The VICIfast self-hosted (BYOI) plan

Most VICIfast customers let us provision a dedicated Hetzner VPS for them — server, OS, and VICIdial all set up in under 40 seconds. But some operators already have a server: an existing Hetzner box they are paying for, an AWS EC2 instance, or even a physical machine in a rack. For those cases, VICIfast offers the BYOI (bring your own infrastructure) plan — Bring Your Own Infrastructure.

On BYOI, you give VICIfast SSH access to your server. We install a secured, pre-tuned VICIdial on it via a tarball install, then manage it going forward. You keep paying your own compute bill. VICIfast charges a flat monthly management fee on top.

Who the BYOI plan is for

BYOI fits a few specific situations. You might already have a server contract with committed pricing you do not want to abandon. You might be running on-premises hardware for compliance reasons — your data never leaves your building. You might have a very large custom box that does not map neatly to the managed tier sizes. Or you might want to run VICIdial on a cloud provider other than Hetzner.

In all these cases, the managed plans do not fit, but the Managed hosting model — where someone else handles the install, security hardening, and ongoing maintenance — still appeals. BYOI gives you that without requiring you to move your infrastructure.

How the install works

sequenceDiagram
  participant You as You
  participant VF as VICIfast platform
  participant Box as Your server
  You->>VF: Provide SSH credentials
  VF->>Box: Connect via SSH
  VF->>Box: Run tarball install
  Box-->>VF: Install complete
  VF-->>You: VICIdial running on your box
  VF->>Box: Ongoing management and updates

The install is a tarball-based deployment that runs on your server over SSH. The process takes around five minutes — longer than the under-40-second managed path because we are not working with a fresh hypervisor image, but still fast compared to a manual VICIdial installation from source. When it completes, you have a working, hardened VICIdial on your existing server.

What is included on BYOI

• Full VICIdial install with security hardening (firewall rules, SSH certificate auth, secured VICIdial defaults).
• The branded webphone and mobile Remote agent app, same as the managed plans.
• Auto TLS renewal for your Branded subdomain (DNS-01 via Let's Encrypt on Cloudflare).
• Ongoing platform management: VICIfast monitors the install and handles updates.

What is not available on BYOI

Three features require VICIfast to own the hypervisor and are therefore not available on BYOI.

• Scheduled Server snapshots: we cannot trigger Hetzner-level snapshots on a box we do not own.
• One-click restore: without managed snapshots, there is no snapshot to restore from via the VICIfast platform.
• Dashboard resize: resizing CPU and RAM requires a Hetzner API call to change the server type, which only works on servers we provisioned.

For these features, the managed plans are the right choice. Your own cloud provider may offer native backup and resize tools you can use independently on a BYOI box, but those are outside the VICIfast platform.

Cost structure

On BYOI you pay two bills: your server provider's compute bill (Hetzner, AWS, your data center, or whoever runs your hardware), and VICIfast's flat monthly management fee. The management fee is lower than the managed plan tiers because we are not paying for the server. See the pricing page for current figures.

For an overview of the managed plans and how to pick between them, see the VICIfast plans explained. For everything VICIfast adds on top of a stock VICIdial install, see what VICIfast adds to VICIdial.