Hi there! It's Ivan, the creator of iximiuz Labs.

Since 2019, through my blog and newsletter, I've published more than 100 articles on Containers, Kubernetes, Linux, Networking, and Programming. I've also created several open source projects and spent countless hours answering questions on Twitter, Discord, and other platforms. All with a single goal: to help people master the Server Side craft.

A few years ago, when iximiuz.com started gaining traction, my dream evolved. I wanted to augment my static writing with a more dynamic experience — giving readers the ability to spin up carefully crafted remote sandbox environments right in their browser to experiment with Linux, Docker, and Kubernetes without needing to install anything on their local machines. This dream eventually led to the creation of iximiuz Labs.

The platform uses a Freemium model with a generous free tier. A large part of the content is (and will remain) free, and only a single-click signup is required to access the playgrounds. However, on the free tier, the daily playground time, the microVM's resources, and Internet egress traffic are significantly limited. This serves two purposes: keeps bots away and also incentivizes the most serious students to become paying members.

With upgraded iximiuz Labs membership students get virtually unlimited daily playtime, more powerful microVMs, and unrestricted Internet egress, allowing them to experiment with a much wider set of technologies in much more permissive environments. Trust me, you will notice the difference even if you find the free tier already good.

For the first couple of years, I was building iximiuz Labs alongside a full-time engineering job — nights, weekends, and whatever spare time I could find. These days, iximiuz Labs is my full focus. But "full focus" doesn't mean "easy mode": keeping a fleet of servers healthy, shipping new playground capabilities, and steadily growing the content catalog is still a lot of work for one person. The project is community-funded, and the revenue is (so far) just barely enough to sustain a single creator. That's why every purchase of the Official Content Pack or the Tinkerer plan makes a real difference — it keeps the free tier generous, funds infrastructure, and buys me more time to build, write, and improve the platform 🚀