The year we changed cloud infrastructure forever
What a year it has been. From launching zero-cost egress, to VPN Gateways, we’ve been breaking new ground – creating a sustainable and reliable cloud infrastructure that will ensure our customers can build and maintain mission-critical services for years to come.
Operating in the cloud has always presented engineering challenges, but as we move into 2025, data security and regulatory compliance are increasingly tough to tackle. We’ve made it our mission to enable customers to leverage data security, data privacy, and European regulatory compliance as significant drivers of innovation and growth. To that end, we revisited UpCloud’s organizational strategy to deliver European engineering excellence that complies with the robust EU Regulatory Framework on Data, atop a comprehensive cloud stack that is reliable, scalable, secure, and optimized for costs.
Speaking of cloud costs, we lit a fire under the cloud ecosystem in May when we eliminated egress fees, and offered unlimited free outbound traffic for cloud services instead. On top of this, we launched our developer plans, giving users a streamlined set of essential services starting at just $3.5.
Alongside our product-led initiatives, we began publicly reporting our Environmental, Sustainability, and Governance strategies in 2024. We’re proud of the huge stride we’ve made, including running 100% of our offices on renewable energy, and will continue to champion ESG at every turn. With such strong foundational work delivered in 2024, we’re looking forward to what the new year will bring. Thank you for being part of this journey with us.
When UpCloud launched more than a decade ago, we boldly stated that we were determined to break barriers in the cloud ecosystem. In 2024, we demonstrated our commitment to that original vision is stronger than ever. This year we went above and beyond to ensure exceptional performance, reliability, and scalability.
Cloud cost optimization has long been a sticking point for us, because far too many businesses struggle with the uncertainty and potential cost spikes associated with egress fees. We firmly believe that you should have a full overview of your cloud spend. But fundamentally, we think the entire ecosystem needs to change. That’s why we eliminated egress fees in May, offering unlimited free outbound traffic for cloud services instead.
“This isn’t just an advancement; it’s a revolution. Unlimited egress represents our pledge to empowering developers and businesses with true freedom and flexibility.”
Our commitment to product-led growth led us to a huge highlight of 2024 – launching developer plans for developers and small teams, which offer a streamlined set of essential services from just $3.5 – perfect for testing, development, and hosting personal projects.
A major milestone in 2024 was the general availability of VPN Gateways, enabling secure connections between UpCloud’s Private Networks and any external IPsec-compatible endpoints. The service’s integrated Network Address Translation (NAT) capabilities and straightforward setup have made multi-cloud connectivity more accessible than before. This represents our commitment to help customers build flexible infrastructure that spans across multiple providers and on-premises networks.
For a detailed timeline of our 2024 releases. View Changelog
$0
Zero-cost Egress
99.99 %
Infrastructure availability
VPN Gateway
Launched for Multi-Cloud connectivity
Give us your feedback and let’s see what we can make happen!
15 Data centers, 12 Countries, 4 Continents
Stavanger, Norway
Copenhagen, Denmark
Stockholm, Sweden
San Jose, USA
New York, USA
Chicago, USA
London, UK
Singapore, Singapore
Warsaw, Poland
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Madrid, Spain
Frankfurt, Germany
Sydney, Australia
We doubled-down on our commitment to open source in 2024, releasing our first Crossplane Provider, updating our Terraform Provider, and offering Valkey as an alternative to Redis. Check out some of our highlights, and stay tuned for more investment into the open source landscape in 2025!
We voted for open source when we released support for Valkey on our managed databases. By adopting Valkey, the open source alternative to Redis, UpCloud ensures continued transparency, community collaboration, and freedom from corporate control in our managed key-value database service.
Watch our Valley Fireside Chat with Valkey Developer Advocate Kyle Davis.
At Upcloud, we’re always excited to adopt Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) projects and make them work best for our end users. So in May we released UpCloud’s Crossplane Provider, which you can use to manage UpCloud resources directly through Crossplane with Kubernetes manifests, even across the cloud! This release complemented our Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) tooling by providing a Kubernetes-native way to manage UpCloud resources.
We value the CNCF’s strong project governance, and have been a certified Kubernetes (Hosted) provider since Kubernetes 1.26. This year, we updated our conformance to Kubernetes 1.29, and are working towards achieving 1.30 and 1.31 early in the new year.
One of the best things about open source is how projects evolve in ways you don’t always expect. In 2017, Ville Vesilehto, Lead Product Manager at UpCloud, started hacking on a Terraform Provider. That weekend project evolved into an essential tool for infrastructure automation and in 2018 we asked Ville if we could make the provider an official part of our developer tooling ecosystem – providing resources and support while maintaining the open source nature of the project. Even better, Ville joined UpCloud in 2021, and improved the project he’d started four years earlier – releasing V5.15.0 in 2024!
Read Ville’s blog for more
Check out our GitHub repos to get started: Terraform Provider, Go SDK, Crossplane provider, UpCloud cli
Community means a lot to us at UpCloud. It extends from our staff, to our customers and partners, through to the open source projects we champion. We genuinely value each and every contribution to our collective success.
Check out how some of our customers leveraged UpCloud for their mission-critical operations this year:
Hailey HR has empowered over 500 HR teams to streamline processes, save time and ensure GDPR compliance. Managers and employees have the information they need, right at their fingertips while maintaining the highest level of data security. UpCloud’s European cloud-native offering has enabled Hailey to stand […] Cloud servers, Managed Databases, Object storage
Due to the success of its solutions, including simulations of real-world scenarios, Hack The Box found the need for high-performance cloud infrastructure in order to meet customer demand. One of the major drawbacks of their previous setup was the slow deployment rate of one of its core cloud services, which consisted of […] Cloud servers, Managed Databases, Private Cloud
We pride ourselves on providing outstanding customer service – 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. In 2024, we were proud to continue our outstanding streak, responding to initial queries in just 46 seconds!
Recognizing the importance of collaboration, in 2024 we established our Partner Business Unit. Dedicating ourselves to fostering stronger relationships with our partners, and creating bridges for mutual cooperation and success, we’ve focused on delivering greater value for our partners by orienting features and products specifically to their needs.
Looking ahead to 2025, our strategy focuses on refining channels, platforms, and resources to deliver even greater value and support for our partners’ growth and success.
One of our major product developments in 2024 was the launch of a new WHMCS module, designed specifically for web hosting companies. This module simplifies operations and enhances automation capabilities for hosting providers, allowing them to focus on scaling their business rather than managing complex backend systems.
Read how UpCloud Partners Elastisys provides a fully GDPR-compliant Kubernetes platform, hosted on UpCloud’s European cloud servers, along with consulting and training services.
Open source is far more than just code. As responsible open source citizens, it’s our mission to empower tech communities through creating space for sharing knowledge, and expanding personal and professional networks. To that end, we opened our doors regularly throughout 2024 for Helsinki’s amazing open source communities, hosting nine MeetUps at our HQ, and sponsoring events including Slush, Junction, and Future Frontend. This year, we also recommitted to the vibrant cloud native ecosystem by renewing our Silver CNCF membership, and are proud to support the incredible velocity of its projects.
We support community initiatives that make a positive impact, including donating end-of-life devices to schools and hosting campaigns offering free credits for students to use our platform – promoting educational and technological advancements.
We are also empowering selected non-profit organizations by hosting their websites for free on UpCloud.
When UpCloud launched more than a decade ago, we boldly stated that we were determined to break barriers in the cloud ecosystem. In 2024, we demonstrated our commitment to that original vision is stronger than ever. This year we went above and beyond to ensure exceptional performance, reliability, and scalability.
Dive into our full ESG Report to learn about our commitment to improving the world around us, and how we’re investing in initiatives that ensure long-term sustainability.
100%
UpCloud offices run on renewable energy
70%
UpCloud data centers run on renewable energy
0%
Direct emissions
When UpCloud was founded in 2012, our vision was to revolutionize the global cloud services landscape, starting with Europe as our foundation. More than a decade later, we’re still driven by the same relentless pursuit of performance, data security, and sovereignty. But the time was right for us to refresh our strategy for the years ahead, to ensure that our customers benefit from the evolving regulatory landscape and are placed to take full advantage of the modern cloud native ecosystem.
In championing the free and foundational spirit of the internet, we will operate with an open source ethos that stays true to the vision and values of the internet, with a touch of the same rebellious and fun nature of the pioneering engineers and early adopters. In practice, this means that we are committed to contributing innovation back into the ecosystem, while ensuring every aspect of our platform is accessible and manageable, for full control with zero vendor lock in.
As The European Cloud with a global reach, we will help users leverage compliance and data security as significant drivers for growth, atop a product stack that reflects European innovation and engineering excellence. In practice, this means that we comply with the robust EU Regulatory Framework on Data – going beyond GDPR to ensure more than just personal data is protected, giving users peace of mind that data is secure and fully in their control. Alongside, we will ensure that every layer of our product stack is optimized for our users’ acceleration.
UpCloud Founder & CTO Joel Pihlajamaa
Internally, we’re a strong community of innovative, welcoming, and very fun people. We’re fully committed to making UpCloud an amazing place to work and we actively support well-being by providing flexibility, choice, and support.Our professionals have great freedom to choose how to deliver their work successfully. Hybrid work is the norm for all our teams, but many work remote full-time.
We also create opportunities to collaborate on a regular basis, from in-person events, to hybrid and virtual meetings, to ensure we are aligned in our work and that everyone is fully supported.
Despite a very busy year, we found time to connect in October through the UpCloud Retreat in Barcelona.
Meanwhile our regular UpCloud events were an opportunity to network and socialize with peers in a relaxed setting.
Thank you for sharing this journey with us in 2024. We’re excited for the coming year and all that we will achieve together. We’d love to see you in 2025! Check out our events calendar for our upcoming events.
