Runstead
Runstead is a modern operating system for hosting businesses developed by Tonmoy Infrastructure & Vision. It unifies customer management, product catalogs, recurring billing, service lifecycle provisioning, domain and DNS operations, multi-channel ticketing, and white-label storefronts into a single cohesive platform.
- Development
- ACTIVE
- 0.2.0-dev
- Commercial Venture / Proprietary
Runstead is an active TIV software venture featuring a verified browser-first interactive demonstration and a production PostgreSQL schema with Row-Level Security (RLS) accepted in Phase 2. Credit card payment transactions, physical hypervisor provisioning, and public DNS root updates are simulated within the demonstration.
Development
Experimental research artifact
ACTIVE
Active research & evaluation
Software Platform
v0.2.0-dev
TIV · Commercial Venture / Proprietary
Tonmoy Infrastructure & Vision
About Runstead
Runstead is a modern operating system for hosting businesses developed by Tonmoy Infrastructure & Vision. It unifies customer management, product catalogs, recurring billing, service lifecycle provisioning, domain and DNS operations, multi-channel ticketing, and white-label storefronts into a single cohesive platform.
Why this system exists
The global web hosting operations market is dominated by legacy, monolithic software architectures—principally WHMCS—and fragmented third-party utilities. Operating an independent hosting company today requires stitching together disconnected portals: separate tools for billing and invoices, unintegrated ticketing panels, manual registrar dashboards for domain registration, disjointed DNS consoles, and antiquated customer self-service portals with poor mobile experiences. This fragmentation leads to high integration maintenance, manual reconciliation overhead, security vulnerabilities, and elevated operational costs for emerging hosting entrepreneurs.
Engineering philosophy & approach
Runstead replaces legacy tool fragmentation with a unified, developer-friendly architecture following three phased horizons: Horizon A delivers the commercial operating platform (CRM, catalog, recurring billing, tickets, storefronts); Horizon B establishes resilient automation and connectors (cPanel/WHM, Plesk, DirectAdmin, registrar EPP APIs, Stripe, automated ACME SSL); and Horizon C charts a path toward owned infrastructure (hypervisors, native control panels, Anycast DNS). Development proceeds with strict multi-tenant Row-Level Security, transaction-scoped database contexts, and verifiable CI testing.
System architecture
Runstead is built on Next.js App Router with strict TypeScript, backed by PostgreSQL with database-enforced Row-Level Security (RLS) across all tenant-owned tables. The platform implements least-privilege role separation (runstead_admin vs runstead_app) and transaction-local tenant context binding (withTenantContext), preventing tenant cross-talk. An asynchronous job queue with exponential backoff handles upstream provisioning and registrar actions. In addition to the production persistence schema, the repository features an offline browser demonstration layer with deterministic seed fixtures and 77 automated tests.
Core system capabilities
- Multi-tenant client CRM with organization hierarchies and referential integrity
- Multi-cycle product catalog (monthly, annual, biennial) with resource limits and setup fees
- Order lifecycle state machine (draft → pending_payment → processing → active)
- Automated invoicing engine with multi-currency, tax calculation, and payment reconciliation
- Hosting service fleet management with suspend, restore, upgrade, and cancellation controls
- RFC-compliant DNS zone editor supporting A, AAAA, CNAME, MX, TXT, and CAA records
- Multi-channel support ticketing queue with customer threads and private internal staff notes
- Real-time WYSIWYG white-label storefront customizer with live desktop/tablet/mobile preview
- Self-service customer portal for account management, service monitoring, and invoice payments
- Executive analytics telemetry tracking MRR, ARPU, customer retention, and service distributions
- Multi-tenant platform operator console for fleet oversight and quota enforcement
- PostgreSQL Row-Level Security (RLS) guaranteeing strict tenant data isolation at the database level
Unifying Commercial Operations & Hosting Automation
Runstead is engineered to resolve a persistent, structural problem across the global web hosting industry: the extreme software fragmentation that burdens independent hosting providers, digital web agencies, and emerging hosting entrepreneurs.
The Operational Problem
For over two decades, independent hosting providers have relied on legacy, monolithic systems—principally WHMCS—coupled with separate, unintegrated third-party utilities. Operating a hosting business today requires managing disparate tools: one for invoices, a disconnected panel for helpdesk tickets, manual registrar consoles for domain purchases, unlinked DNS tools, and antiquated customer portals with poor mobile responsiveness. This fragmentation generates high manual maintenance, recurring reconciliation errors, security vulnerabilities, and steep onboarding friction for new market entrants.
The Proposed Solution & Differentiation
Runstead consolidates the entire hosting business lifecycle into a single, cohesive SaaS platform: CRM, multi-cycle catalog, automated recurring invoicing, service lifecycle automation, domain search, RFC-compliant DNS zone editing, support ticketing, and real-time white-label storefront customizers. Backed by PostgreSQL Row-Level Security (RLS) and transaction-scoped tenant context, it guarantees strict data isolation while providing platform operators global fleet visibility.
Managing client hosting portfolios with unified recurring billing, white-label portals, and team access.
Bootstrapping regional hosting brands without spending months integrating complex legacy software stacks.
Bundling turnkey web hosting, domain registration, and maintenance subscriptions into project retainers.
Seeking an API-first Next.js alternative to replace aging WHMCS installations and high per-account license fees.
Runstead's business model is deliberately staged across three sequential horizons, balancing immediate commercial software delivery with Tonmoy Infrastructure's long-term sovereign infrastructure assets:
Commercial operating software: Client CRM, billing, catalog, storefronts, and helpdesk. Immediate SaaS recurring subscription monetization.
Integration connectors: cPanel/WHM, Plesk, DirectAdmin, registrar EPP APIs, Stripe, and Let's Encrypt ACME challenge automation.
Sovereign TIV assets: Bare-metal hypervisors, native containerized control panels, Anycast DNS, and deduplicated object backup storage.
- •Upstream API Maintenance: Upstream cPanel/WHM, Plesk, and DirectAdmin API changes require continuous regression testing and dedicated adapter maintenance.
- •Customer Migration Friction: Hosting providers with historical databases require battle-tested, lossless WHMCS import and schema reconciliation tooling.
- •Payment Compliance: Production Stripe Connect, subscription webhooks, and multi-currency tax calculation require strict financial audit compliance.
- •Customer Acquisition Velocity: Reseller customer acquisition cost (CAC) and conversion from free sandbox to paid plans requires empirical testing with live pilot cohorts.
Modern Alternative to Legacy Tool Fragmentation
The hosting billing and business management market is currently characterized by high concentration around legacy software suites, paired with growing dissatisfaction over escalating license fees and aging technical architectures.
| Platform / System | Architecture & Stack | Commercial Model | Primary Operational Limitations | Runstead Differentiation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| WHMCS (WebPros) | Legacy PHP 7/8, IonCube encoded, MySQL | Tiered monthly per active client ($18.95 – $54.95+/mo) | Closed source IonCube encoding, frequent license price hikes, complex third-party plugin bloat | Modern Next.js/TypeScript, open schema, built-in visual storefront, predictable tiers |
| Blesta (Phillips Data) | PHP (open source files), MySQL | Monthly ($12.95/mo) or Perpetual ($250+) | Smaller plugin ecosystem, legacy admin UI, no integrated visual storefront builder | Turnkey multi-tenant SaaS, modern accessible Radix UI, integrated RFC DNS editor |
| Clientexec | PHP, MySQL | Monthly ($11.95/mo) or Reseller bundled | Limited hypervisor integration, slower release cadence, dated customer self-service | Operator console, strict PostgreSQL RLS data isolation, responsive mobile-first portal |
| HostBill | PHP, IonCube, MySQL | High perpetual license ($599 to $5,999 upfront) | Prohibitive upfront capex for startups, costly enterprise support contracts | Free sandbox tier, low barrier $49/mo launch plan, zero perpetual license lock-in |
Market landscape notes: Competitor pricing and architectural observations are derived from publicly available vendor documentation as of October 2026. External market share figures are not estimated without accredited third-party census data.
Predictable Platform SaaS Subscriptions
Runstead's revenue model is based strictly on subscription fees paid by hosting businesses and resellers for platform access. It maintains absolute separation from downstream end-user hosting revenues.
| Subscription Tier | Listed Monthly Fee | Target Reseller Profile | Included Features & Quotas | Commercial Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sandbox | Free ($0 • ₹0 • ৳0) | Developers, pre-launch testing, evaluation | Up to 3 active clients, simulated billing, test DNS editor, watermarked storefront | Available in Demo |
| Launch | US$49 / mo ₹4,116 / ৳5,880 | Freelance web designers, boutique agencies | Up to 50 active clients, custom domain, white-label storefront, 1 cPanel/Plesk server | Indicative Pricing |
| Growth (Popular) | US$149 / mo ₹12,516 / ৳17,880 | Independent hosting entrepreneurs, regional hosts | Up to 250 active clients, multi-server routing, custom email branding, priority queue | Indicative Pricing |
| Scale | US$399 / mo ₹33,516 / ৳47,880 | Growing hosting brands with multi-region nodes | Up to 1,000 active clients, automated server provisioning, multi-currency, audit logs | Indicative Pricing |
| Enterprise | Custom (from $999/mo) from ₹83,916 / ৳1,19,880 | Large web hosting companies, telecom resellers | Unlimited clients, dedicated VPC, custom SLA, bespoke registrar integrations, SSO | Custom Quotation |
Runstead Revenue vs. Downstream Hosting Customer Revenue: When a web agency using Runstead charges their client $15/month for WordPress hosting and $12/year for a .com domain, 100% of that end-user transaction belongs to the agency. Neither Runstead nor Tonmoy Infrastructure & Vision counts, consolidates, or reports downstream hosting revenues as corporate revenue. Runstead's sole commercial revenue comprises direct platform SaaS subscription fees.
Roadmap Evidence, Completed Phases & Production Blockers
Runstead enforces an evidence-based development standard. Functionality is claimed as complete only when supported by verifiable source code, database migrations, and passing automated test suites.
Implemented multi-tenant store, seed data models, reseller onboarding wizard (/demo/launch), platform operator console (/demo/platform-admin), and global command palette (⌘K). Verified by unit tests (tests/seed-data.test.ts, tests/selectors.test.ts).
Implemented customer CRM, product catalog with multi-cycle pricing, order processing state machine, automated invoices with tax calculations, and multi-channel support ticketing. Verified by tests/workflows.test.ts.
Implemented real-time visual storefront customizer with viewport toggles, public published storefront preview (/demo/storefront-preview), customer self-service client portal, and multi-item shopping cart. Verified by tests/storefront.test.ts.
Service lifecycle state machine (Suspend, Restore, Upgrade, Cancel) and interactive 4-step provisioning simulation are verified in browser state.
- • Real cPanel/WHM XML-API / UAPI client library for account provisioning.
- • Asynchronous background worker queue (BullMQ / Redis) with exponential backoff and dead-letter queues.
- • Plesk and DirectAdmin driver adapter implementations.
Full RFC-compliant DNS zone editor supporting A, AAAA, CNAME, MX, TXT, and CAA records with TTL validation is verified in unit and E2E suites.
- • Live registrar API connectors (ResellerClub, Enom, Namecheap EPP protocols).
- • Automated Let's Encrypt / ACME challenge automation for SSL certificate lifecycle management.
- • DNS edge synchronization with PowerDNS or Cloudflare API.
Phase 2 Completed (October 15, 2026): Modeled 19 relational entities in prisma/schema.prisma using Prisma ORM 6.12.0. Enforced PostgreSQL Row-Level Security across all 18 tenant tables with transaction-scoped context (withTenantContext). Verified by 25 PostgreSQL integration tests in tests/db-rls.test.ts (total test suite expanded to 77 passing tests).
- • Concrete Stripe Checkout, Customer Portal, and webhook signature verification for real billing settlement.
- • Multi-factor authentication (MFA) and secure session token management.
- • Independent security penetration testing and formal v1.0 release packaging.
Milestone Delivery Budget & Resource Allocation
Advancing Runstead from its current Phase 2 state to a battle-tested v1.0 production release requires targeted engineering investment across six core disciplines.
Official Investment Request Status: Tonmoy Infrastructure & Vision has not published a formal fundraising target, enterprise valuation, or committed equity offering for Runstead. The allocations below represent an illustrative engineering budget scenario derived from estimated effort points required to resolve Milestones 4–6 production blockers over a 12-month development cycle.
Engineering upstream cPanel/WHM XML-API, Plesk REST API, and DirectAdmin CMD_API driver adapters; asynchronous BullMQ worker queues with retry semantics; and webhook delivery engine.
Implementing production session token lifecycle, email verification, TOTP multi-factor authentication (MFA), role-based audit logging, and external third-party penetration testing.
Live Stripe Billing integration, Payment Intents, Customer Portal reconciliation, webhook signature verification, and automated dispute and refund lifecycle handling.
EPP domain registrar integrations (ResellerClub, Enom, Namecheap) for automated domain procurement; DNS-01 / HTTP-01 ACME challenge workers for automatic Let's Encrypt wildcard SSL issuance.
PostgreSQL multi-AZ replication, Redis persistence clusters, automated off-site database backups, monitoring telemetry, and load-tested staging environments.
Comprehensive API documentation, WHMCS database migration scripts, developer SDKs, and high-touch support for the initial cohort of beta web agency partners.
36-Month Commercial Trajectory & Unit Economics
Reflects measured adoption among freelance web agencies, small hosting providers, and digital developers looking for a modern control plane. 5.0% free-to-paid conversion, 2.5% monthly churn, and standard gross margins.
$963,984
Annualized Recurring618
Active ResellersMonth 11
Net Cash Flow >= $0$72,150
Max Cumulative Drawdown89.7%
Revenue minus Direct COGS65.3x
LTV: $4,638 • CAC: $713-Year Financial Trajectory (Base Scenario)
| Metric Dimension | Year 1 (Foundation) | Year 2 (Expansion) | Year 3 (Scale) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Active Paying Customers (Ending) | 151 | 344 | 618 |
| Ending MRR (Monthly Recurring) | $22,099 | $44,506 | $80,332 |
| Ending ARR (Annualized Recurring Revenue) | $265,188 | $534,072 | $963,984 |
| Blended ARPU (Monthly) | $146 | $129 | $130 |
| Total Annual Recognized Platform Revenue | $148,847 | $389,694 | $754,544 |
| — Direct Variable COGS (Hosting, Payment fees, APIs) | ($14,131) | ($42,263) | ($81,684) |
| Gross Profit & Margin | $134,716 (90.5%) | $347,431 (89.2%) | $672,860 (89.2%) |
| — Operating Expenses (Engineering, Infra, Support, Marketing, G&A) | ($203,930) | ($224,460) | ($252,460) |
| Net Annual Operating Cash Flow | ($69,214) | $122,971 | $420,400 |
Milestone Checkpoint Telemetry (Semi-Annual)
| Month | Free Tenants | Paying Resellers | MRR ($) | ARR ($) | Total Op Cost ($) | Net Cash Flow ($) | Cumulative Flow ($) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| M1 | 110 | 12 | $2,188 | $26,256 | $16,507 | ($14,319) | ($14,319) |
| M6 | 730 | 72 | $11,528 | $138,336 | $17,996 | ($6,468) | ($61,811) |
| M12 | 1,654 | 151 | $22,099 | $265,188 | $19,906 | $2,193 | ($69,214) |
| M18 | 2,821 | 240 | $30,410 | $364,920 | $21,954 | $8,456 | ($39,305) |
| M24 | 4,300 | 344 | $44,506 | $534,072 | $24,474 | $20,032 | $53,757 |
| M30 | 6,170 | 468 | $61,882 | $742,584 | $27,495 | $34,387 | $221,610 |
| M36 | 8,536 | 618 | $80,332 | $963,984 | $31,075 | $49,257 | $474,157 |
1. Hypothetical Estimates Only: This model is an illustrative tool designed for engineering and commercial milestone planning. It does not reflect past revenue, bank ledger balances, or management commitments.
2. Downstream Invoice Exclusion: Invoices generated by resellers selling web hosting, domains, or SSL to their end-users belong entirely to those independent businesses. Only Runstead's direct platform subscription fees are counted.
3. No Guaranteed Return: Neither Tonmoy Infrastructure & Vision nor Runstead offers guaranteed returns on investment, assured exit horizons, or statutory distributions.
4. Formal Investment Terms: An official company-approved valuation or equity offering has not been authorized. Maintainers and partners evaluate Milestones 4–6 resource requirements based on audited engineering deliverables.
Rigorous Evaluation Criteria & Commercial Partnerships
Tonmoy Infrastructure & Vision invites prospective strategic partners, infrastructure collaborators, and early-stage enterprise evaluators to assess Runstead with complete transparency.
What Evaluators Should Examine
- Verifiable Codebase: 77 automated unit and integration tests, 25 Playwright journeys, and production Prisma RLS migrations.
- Multi-Tenant Isolation: Enforced database Row-Level Security ensuring zero tenant cross-talk across commercial and service entities.
- Unit Economics Discipline: High gross margins (~75–80%) achievable through lean Next.js App Router serverless and containerized deployment.
- Transparent Governance: Honest separation between simulated demonstration behavior and planned production infrastructure.
What TIV Does Not Offer
- No Guaranteed Returns: No promises of specific returns on capital, dividend distributions, or predetermined liquidity horizons.
- No Premature Valuations: Standalone monetary company or venture valuations are not assigned or published without audited financials.
- No Public Securities Offering: This profile is for informational and commercial partnership purposes only; it does not constitute a public solicitation of securities.
Explore Strategic Partnerships & Pilot Opportunities
We welcome discussions with web agencies seeking modern client hosting tooling, control-panel vendors interested in driver integrations, and strategic partners evaluating cloud infrastructure ventures.
Executive Overview
Runstead is a modern, unified operating system engineered specifically for hosting businesses. Developed under Tonmoy Infrastructure & Vision (TIV), Runstead addresses the operational friction created by fragmented, legacy software ecosystems (such as WHMCS, legacy billing portals, and manual registrar consoles) by providing a single, cohesive, developer-friendly control plane.
[!IMPORTANT] Investor & Commercial Demonstration Notice: Runstead is currently an active venture in development. The repository provides an interactive browser-first demonstration of the platform alongside a production-grade relational PostgreSQL schema with Row-Level Security (RLS) completed in Phase 2. Live payment processing via credit card networks, physical hypervisor provisioning, and public DNS root updates are simulated within the demo environment.
The Three Architectural Horizons
Runstead enforces clear architectural boundaries across three evolutionary stages:
Horizon A: Hosting-Business Operating Platform (Verified Demonstration & Baseline)
The commercial and business management foundation:
- —Multi-tenant client CRM and organization accounts.
- —Flexible multi-cycle catalog (Shared, VPS, Dedicated, Domains, Add-ons) with resource quotas.
- —Order processing state machine (
awaiting_payment→paid→provisioning→active). - —Automated invoice calculation, tax rates, line items, and payment reconciliation.
- —Multi-channel support ticket queues with customer conversation threads and internal notes.
- —Real-time WYSIWYG storefront visual builder with live multi-viewport preview.
- —Client self-service portal for services, domains, invoices, and helpdesk.
Horizon B: Automation & Integration Layer (In Progress / Milestones 4–5)
The connector and orchestration layer linking business events to external providers:
- —Asynchronous resilient job queue with exponential backoff and dead-letter queues.
- —Standardized Driver Adapters for upstream control panels:
- —cPanel / WHM (XML-API / UAPI)
- —Plesk (REST API)
- —DirectAdmin (CMD_API)
- —Registrar API Connectors for automated domain registrations, transfers, and nameservers (ResellerClub, Enom, Namecheap).
- —Payment Gateway Integration: Stripe Checkout, Payment Intents, and Webhook settlement.
- —DNS Edge Synchronization: Cloudflare and PowerDNS API connectors.
- —Automated Let's Encrypt / ACME SSL certificate issuance and renewal.
Horizon C: Owned Infrastructure Platform (Long-Term Roadmap)
Future sovereign infrastructure capabilities developed by Tonmoy Infrastructure:
- —Native bare-metal hypervisor node orchestration (KVM/QEMU, microVMs).
- —Native containerized shared hosting control panel (eliminating third-party panel licensing).
- —Authoritative globally distributed Anycast DNS network.
- —Deduplicated block and object backup storage engine with point-in-time recovery.
Technical Stack & Architecture
- —Frontend & App Framework: Next.js 15+ (App Router with React Server Components & Client Boundaries)
- —Programming Language: Strict TypeScript throughout
- —Database & Persistence: PostgreSQL 16+ with Prisma ORM 6.12.0
- —Multi-Tenant Security: PostgreSQL Row-Level Security (
FORCE ROW LEVEL SECURITY) enforced across all 18 tenant-owned tables with transaction-scoped tenant context (withTenantContext) - —Styling & Design Tokens: Tailwind CSS with dark surfaces and TIV coral-red accent (
#f43f5e/#E5484D) - —UI Components: Accessible primitives built on Radix UI
- —Visualizations: Recharts for MRR trends, client growth, sales distribution, and resource metrics
- —Offline Demonstration Engine: Typed Demo State Provider with localStorage persistence and deterministic seed fixtures, verified with 77 automated tests.
Indicative Commercial Model
Runstead's commercial pricing is structured around transparent, predictable SaaS tiers for hosting entrepreneurs:
| Tier | Listed Monthly Price | Target Reseller Profile | Active Service Capacity |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sandbox | Free ($0) | Developers, evaluators, and pre-launch testing | Up to 3 active clients |
| Launch | US$49 | Freelance web designers & boutique agencies | Up to 50 active clients |
| Growth | US$149 | Independent hosting entrepreneurs & regional hosts | Up to 250 active clients |
| Scale | US$399 | Growing hosting brands requiring multi-server fleet automation | Up to 1,000 active clients |
| Enterprise | Custom | Dedicated infrastructure, custom SLAs, and high-volume billing | Unlimited clients |
[!NOTE] Strict Billing Separation: The tiers above represent Runstead's indicative subscription fees charged to hosting businesses. Revenue generated by hosting businesses from selling hosting, domains, or email to their downstream end-users belongs entirely to those businesses and is never counted as Runstead or TIV revenue.
Production Readiness Blockers & Next Milestones
To transition from the current verified demonstration to production availability, the following deliverables are prioritized:
- —Upstream cPanel/WHM Client: Real REST API integration for automated account creation, suspension, and deletion.
- —Persistent Background Task Queue: BullMQ / Redis job queue for resilient provisioning retries and failure isolation.
- —Stripe Webhook Settlement: Live webhook signature verification and automatic invoice state transitions.
- —Registrar EPP Connectors: Real domain registration and DNS record synchronization via provider APIs.
- —Session Authentication & MFA: Production session token issuance, email verification, and TOTP multi-factor authentication.
Milestones & active developments
- Phase 0: Project Charter & Verification Baseline
- Phase 1: Dependency Hardening & Security Audit Baseline
- Phase 2: Relational PostgreSQL Schema & Multi-Tenant RLS Enforcement
- Milestone 4: Upstream cPanel/WHM XML-API & Plesk Provisioning Connectors
- Milestone 5: Domain Registrar API Integrations (EPP) & Anycast DNS Sync
- Milestone 6: Production Stripe Webhook Settlement & Hardened v1.0 Release
Checkpoint lineage & milestones
Step-wise checkpoints and lineage updates for Runstead.
Phase 2 delivery: Server-side PostgreSQL schema with Prisma ORM 6.12.0 and Row-Level Security (RLS) across all 18 tenant tables.
- — PostgreSQL relational schema modeling 19 domain entities in prisma/schema.prisma
- — Enforced ENABLE and FORCE ROW LEVEL SECURITY across all 18 tenant-owned tables
- — Transaction-scoped tenant context (withTenantContext) preventing connection pool leakage
- — Role separation: runstead_admin (migration superuser) and runstead_app (NOSUPERUSER, NOBYPASSRLS)
- — 25 automated database RLS integration tests in tests/db-rls.test.ts
- — Interactive browser demonstration layer with 77 passing automated unit and integration tests
- — Full RFC-compliant DNS zone editor supporting A, AAAA, CNAME, MX, TXT, and CAA records
- — Multi-tenant platform operator console for reseller fleet monitoring and quota enforcement