Yeah, so you're getting lied to. There have been a lot of videos over the last couple days of AI creators recommending for you to set up your open claw through VPSes like Hostinger and all these other online services. Basically, every single one of these videos was sponsored.
Some of the creators mentioned the videos were sponsored. A lot of other ones didn't mention they were sponsored, which is very illegal and unethical. Moral issues aside, the advice they're giving you is at best wrong and at worst very dangerous.
In this video, I'm going to go through why Open Claw hosted on virtual private servers is wrong for basically 99% of people and in some situations very dangerous. Then I'll go through the best way to set it up which is more secure, more powerful, in a lot of situations much cheaper even than the $6 plans and a lot of these other services. I'll walk through it all step by step.
So even if you are brand new to OpenClaw, you'll learn how to set this up. And if you're using OpenClaw right now, you'll see why a lot of the advice you're getting online right now is extremely dangerous. Now, let's lock in and get into it.
So, in no particular order, here's what we're going to cover in this video. Why VPS's are bad for 99% of people, and you shouldn't be listening to other people's advice. The better way to set up OpenClaus.
I'll walk through step by step setting this up locally, whether it's on a Mac, Mini, Mac Studio, or a really crappy old laptop. And we'll also go through real quick why you shouldn't trust most people. But before we begin, I just want to shout out our sponsors, Logic and Good Faith.
There are quite literally billions of dollars being thrown around by AI companies right now at creators. The best way to get people onto your services, spending tons of money, is to pay creators with lots of eyes to have them shill your service. Most creators are taking this money.
And there is nothing wrong with that. There is nothing wrong with doing sponsored content. It is one of the best ways to monetize if you are a creator.
The issue is when you start to promote things out of bad faith knowing they're not the best product or service or if you take that sponsorship and then you don't disclose it, which is quite literally illegal, not to mention immoral, unethical, and a whole bunch of other bad things. Over the past few days, almost every big AI creator on YouTube has taken one of these sponsorships. I get all the emails.
I know how much they're getting paid. They're getting paid high five figures for this. And listen, if they truly believe a VPS is the best way to install OpenClaw and they're disclosing it's an advertisement, I have no issue with these people taking their bag.
My problem is when some of these creators know this isn't the best way to set up OpenClaw or they just don't mention that they took the sponsorship. I think these creators are sacrificing the trust they've built with their audience just for a small $30,000 bag, which is crazy because the earning potential in this space is so much more if you just keep the trust with your audience. So, I'm just going to give it to you straight.
I think hosting OpenClaw on a virtual private server is the wrong way to host it. So, first thing I'll do in this video is go through why VPS is the wrong way to do this, why it is potentially more unsafe, why it is worse for 99% of people. I'll go through why local setup is better.
And then right after this, I'll show you exactly how to set this up locally in the easiest, cheapest, most secure way humanly possible. No matter what device you have, you don't even need a Mac Mini. So, here's what the people recommending VPS's are signing you up for.
Number one, it is just significantly harder to set up than local. I've tried it. I've tried them all.
I've tried even the one-click solutions. They are not nearly as easy to set up. Local setups are literally one command.
You just put one command in your terminal. I understand the terminal is scary and is it makes you feel like you're Neo in the matrix and you want nothing to do with it. I get it.
But trust me, it is so easy. You literally just copy, paste it, hit enter, and you're set up. The VPS is not secure by default.
It is incredibly dangerous by default. There are a tremendous amount of tweets just like this going up on X at the moment where people are running scans of these online services, these EC2 instances, all these VPS's and they're finding thousands of these are not secure and anyone can go right now access these online servers and take all your credentials and tokens and everything private to you on them. By default, a majority of these VPS's require highly technical work to make them secure.
You need to set up firewalls and SSH and a whole bunch of other services that for the average person is incredibly technical and complex. They might just be one-click setups, but you're still exposing your OpenClaw to the entire internet unless you know how to set up really complex security. On the other hand, by default, when you set up Open Claw locally on a Mac Mini or a dusty old Lenovo in your closet, it is secure with some caveats, which I'll explain.
By default, so if you install this on a fresh new device, a Mac Mini, a whatever, you can buy a Raspberry Pi for like $75 and you set it up and there's no other apps or programs, then this will be secure by default because your Open Claw is only going to have access to what's on this computer. And if there's nothing else on this computer, then it's not going to be able to touch things that will make it insecure. Also, by default, a lot of these devices, especially Apple's, but also a lot of the Windows devices, they have good firewalls and security set up right out of the box.
No one's going to hack your fresh out of the box Mac Mini. So, by default, when you install it locally on fresh devices, it's secure. Now, the exception is if you're installing it on a device that you've already been using before, you have a whole bunch of accounts on it already.
And maybe you've been downloading and doing things that allow people to access that device externally. Then you are not going to be secure by default. But at its core, for most people who install this on local fresh devices, this is going to be secure by default and won't require a whole bunch of technical work for you to go in and make it secure, which is super important because if you're new to this, which a lot of people using OpenClaw are not very technical in nature, you are putting your entire digital livelihood at risk by putting this on Amazon EC2 or these other hosted services.
Many other reasons why VPS's stink in my opinion. poor integration, right? I have this running right now on a Mac studio.
If I have a video I want my Open Claw to edit, or if I have a photo I wanted to use for a thumbnail, or if I wanted to read some sort of article I have downloaded on my phone, I can hit Airdrop and in literally 2 seconds, my Open Clog can be using that file or whatever I needed to do. That is unbelievably helpful. And especially when you're treating this like an AI employee, the ability to go on your iPhone, on your iPad, on your MacBook Pro, hit a button, drop it any file you want is so, so convenient.
That's just not possible with the VPS. From a usability perspective, it stinks. One of the most amazing parts about OpenClaw, I can give it commands from my phone, then I can sit here and watch it on my computer do the work I asked it to do.
I can see it open browsers. I can see it open different files. It's just on this computer working 24/7 for me.
And that is great usability. If you work in a corporate environment, you know why this is important. You build much better relationships and work much better with employees that are inside your office working right next to you.
The employees that are outsourced halfway across the world. They're much harder to build relationships with and work with and stay on top of what they're doing and track what they're doing. That's the difference between a VPS and having the device local.
When the device is local, you can sit there and communicate with it and see every single thing it does. when it's on a VPS, you don't have great visibility into what's going on. So, the usability perspective is just so much better on a local device.
All of this combined makes the VPS not very powerful and the local environment very powerful. This technology is so good, you want to take full advantage of it. You don't want the labbotomized dumb version of it.
You want the full power. And the only way, in my opinion, to get the full power is using it on a local setup. Now, does that mean you have to go out right now and spend $600 on a Mac Mini?
No, that's not what this means at all. I I am not recommending that. Although, you could and it's a lot of fun and Mac minis are amazing devices and probably the best value for their dollar.
You don't have to. You could go in your closet right now and pick out that old Lenovo PC from college that has that rubber red dot in the middle that makes the mouse move around that's really fun to play with. You can pick that out for free right now and put your open claw on and not spend a dime on this.
Now, there's a couple of reasons why I think people are going out and shilling VPS's and telling you Mac minis are the devil. One, they're either getting paid like we went over at the beginning of this video, right? They're just shilling the opinion of whatever company paid them the most money last, which again is fine if you truly truly believe it, but I'm not sure most people believe it.
Or two, they're just contrarians who absolutely hate when you spend money on corporations. I'm seeing this a ton. I say, "Hey, go out and buy a computer for open client.
Oh, what are you getting paid by Apple? you you popping Apple stock. First of all, no, I'm not getting paid by Apple.
Second of all, Apple, if you want to pay me, that's great because I 100% believe you're the best way to be doing this. First of all, I am not getting paid by Apple. Second of all, I just think there's a lot of people in this world who hate when you recommend you spend money with companies.
They hate when other people are consumers. They hate they for some reason just want to tear down every big company out there. And so when other people say, "Hey, go buy an iPhone.
" They go, "Oh no, buy a $10 Android. " Or they say, "Hey, go buy a Mac. Oh, no.
Spend $5 on the most complex Amazon EC2 setup anyone's ever seen in their lives. They don't care what's best for you. They just don't like to see big corporations win, which is whatever.
But I just do I just think at the moment the best route for people are these local devices. Now, if you're going with a local device like an old dusty Lenovo laptop, I would highly recommend wiping it first, right? So, you make it secure so there's nothing else that can access your Open Claw.
I wouldn't just take an old device and put it on that has a whole bunch of other insecure software on there cuz again that could be dangerous. So if you're using an old device that you've had for a while, make sure to wipe it first. Make sure it doesn't have access to any other accounts and that will make it more secure.
If you want to go Mac Mini, I think it's a great choice. I think it's an incredible device. I think the value you get for $600 is unmatched.
I went even a level higher. I spent I bought two $10,000 Mac Studios. The reason why I did that is I'm running a bunch of local models which unlocked a whole bunch of use cases for me.
If you're interested in seeing those use cases, feel free to subscribe and turn on notifications. Also, if you learned anything so far, make sure to leave a like down below as well. But you don't have to do that.
You don't have to go out and buy Mac Studios. I'm just a power user who is trying to find the limits of this technology. But you can easily get away with much cheaper devices or the old dusty devices in your closet.
And the last pitch I'll give you on why local is so much better than virtual private servers is it is just straight up more fun. It is more fun looking down at your desk, seeing a device there, knowing there's an AI agent working there 24/7, building you cool stuff, doing cool things for you. That is just tremendously more fun than having a little command line interface in a virtual private server in a browser that's just going there moving real slow.
That's not fun. That's not interesting. I truly believe people should be enjoying their tech experiences.
I truly believe you should be having fun with AI. That's why I use AI models that are more fun to talk to than the ones that are robotic and not as fun to talk to. I think it's important to be having fun as you use this technology.
And having local devices is just significantly more fun. And that's not even covering privacy concerns, right? Having your data local on your computer rather than having it in a cloud that anyone can access and giving it to Amazon.
You should have your data local as well. It's just better privacy and security, but that's up to you. So, hopefully by this point I have you convinced to be running this locally.
So, how do you set this up locally? Well, after you've chosen your device, whether it's a Mac Mini, whether it's the dusty Lenovo, whether it's a $75 Raspberry Pi, plug it in, get it set up, and now let's get OpenClaw installed on it. You go to openclaw.
ai. You scroll down. You see this command right here.
You hit copy on that command. By the way, this is so much easier than setting up a VPS. I don't know who started the rumor that setting up VPS's is easier than this, but this is literally just copy and paste and hit enter.
From there, you just open up a terminal if you're on Mac. If you're on Windows, you open up the command line. It's going to look something like this.
You're going to feel like Neo in the Matrix. You're going to feel like you're hacking the future. It's totally cool.
Do not be intimidated. This is super easy. You paste in that command you just copied and you hit enter on here.
Once you do that, it's going to install. You just sit there. It installs everything.
Then it's going to take you through onboarding. Onboarding, again, it's going to feel intimidating, but I promise you this is so simple. All you do is you hit yes, and I understand this is powerful and risky.
You choose quick start, and then it's going to take you to this menu where you're going to choose your AI provider. There's cheap ways to do this. There's expensive ways to do this.
If you want the best, most expensive way to do it, which is what I recommend if you have the money, it'll cost you $200 a month. You go to Anthropic and then you choose Anthropic token. So, subscribe to Anthropic.
I recommend the $200 a month plan. You go to this option right here, and it's going to say, "Run Claude setup token elsewhere. " Then paste the token here.
So, you copy Claude setup token. You paste it in another terminal or command line window. You hit enter.
That's going to ask you to log into your subscription you just set up. It's then going to give you a token, which is a really long string of numbers and letters. What I'd recommend doing is copying and pasting that token into a notepad file.
This is going to allow you to make sure the formatting is correct. So, get rid of all the line breaks and everything so it's just all in one line straight. Then you copy and paste that into here after you hit enter on this and it's going to connect to your Anthropic subscription and boom, you're set up.
If you want a cheaper way to do this, less than $200 a month, you have many different options. The cheapest way is going to be with a subscription through one of these cheaper open-source models. I recommend Kimmy K 2.
5. They have plans you can set up where you're spending like $5 a month. You can get in there.
There's even, from what I'm hearing, people are getting free subscriptions to Kimmy K2. 5 through Nvidia. So, if you Google Nvidia Kimmy K2.
5, you might find a deal that they're running where you can get a subscription for free for a while. So, you can do that as well. So, you can sign up for Moonshot there.
Go through the same subscription setup through this menu. Hit enter on there and you are good to go. And you have a much cheaper version.
might not be as smart or efficient, but it's still going to be good and you get a lot of bang for your buck. After you choose the AI model, you'll have one more menu to choose, and that is which messaging service you want to use. I highly, highly, highly recommend using Telegram as your messaging service.
This is where you're going to be interfacing with your bot. You can choose iMessage, Telegram, Discord, 100 different options for messaging services. Telegram is the best because it has the most customization options.
You can do threading, chunking, whole bunch of other cool things. I'd recommend Telegram. It's also incredibly easy to set up.
It'll walk you through step by step how to do it. You just create a bot in Telegram, which is very easy to do. Once you do that, you have your messaging set up and then you can hatch your Open Claw and you are good to go.
You don't need to choose insecure online VPS's in order to skip the setup I just went through here. Have a little faith in yourself. This doesn't take Albert Einstein to set up.
You can literally set it up in under 45 seconds. I just showed you exactly how to do it. No programming or technical skills necessary and you have it all set up.
And I just want to leave you off on one more note before we go here. I have zero issue with creators monetizing. I have zero issue with creators taking sponsorships.
I think it is maybe the best way for creators to get their bag is through sponsorships. I just think the creator is doing their fans a disservice when they either a shield something they don't actually believe in or b do undisclosed shilling which is highly illegal, immoral and unethical. I fully plan on taking sponsorships at some point in the future.
I've been doing this for a year and a half. I think I've only taken two sponsorships in the last year and a half. The reason why I do that is I only want to talk about products I truly believe in and will truly make life better for my audience.
More valuable than a couple thousand sponsorship is the trust I've built with you and the amount of trust you have in me. If I destroy that trust by taking a $20,000 sponsorship from some VPS and recommend something I know will make your life worse, that trust is gone and that trust is worth way more than whatever money they're paying me. This is not me virtue signaling.
This is me just saying it's all right to take sponsorships. I just if you're a creator, you're coming up, maybe you're making AI content. A lot of people are going out there and making more AI content.
Just make sure when you take sponsorships, you disclose it first of all. And if you want to conserve the trust in your audience, make sure you're shilling something that actually makes their life better. Let me know down in the comments below what OpenClaw subjects you want me to cover next.
I think for the next video, I'm going to go over my top five use cases for OpenClaw that I've set up that have improved my life. Also, leave a like down below if you've learned anything. Make sure to subscribe and turn on notifications.
All I do is make amazing videos about AI. I so appreciate you guys trusting me, spending your time with me, watching my content.
