How Bricolib runs a national marketplace without a dedicated infrastructure team
Today, Bricolib brings together more than 149,000 members around more than 81,000 tools available across France. The platform also displays more than 10,000 five-star reviews and estimates that 1,500 tonnes of CO₂ have been saved through peer-to-peer tool rental. Over the last six months, this momentum has resulted in a 30% increase in rentals compared with the same period the previous year.
Behind these volumes, the technical challenge is clear: operating a national marketplace with geolocated search, real-time availability, booking, payment, payout to the tool owner and instant messaging, without turning the product team into an infrastructure team.
That is what Bricolib came to Clever Cloud for: a cloud platform able to absorb operational complexity while keeping the team focused on the product.
The main benefit is the time we do not spend on infrastructure.
Jean-Baptiste Le Guennec
Co-founder of Bricolib
A marketplace with no stock, built around proximity
Bricolib starts from a simple observation: many tools sit unused in garages. A drill, carpet cleaner, pressure washer or drywall sander can be expensive to buy, while only being used for a few days.
The platform allows owners to monetise unused equipment, while helping renters find a tool available near them.
A traditional rental company optimises a fleet around its branches; we activate an existing dormant fleet.
Jean-Baptiste Le Guennec
Co-founder of Bricolib
This difference changes the technical equation. Bricolib owns no fleet, has no branches and has no stock to amortise. The supply is already distributed across the country, with private individuals and professionals. The platform’s role is to make that supply visible, accessible and reliable.
Bricolib also stands out through a rental journey designed for this specific use case: availability on a given date, online booking, secure payment, identity verification, insurance for rented equipment and automatic payout to the tool owner. This structure turns a local connection into a trusted transaction.
At Bricolib, proximity is the business value — and the technical constraint
The user promise comes down to one question: what equipment is available, on this date, within this geographic radius?
To answer it, Bricolib has to combine local search, calendar-based availability, tool categories, booking, payment and payout to the tool owner. This is where trust is built: a bug in this flow does not just degrade the experience, it can cost the platform a transaction.
A bug elsewhere is annoying; a bug in that flow costs the platform a transaction and a user’s trust.
Jean-Baptiste Le Guennec
Co-founder of Bricolib
The diversity of use cases adds to this constraint: between August 2025 and August 2026, more than 200 types of tools were rented on Bricolib. This long tail requires efficient search.
Bricolib relies on PostgreSQL to manage data and search, Redis® to reduce the load on frequent queries, and Mercure for instant messaging between tool owners and renters.
The challenge is therefore not simply to host an application. It is to run a transactional marketplace that is local in usage and national in scale.
Rethinking marketplace hosting during the Symfony rebuild
Before Clever Cloud, Bricolib ran on WordPress. The team had no particular criticism of its managed hosting provider. But rebuilding the platform with Symfony raised a new question: which infrastructure should support a national marketplace, containerised with Docker, without a dedicated infrastructure team?
This reflection was also shaped by practical experience. During previous traffic peaks, especially after TV appearances, activity could rise within minutes. For Bricolib, this confirmed the need to adjust resources quickly, without turning every peak into an emergency project.
The need was clear: move from hosting suited to a WordPress website to a PaaS foundation designed for a Symfony application, with managed components and scaling that is easier to control.
That is the context in which Bricolib discovered Clever Cloud, recommended by the Nantes-based agency Grinn.
We wanted a PaaS model, with the infrastructure operated for us, so we could focus our energy on the product rather than server administration.
Pierre Bertaud
Lead Developer at Bricolib
An operational choice strengthened by hosting in France
The central criterion for Bricolib was to find the right balance: being able to scale easily, without having to manage the entire infrastructure.
With Clever Cloud, the team uses a model where infrastructure, database, cache and storage can be operated as managed components. For a marketplace used by more than 149,000 members, this is a structural point: infrastructure must be reliable, but it must not occupy the team day to day.
From a development perspective, Pierre Bertaud summarises what he expects from a cloud partner:
Infrastructure should be a foundation we rely on, not a topic that takes up our time every day.
Pierre Bertaud
Lead Developer at Bricolib
Clever Cloud’s French hosting footprint also strengthened this choice. Bricolib handles user data, contact details, identity verification elements and payments operated through an approved French provider. In this context, hosting in France makes the compliance and trust narrative easier to explain.
It also fits the project’s logic. Bricolib helps equipment circulate between neighbours and supports a local economy. Relying on French infrastructure fits naturally with that logic.
For a small team, proximity also matters: the same time zone, the same language and accessible technical contacts.
A Symfony stack operated with managed components
Today, the core of Bricolib runs on Clever Cloud. The stack is based on PHP / Symfony, served by FrankenPHP, with Docker for containerisation. The web application is deployed in production and staging. A dedicated “hub” instance manages scheduled scripts and instant messaging via Mercure.
Bricolib also uses PostgreSQL with a replica, Redis® for sessions and cache, and S3-compatible object storage for images.
The implementation took place throughout the rebuild. According to the team, it took one to two weeks to understand how Clever Cloud works. The PaaS model then simplified the project: instead of provisioning and configuring servers, the team declared its components, connected them together and integrated deployment into its daily workflow.
A typical deployment is performed via the Clever Cloud CLI. The team launches the deployment from the terminal. Clever Cloud builds the image from the Docker configuration, then brings the application online. Bricolib validates first in staging before promoting to production.
Up to ten deployments per week, without a dedicated infrastructure team
The main benefit can be seen in day-to-day operations.
Bricolib does not administer servers. The team delegates the underlying infrastructure to Clever Cloud, along with PostgreSQL and replica maintenance, Redis®, image storage, backups, component availability and scaling.
On a traditional infrastructure, these topics would have required time and dedicated skills. With Clever Cloud, Bricolib keeps a lean team focused on the product.
Deployment frequency illustrates this change. Bricolib deploys up to ten times per week, in staging or production, without each release becoming an event. This allows the team to ship fixes and improvements continuously.
Scaling follows the same logic. Over the last six months, rental volume increased by 30% compared with the same period the previous year. During activity peaks, Bricolib says scaling takes place without manual intervention from the team.
A traffic peak becomes a matter of adjustment, not a risk of downtime.
Pierre Bertaud
Lead Developer at Bricolib
Support also plays its part. Bricolib has contacted Clever Cloud several times, mainly about backups or the behaviour of certain components. The team highlights fast, technical answers, with few incidents to manage.
In the end, that is the best compliment you can give a hosting provider: you do not contact them often, and when you do, there is someone who understands the topic on the other side.
Pierre Bertaud
Lead Developer at Bricolib
Continuing to densify the service, territory by territory
Bricolib’s next step is to densify supply territory by territory. The more tools are available nearby, the more natural the service becomes for users.
Technically, this trajectory means more traffic, more searches, more bookings, more messages and more data to process. Bricolib wants to support this growth without having to re-architect at every stage.
That is precisely the role the team gives to Clever Cloud: making it possible to adjust resources, rely on managed components and keep operations compatible with a small team.
Bricolib illustrates a common challenge for growing marketplaces: the experience looks simple for the user, but it relies on infrastructure able to absorb proximity, availability, trust, payment and traffic peaks.
From a technical perspective, Pierre Bertaud sums up Clever Cloud in three words:
Simplicity, reliability, peace of mind.
Pierre Bertaud
Lead Developer at Bricolib
