers a wide variety of server options with diverse configurations. In addition, all services come backed by 24/7 server administration and DDoS attack mitigation.

Customers concerned about privacy may obtain all services anonymously by making payments via cryptocurrency — no personal information is required.

The history of VSYS goes back to 2009 when the company got its start as a vendor of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection at the domain stop-ddos.net.

“Back in 2009 to 2010, there were a few hosting providers who offered protection against volumetric DDoS attacks — because that required a lot of bandwidth and also some know-how to filter out malicious traffic,” Kirill said.

The Kyiv-based company eventually expanded from DDoS protection to offer a full suite of high-performance hosting and security offerings.

“We blended Ukraine’s large territory of well-developed IT infrastructure with our professional system operational skills,” Kirill said. “The result was VSYS.”

Since 2020, VSYS has catered to diverse customer needs by offering its hosting services out of both Ukraine and the Netherlands. Ukraine is known for liberal content regulations, while the Netherlands is home to AMS-IX, Europe’s largest data interconnection hub. VSYS offers premium servers connected to high-bandwidth 10 Gigabit ports designed for all forms of content via the Netherlands.

Kirill told us that the VSYS team has observed numerous industry shifts since dipping its toes in the hosting space. “DDoS-protected networks are a must nowadays, but we initially began offering them as a unique feature of our startup company,” Kirill said.

The fast-growing hosting industry has also begun to shift from offering limited traffic plans to providing bandwidth without usage limitations. “Broadband speed is booming,” Kirill said. “During the last decade, port speeds have gone from 10Mbps to 100Mbps, and from 1Gbps to 10Gbps and beyond.”

VSYS has built a reputation for its high-quality offshore dedicated servers. But the company has also expanded to serve a variety of niche markets.

“We offer servers with GPU, storage servers, streaming servers, servers in the Netherlands, 10 Gbps servers, etc.,” Kirill said. “We are ahead of our offshore hosting competitors because we discover new niches. This helps us learn and move forward every day.”

The VSYS team keeps a close eye on trends in server hardware, carefully weighing them from a business and marketing perspective in terms of power consumption and pricing. “We try to keep our hardware up to date but with good value for money spent,” Kirill said.

The company also keeps up with the demands of modern media streaming.

“We adjusted to this trend by adding ready-to-go streaming servers,” Kirill said. “We started offering streaming software as an optional add-on. We then enhanced it as a separate service with Xtream Codes, a well-known open-source streaming server.”

The VSYS team makes the most of challenges when possible, using them to stay ahead of the competition instead of falling behind.

“We had an issue with available rack space in our Kyiv datacenter,” Kirill said. “At the same time, the trend toward virtual private servers with 1 Gbps port speed encouraged us to create something new.”

The resulting product, EPIC VPS hosting, is powered by AMD Epyc CPUs and offers nearly the same level of performance as a dedicated server.

“Another challenge is having enough spare bandwidth capacity reserved for growth and seasonal factors,” Kirill said. “There’s the challenge to hire more specialists to maintain a high level of client service in our technical support, billing department, datacenter staff, etc.”

The company is growing at record speed, staffing five times more employees than it did just three years ago.

VSYS currently offers a vast product selection, from virtual servers and hosting services to DDoS protection and managed support. Underlying all these products and services is a focus on setting clear expectations, which boosts customer satisfaction rates.

“A personal favorite approach of mine is to underpromise and overdeliver,” Kirill said. “All our products are connected by a blend of different strategies we use to run the business.”

These include following global trends in the hosting industry, searching for unique service proposals, and adjusting courses to serve blue ocean markets that are competition-free.

VSYS also takes action based on client feedback while keeping ROI firmly in mind. Kirill told us that about 70% of changes come in response to customer requests, while the rest are the result of adapting to trends.

“We are currently trying to move forward from offshore hosting, but that category remains our strongest magnet for attracting clients,” Kirill said. “It comes down to more than just hours and dollars saved — there are cases when moving a web project offshore is the only option available.”

“Right now, we are looking for a datacenter with excellent connectivity on the West Coast of the U.S.,” Kirill said. “We have a plan to extend our services with a CDN solution. Our short-term goal is to reduce the delivery time of dedicated servers to 120 minutes.”

VSYS is also working to respect the privacy of its clients while shutting down criminals trying to host illegal materials.

“We are terminating such actions,” Kirill said. “With more than 10 years in the hosting industry, we’ve invested a lot of hard work and have learned from a lot of pitfalls.”