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PolskiStop Configuring Servers When All You Need Is Someone to Handle Your Email
You heard about OpenClaw. Maybe you saw it on the news when OpenAI hired its creator on February 15, or a friend sent you a link to its 180,000-star GitHub repo. Maybe you watched a YouTube video of someone's AI agent booking flights and writing emails and thought: I want that for my business.
On February 15, 2026, OpenAI announced it had acquired OpenClaw and hired its creator, Peter Steinberger. The project's future is now tied to OpenAI's roadmap, not the open-source community that built it. For the thousands of solopreneurs who adopted OpenClaw for business automation, this raises questions: Will the free version stay free? Will the skill marketplace remain open? Will your self-hosted instance still get security patches?
If you are evaluating OpenClaw alternatives because of the acquisition, you are not alone. Search volume for "OpenClaw alternative" has surged since the announcement.
Then you looked into actually setting it up.
Docker. VPS. SSH keys. API tokens. YAML configuration files. Gateway secrets. Port forwarding. Device pairing. Security audits you have to run yourself.
And if you made it past all of that, you discovered the costs: one OpenClaw user running 10 agents reported a $109 single-day bill just from Anthropic's caching charges. A solo SaaS founder pulled the plug after two weeks, writing on Reddit: "The time I spent on this was in no way proportional to the output I received."
You are not a DevOps engineer. You are a real estate agent or a freelance consultant. You need your receipts processed and your emails followed up on. You do not need a server.
You need a secretary.
The Security Problem Nobody Wants to Talk About
OpenClaw is powerful. It is also, according to the people whose job it is to evaluate these things, dangerous.
Gartner, the world's leading IT research firm, published a report titled "Agentic Productivity Comes With Unacceptable Cybersecurity Risk" and recommended that businesses block OpenClaw immediately.
Northeastern University researchers called it "a privacy nightmare" in an analysis picked up by TechXplore. Their concern: giving an AI agent broad access to your personal data on a server you manage yourself.
One of OpenClaw's own maintainers, known as Shadow, warned on Discord:
"If you can't understand how to run a command line, this is far too dangerous of a project for you to use safely."
The numbers back this up. As of February 2026:
- 6 CVEs (publicly disclosed security vulnerabilities) documented against OpenClaw
- 824+ malicious skills found in OpenClaw's skill marketplace
- 42,000+ exposed instances discovered on public internet scans
- 41.7% of popular skills found to contain serious security vulnerabilities in an independent audit of 2,890+ skills
- CVE-2026-25253 demonstrated that a single malicious link could achieve full remote code execution on any OpenClaw instance, even ones not connected to the internet
This is not theoretical risk. Security firm ZeroLeaks scored OpenClaw 2 out of 100 on their security testing framework.
"But What About Managed Hosting?"
Fair question. Services like ClawCloud ($29-129/mo), MyClaw ($19/mo), EasyClaw ($10+/mo), and Agent37 ($0.99-3.99/mo) promise to handle the infrastructure so you do not have to.
They do simplify the setup. Some get you running in under a minute.
But managed hosting does not solve the underlying problem. You are still running OpenClaw. You are still exposed to:
- The same skill marketplace where 41.7% of popular skills have security vulnerabilities
- The same prompt injection attacks that let malicious websites hijack your agent
- The same LLM costs that surprised that solo founder with a $109/day bill
- The same complexity when something breaks (and in the r/OpenClaw subreddit, things break constantly): token mismatches, Telegram pairing failures, agents "lying" and sending wrong information to customers, models forgetting conversation context
A managed host is still an OpenClaw host. The attack surface does not shrink because someone else runs your Docker container.
What Cora Does Differently
Cora is not OpenClaw with training wheels. It is a different product built for a different person.
Cora is an AI Secretary that lives on WhatsApp. You talk to it the way you would talk to a human assistant. It handles the administrative work that eats your day: email follow-ups, meeting notes, receipt processing, document creation.
| OpenClaw (Self-Hosted) | Managed Hosting (ClawCloud, etc.) | Cora | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Setup time | 2-6 hours (VPS, Docker, SSH, config) | 5-30 minutes | 3 minutes (WhatsApp + Google login) |
| Technical skill required | High (Linux, Docker, networking, security) | Medium (API keys, skill config, debugging) | None |
| Monthly cost | $7-50/mo server + $35-109+/day LLM APIs | $10-129/mo + LLM API costs | $0-199/mo (everything included) |
| Security responsibility | Entirely yours | Shared (host manages infra, you manage skills) | Cora's (TEE-based, privacy-first) |
| Security track record | 6 CVEs, 2/100 ZeroLeaks score, Gartner "unacceptable risk" | Inherits OpenClaw's security model | No CVEs, Trusted Execution Environment |
| Customizability | Unlimited (any LLM, any skill, any integration) | High (most OpenClaw features available) | Opinionated (supported workflows only) |
| Communication channels | Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp (with setup) | Same as self-hosted | |
| What happens when it breaks | You debug Docker logs and JSON configs | You file a support ticket and wait | It does not run code on your infrastructure |
| Voice input | Requires additional skill setup | Varies by provider | Built-in voice-to-notes |
| Who it is for | Developers and technical power users | Technical-adjacent users willing to learn | Solopreneurs who want outcomes, not infrastructure |
OpenClaw Power, Without the OpenClaw Baggage
The idea behind OpenClaw was right: an AI agent that does real work on your behalf. The execution was wrong for 95% of people: servers, terminals, Docker, YAML, security audits.
Cora takes the OpenClaw promise — an AI that actually does things — and delivers it through WhatsApp. No infrastructure. No technical skills. No security nightmares.
Think of it as OpenClaw for everyone:
| What OpenClaw requires | What Cora requires |
|---|---|
| VPS or local server | Your phone |
| Docker + Docker Compose | WhatsApp (already installed) |
| SSH keys and terminal access | Google account login |
| YAML configuration files | A text or voice message |
| API key management | Nothing (included in pricing) |
| Security patching and audits | Nothing (managed for you) |
| 2-6 hours of setup | 3 minutes |
Same outcome: an AI that handles your admin. Different experience entirely.
Where OpenClaw Wins (And We Will Be Honest About It)
OpenClaw is more flexible than Cora. Full stop.
If you are a developer who wants to build a custom AI agent that browses the web, writes code, manages your Kubernetes cluster, and integrates with 15 different services through custom skills, OpenClaw can do that. Cora cannot.
If you want to run local LLMs on your own hardware for zero API cost, OpenClaw supports that. Cora does not.
If you want complete control over every prompt and every model the agent can access, OpenClaw gives you that. Cora is opinionated about its workflows.
The question is not whether OpenClaw is more powerful. It is. The question is whether you need that power, and whether you can safely manage it.
A solo real estate agent who wants their receipts scanned and their follow-up emails drafted does not need Kubernetes integration. They need something that works when they send a photo of a receipt from their phone.
Real Talk From People Who Tried OpenClaw for Business
From the r/OpenClaw subreddit, a solo SaaS founder at $2K MRR after two weeks with OpenClaw:
"Things kept breaking. It straight up lied to me. We went through dozens of restructures of its filesystem. I rebuilt the entire bot from scratch. Ultimately the time I spent on this was in no way proportional to the output I received. OpenClaw single-handedly was the one thing that hurt my margins the most."
An enterprise IT professional after 7 days of debugging:
"It spends more time apologizing to me for failed jobs and forgetting things than helping me."
A non-coder product manager trying to build a one-person business:
"I feel like the barrier is still pretty high for non-programmers."
These are not people who gave up too easily. They are busy professionals who need tools that work, not projects that become a second job.
How Cora Works
- Send a WhatsApp message. "Cora, forward my meeting notes from today to Sarah and schedule a follow-up for Thursday."
- Cora handles it. Email sent. Calendar event created. Confirmation sent back to you on WhatsApp.
- That is it. No Docker. No VPS. No terminal. No API keys. No skill marketplace. No security audits.
Cora connects to Google (Calendar, Gmail, Drive) and WhatsApp. Setup takes 3 minutes. It learns your writing style over time. Your data is processed in a Trusted Execution Environment, not on a VPS you forgot to update.
Pricing That Does Not Surprise You
Cora uses action-based pricing. You pay for what you use, not for servers running idle.
- Free: 50 actions/month. No credit card.
- Starter: $29/month. For solopreneurs getting started.
- Pro: $99/month. For busy professionals.
- Business: $199/month. For high-volume users.
No LLM API bills, no server costs, and no "$109 surprise" on a Tuesday.
Compare that to the real cost of OpenClaw: $7-50/month for a VPS, plus $35-109+/day in LLM API charges, plus the hours you spend configuring and debugging instead of running your business.
Try Cora Free -- 50 Actions, No Credit Card
You do not need 180,000 GitHub stars or Docker. You do not need to understand what a CVE is or why 42,000 OpenClaw instances are exposed to the internet.
You need your receipts processed and your emails followed up on.