Webhost has been a reliable player in the hosting market since 2008. Over the years, they’ve supported more than 150,000 digital projects, from small websites to infrastructure for federal brands. Together with ispmanager, a popular hosting and server control panel, we’ll study what benefits their partner Webhost received using BitNinja.
Initially, Webhost handled server protection entirely in-house. Their team reacted to threats after infections were discovered: they scanned for malicious files and notified clients post-factum. This reactive approach had a few limitations, namely, it:
To address those issues, Webhost implemented BitNinja, first as a way to ease internal strain, and later as a paid add-on for clients.
| The result? 15–20% increase in the number of clients per server. Plus, higher average revenue per client. |
Webhost first deployed BitNinja in 2017 on their virtual hosting servers. The purpose was to eliminate key pain points:
Then in 2020, demand for VPS and VDS services surged, and Webhost began offering BitNinja as a paid add-on. The latter delivered enterprise-grade protection, but unlike traditional corporate solutions, BitNinja was easier to deploy, more flexible, and affordable.
At the same time, more customers started requesting fully managed server administration and project support. BitNinja’s automation and proactive threat blocking allowed Webhost to fulfill this new demand without scaling up their team.
| How does BitNinja work exactly? BitNinja scans both bot requests and file code. When it detects suspicious behavior or code patterns that match known malware signatures, it moves infected files to quarantine, blocks access to malicious URLs, and adds offending IPs to a greylist, preventing similar attacks on other sites across the same server. |
BitNinja turned out to be an effective, multi-purpose solution. It helped Webhost and their clients address several critical pain points:
In short, the key strength BitNinja demonstrated was that it didn’t just defend but also prevented.
| Real-world example Webhost’s client had suffered repeated hacks on their previous provider, attackers had injected shell scripts onto their site. After migrating to a Webhost server protected by BitNinja, the attacks stopped completely. |
Like with any real-world implementation, not everything went smoothly from the start.
One unexpected issue was false positives: BitNinja occasionally flagged legitimate files as malicious. In particular, encoded CMS license keys were sometimes mistaken for suspicious code. Since these keys could be located in different paths across different websites, Webhost’s team had to manually request whitelist additions through BitNinja support.
Fortunately, BitNinja’s support team responded quickly and clearly, helping resolve the issues with minimal disruption. Over time, the number of such cases decreased as BitNinja’s team refined detection rules and whitelists.
| What happened? | Result |
|---|---|
| Server load from client websites dropped by 30% (mostly due to blocking spam and malicious bots). | Webhost reduced infrastructure strain. |
| Webhost started hosting 15–20% more clients per server. | The company improved profitability without compromising speed or stability. |
| Bots, spam, and light DDoS attacks stopped slowing down websites on a server. | Tech support workload dropped. |
| BitNinja was sold as an add-on without dedicated marketing. | Additional revenue with zero acquisition cost. |
| Clients no longer exceeded resource limits on shared hosting. | They stopped receiving warnings and suspensions, which improved their experience. |
| The number of hacked sites dropped by 70–80%. Clients running outdated CMSs stopped getting hacked, even without upgrading. | Customers got happier. |
So, what can you achieve by implementing BitNinja? Webhost’s 8-year experience provides the following answers:
15–20% more clients per server;
30% drop in server load on shared hosting plans;
70–80% fewer hacked websites (even for clients with outdated CMSs)
Cost savings on support;
Additional revenue with no dedicated marketing effort;
Customer loyalty and returnees, clients tend to come back after suffering repeated breaches elsewhere.
All in all, BitNinja did make life easier for Webhost’s technical team. Besides, it became a business growth tool that helped to improve customer experience, reduce operational costs, and open up new revenue streams.
ispmanager is a popular web hosting control panel with partners and users in 150 countries. With the ispmanager affiliate program, partners get access to a number of benefits, including exclusive discounts for ispmanager licenses, priority technical, advanced marketing support and opportunity to resell such solutions as BitNinja.
This allows hosting providers to effectively attract new customers due to the appearance of high-quality and in-demand products in their portfolio.
We would like to thank the ispmanager team for preparing this case study.
