Self-Service Portal for Growing Hosting Provider

Client: Regional web hosting provider scaling past its ops Role: Systems architect + delivery lead — design and build Stack: PHP, custom portal, JWT, Docker, MongoDB, CI/CD (Bitbucket Pipelines)

The problem. Growth throttled by internal friction. Every account, billing, or product change required a support ticket. Wait times climbed, churn rose, and ops couldn't scale without piling on headcount. No central system for self-service — just inefficiency and revenue leakage.

What I did. Architected and built a custom self-service platform on a modular PHP codebase, with internal admin tools for centralized product, billing, and customer management. Wired secure JWT auth for stateless sessions, set up Docker-based isolated environments for safe feature testing, and built clean CI/CD pipelines for fast, low-risk releases. Centralized account data on MongoDB for scale.

90% drop in support volume as customers self-served

+15% sales within 12 months from lower onboarding/upgrade friction

Higher retention from faster service access

Ops shifted to a scalable, customer-first model with new self-service upsell revenue