A total cost of ownership breakdown: running OpenClaw on your own VPS versus letting Homard Cloud handle everything.
| Homard Cloud | Self-Hosting | |
|---|---|---|
| Setup & maintenance | ||
| Time to first agent | 2 minutes | 2–6 hours |
| Server provisioning | Automatic | Manual (VPS + SSH) |
| Docker setup | Not needed | Required |
| SSL/TLS certificates | Included | Manual (Let's Encrypt) |
| Auto-updates | ||
| Security patches | Managed | Your responsibility |
| Monitoring & reliability | ||
| Health checks | Automatic | Manual setup |
| Auto-restart on crash | With systemd/supervisor | |
| Log access | Dashboard | SSH + journalctl |
| Usage tracking | Built-in dashboard | DIY or none |
| Uptime monitoring | Included | External service needed |
| Resource alerts | ||
| Features included | ||
| Web chat interface | Build your own | |
| Multi-channel messaging | 7+ channels | Telegram only (default) |
| Browser automation | Managed Chromium | Manual Playwright setup |
| Personality presets | 8+ presets | Manual SOUL.md editing |
| Scheduled tasks (cron) | Dashboard UI | System crontab |
| Cost estimation per model | ||
| Cost breakdown (monthly) | ||
| Hosting | From $9/mo | $5–24/mo (VPS) |
| Monitoring tools | Included | $0–15/mo |
| SSL certificates | Included | Free (manual renewal) |
| Your time (setup) | 5 minutes | 2–6 hours |
| Your time (maintenance/mo) | 0 hours | 1–4 hours |
| Browser deps management | Included | 1–2 hours setup |
A $5/month VPS looks cheap until you factor in the hours spent setting up Docker, configuring Nginx, installing Chromium dependencies, debugging container crashes, and applying security patches. At any reasonable hourly rate, the first month of self-hosting costs more than a full year of Homard Cloud.
When OpenClaw releases a new version, self-hosters must SSH in, pull the new image, check for breaking changes, update configs, and restart. With Homard Cloud, updates are applied automatically with zero downtime via rolling deployments on Kubernetes. Your agent keeps running while the platform upgrades around it.
Running Playwright with Chromium in a container requires 16+ shared libraries, sandbox configuration, and careful resource limits to prevent memory leaks. Most self-hosters skip browser automation entirely because the setup is too painful. On Homard Cloud, it works on every plan from day one.
The default OpenClaw setup gives you Telegram. Adding Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, or web chat requires additional configuration, gateway setup, and ongoing maintenance for each channel. Homard Cloud includes all channels out of the box — connect from the dashboard in a few clicks.
Self-hosting OpenClaw on a VPS costs $5–24/month in server fees but demands 2–6 hours of initial setup and 1–4 hours of monthly maintenance. Homard Cloud starts at $9/month and includes everything: Kubernetes orchestration, auto-updates, multi-channel messaging, browser automation, usage tracking, and a management dashboard. When you value your time at even $20/hour, Homard Cloud pays for itself in the first week.
Deploy your OpenClaw AI agent in 2 minutes. No servers, no Docker, no DevOps.
Starting at $9/month
Get started