Case studies

Insurance at speed: How Goodflair hits 8-hour reimbursement targets with Upsun

4-minute read

Challenge

Goodflair co-founders Christophe Mas and Jérôme Brisseau launched the company in 2022 to fix a major problem: nearly half of pet owners avoid the vet because it costs too much. They built their reputation on a single, difficult promise: paying back claims in an average of 8 hours.

To hit that goal, they rely on two critical engines: a WordPress storefront and a custom Symfony CRM that handles the business operations. But as the company scaled, their original cloud provider, a massive generalist, became a bottleneck. At a giant host, the platform is just one of a hundred products; it lacked the specialized support and sharp expertise needed to handle sensitive pet health data and complex technical requirements.

Solution

Goodflair moved 100% of its applications to Upsun to gain finer scalability, tighter security, and expert support. By adopting Upsun’s Git-driven workflow, every code change automatically creates an isolated preview environment.

These environments act as production-perfect clones where the team can test new features, member journeys, or pricing updates against real data without risking the live site. By defining their entire infrastructure as code, Goodflair offloaded server complexity to the platform, freeing their internal team to focus entirely on insurance innovation.

WordPressSymfony

Results

Radical velocity: Shorter delivery cycles and faster shipping of new insurance features.
Production-perfect testing: Eliminated "unpleasant surprises" by using isolated preview environments for every branch.
Operational peace of mind: Achieved stable response times and high security for sensitive health data.
0% infrastructure toil: Freed up engineering bandwidth to maintain a #1 Trustpilot ranking and focus on member care.

Bridging the gap between technology and human care

While Goodflair offers a fully digital experience, the back office is run by qualified Veterinary Technicians who review every claim. For Christophe Mas, the infrastructure must support these human experts without becoming a distraction.

"The CRM is the operational heart of Goodflair," Mas explains. "It handles all business workflows, manages connections with our third-party partners, and operates with a high level of security. Ultimately, it is what makes our promise of ultra-fast reimbursement a reality."

Why Upsun was the right fit

The move to Upsun was about getting three things right: scaling, security, and expertise. Generalist cloud providers often lack the deep platform knowledge required to move as fast as a growing startup.

"We needed finer scalability, a robust and secure infrastructure we handle health data, that is non-negotiable and above all, genuinely expert support," says Mas.

Upsun’s "NoOps" model allowed them to scale their Symfony CRM alongside WordPress in a centralized, predictable environment without managing the underlying plumbing.

Removing the fear of production risk

The biggest barrier to rapid delivery is the fear of breaking the site. Before Upsun, Goodflair found testing to be a tedious manual process where results rarely matched what would actually happen in production.

Goodflair fixed this by making preview environments a natural reflex.

"Today, in a few clicks, we create a preview environment that is a faithful replica of production same configuration, same services, same data," says Mas. "Each environment is fully isolated tests cannot impact production, and data remains protected. For a company that handles health data, that is far from a minor detail."

Scaling without the operational overhead

By moving to a dedicated application platform, Goodflair has created shorter delivery cycles and a calmer work environment. Stability is a trust issue; a single outage could delay a reimbursement and break a customer promise.

"PaaS, by nature, frees engineering teams from low-value infrastructure tasks," Mas notes. "We ship faster and with greater confidence because environments are reproducible and consistent. Automatic scaling means we no longer have to question capacity at every release."

Advice for technical leaders

The Goodflair team encourages other CTOs to focus on the product rather than the infrastructure. By offloading the "Ops" to a partner that understands high-stakes platforms, teams can maintain their velocity as they grow.

"Moving to PaaS is a structural choice that frees up engineering bandwidth for what truly matters: the product," Mas concludes. "With Upsun in particular, you also get genuinely expert and responsive support. I recommend it to any CTO who wants to build fast and build well, without drowning in ops."

About Goodflair

Goodflair is a French insurtech providing transparent and ultra-fast pet insurance. Based in France, they combine a digital-first experience with human veterinary expertise. They are currently ranked #1 on Trustpilot among French pet insurance providers.