“Amanah provides a reliable, scalable and cost-effective colocation solution.”
Alex Visnea, CTO, Qublix Games
The Company
Qublix Games is a full-cycle casual game studio developing and publishing games across iOS, Android, Meta Instant, and Amazon.
Full-cycle means they handle everything in-house: game design, development, publishing, and live operations. At the technical level, their workloads are complex. Their day-to-day involves high rates of HTTP calls from game clients, board and user state updates, and continuous analytics processing – all running simultaneously.
The infrastructure supporting those workloads needs to be reliable, fast, and available around the clock.
Cloud is the default starting point for most studios. It’s easy to get going and scales on demand.
But as workloads grow, the cost structure starts to work against you – egress fees, bandwidth charges, and unpredictable billing compound fast.
For gaming studio colocation in Toronto, 151 Front Street West is where that conversation starts.
The Evaluation
“We were choosing between Cologix, Aptum, and Amanah.”
– Alex Visnea, CTO, Qublix Games
Qublix had a checklist of what they were looking for:
- Reliable colocation for their game server workloads
- Room to scale for production
- Predictable, transparent pricing
- Simple account and billing management
Amanah stood out for three reasons:
1. Responsiveness.
The Amanah team was the quickest to respond during their evaluation process. In infrastructure decisions, how a provider handles the pre-sales period is a good signal of how they’ll handle support after you sign.
2. Pricing clarity.
Qublix appreciated that the price on Amanah’s website matched what the sales team quote
“The fact that the published price matched pricing mentioned by sales reps was one of the key points that affected our decision to go with Amanah.”
– Alex Visnea, CTO, Qublix Games
3. The customer service portal.
Amanah’s self-service portal makes billing, ticketing, and account management simple. For a team that wants to focus on building games and not waiting in an international IT ticket queue, it makes a noticeable difference.
The support team is also entirely based in Toronto – just steps from the data center.
And, all colocation contracts are 1-year-long, so there’s no commitment issues getting in the way of making a decision.
The Outcome
Qublix didn’t exit AWS entirely. They moved select workloads into colocation at Amanah and continued to maintain a multicloud posture across public and private cloud. For a gaming studio reinvesting in product, those operational savings matter.
“Moving our production workloads from AWS to equipment colocated at Amanah helped us save ~10-15% on our AWS bill.”
– Alex Visnea, CTO, Qublix Games
When asked what’s one thing they’d want someone to know about colocation, Alex was direct: “Freedom. But with more control comes more responsibility.”
Owning your infrastructure means you’re not constrained by instance types, region availability, or someone else’s cost model. The tradeoff is that you’re responsible for outcomes, too.
But most businesses are already familiar with this dynamic.
The Facility
Amanah operates out of 151 Front Street West – one of the most connected buildings in Canada. It’s carrier-neutral, with access to 400+ providers and direct TorIX peering.
For gaming studios, this matters – high latency costs you customers. On the ground, this looks like timed-out sessions, dropped connections, and users who don’t return.
The fix is physical: staying close to your carrier, improving the network path, and reducing the number of hops to the end user.
At Amanah, BGP multi-homing works across tier-1 carriers, which means traffic takes the most efficient path. Fewer hops, lower latency. For gaming workloads, this is essential.
With additional built-in DDoS protection, infrastructure stays secure and traffic keeps flowing without interruption.
Gaming Studio Colocation in Toronto
If you’re a gaming studio with rising cloud costs, colocation at 151 Front is valuable – for many reasons.
Gaming workloads are expensive to run in the cloud. Bandwidth and egress fees scale with player count: the more successful your game, the bigger the bill. Colocation is how you stop paying cloud rates for infrastructure that runs the same job every single day. Now, your predictable workloads have a predictable bill.
Amanah is fully Canadian-owned and offers gaming studio colocation in Toronto. High-density racks, reliable power, precision cooling, and transparent pricing with local support – built for demanding workloads.
Not ready to make the jump? We offer free data center tours, so you can explore the facility before committing.
When you’re ready, talk to our sales team to see what your infrastructure could look like at 151 Front.
Questions We Get From Gaming Studios
What is colocation and how is it different from cloud hosting?
Colocation means you own your hardware and rent space, power, and connectivity inside a data center. Cloud means you’re renting someone else’s hardware by the hour. With colocation, you get more control and predictable costs. With cloud, you get flexibility – but you pay for it, especially on egress and bandwidth, which compound fast for gaming workloads.
Is colocation cheaper than AWS for gaming studios?
For studios with stable, predictable workloads – yes, significantly. Qublix Games reduced their AWS spend by 10-15% by moving select production workloads into colocation with Amanah at 151 Front Street West in Toronto. The bigger savings come from eliminating egress fees and unpredictable bandwidth charges that cloud providers build into their pricing.
What makes 151 Front Street West a good fit for game server hosting?
151 Front Street West is one of the most connected buildings in Canada. It’s carrier-neutral with access to 400+ providers, BGP multi-homing across tier-1 carriers, and direct TorIX peering. For gaming workloads, that means fewer hops, lower latency, and more reliable connections to end users across Canada and beyond. DDoS protection is also built in.
How long are Amanah’s colocation contracts?
Colocation contracts at Amanah are 1-year terms, no multi-year commitments, no long-term lock-ins. It’s designed for studios evaluating the move from cloud to colocation for the first time, giving you room to assess the fit without overcommitting.
Can I tour the data center before signing?
Yes, Amanah offers free data center tours. If you’re evaluating colocation for the first time, seeing the facility in person before committing is a reasonable ask and something we actively encourage.
What kind of support does Amanah offer?
Amanah’s support team is entirely based in Toronto. Billing, ticketing, and account management are handled through a self-service portal, and when you need to reach someone, you’re reaching a local team, not a global support queue.
Do I need to own my own servers to use colocation?
Yes, colocation is bring-your-own-hardware. You own and manage the equipment; Amanah provides the space, power, cooling, and connectivity at 151 Front. If you’re still on cloud and haven’t made the hardware investment yet, that’s worth factoring into the decision.
What size studios does Amanah work with?
Amanah specializes in working with small to medium-sized and boutique gaming studios – teams that need enterprise-grade infrastructure without enterprise-level complexity or pricing. That said, we work with studios of all sizes. If you’re evaluating colocation, 151 Front Street West is an excellent location regardless of where you are in your growth.