The Most Polished Way to Deploy OpenClaw. Still Not a Secretary.

Credit where it is due: SetupOpenClaw, branded as OpenClaw Cloud, is probably the best-designed managed OpenClaw product available right now. German GDPR-compliant servers. A good-looking dashboard with chat, files, terminal, and settings in one place. Fifteen pre-installed skills. A 60-second deploy flow. A dedicated server per user.

If you have decided that running OpenClaw is what you want, SetupOpenClaw is one of the best ways to do it.

There is just one problem: good hosting does not make OpenClaw into a secretary.

After the 60-second deploy, you are still looking at an empty agent that does not know your name, your business, or your clients. The dashboard is polished. The agent is blank.

"The people posting 'my agent built a full app overnight' have spent weeks tuning. The gap between the demo and daily use is real. It's closing fast, but it's still there." — r/openclaw user, 510 upvotes

If you are a real estate agent, consultant, or coach who needs admin handled — not a hosted agent platform to configure — keep reading.

What Is SetupOpenClaw?

SetupOpenClaw is a managed hosting service for OpenClaw, the open-source AI agent framework. Their brand name is "OpenClaw Cloud." They give you a dedicated cloud instance: your own server, your own subdomain (you.openclaw.you), your own data.

You may also know them by their previous names. The company has rebranded twice. They launched as Clawdbot, were asked by Anthropic to change the name, became Moltbot, were asked again, and are now OpenClaw Cloud on the setupopenclaw.com domain. That is not a minor footnote. It shows what platform risk looks like when you build a business on top of open-source projects with active trademark concerns.

Their pricing:

What you get:

• Dedicated server per user (genuinely good for privacy)
• Custom subdomain at openclaw.you
• 15+ pre-installed skills
• Web dashboard: chat, files, terminal, AI settings
• Telegram bot wizard
• Daily backups, 24/7 monitoring
• GDPR compliant, hosted on Hetzner (Germany)
• AI credits to purchase, or bring your own API keys

They are in limited beta with limited daily spots. There is a waitlist.

SetupOpenClaw is a strong product within its category. The UX is better than most competitors. The GDPR compliance is real and relevant for European users. The dashboard is the best in the managed OpenClaw space.

The question is not whether SetupOpenClaw is a good OpenClaw host. It is. The question is whether OpenClaw is the right tool for what you actually need.

Three Rebrands, Same Underlying Problem

Before getting into feature comparisons, it is worth sitting with that rebrand history for a moment.

Clawdbot. Moltbot. OpenClaw Cloud. Three names, same product, because Anthropic objected to trademark proximity each time. The company kept building through each disruption. That is admirable.

But it is also a live example of the risk every managed OpenClaw host carries. The entire business is built on an open-source project whose direction, branding rules, and community norms are controlled by people who are not SetupOpenClaw. If the OpenClaw project changes its license, deprecates an API, gets acquired, or issues another trademark complaint, the host absorbs that impact directly.

This is not a theoretical concern. It has already happened to this company twice.

Cora is a purpose-built product. The AI models, the task logic, the memory system are all built and maintained by Cora's team for one specific use case. There is no upstream project that can pull the rug.

What 60 Seconds Gets You (And What It Does Not)

SetupOpenClaw's headline claim is "Your AI Assistant, Ready in 60 Seconds." That is accurate, in the same way that buying a commercial kitchen is getting "a restaurant ready in an afternoon."

The kitchen is ready. The menu is not written. The staff are not hired. The ingredient suppliers are not arranged.

After your 60-second SetupOpenClaw deploy, you still need to:

1. Configure the agent for your actual work.

OpenClaw out of the box is a blank slate. It does not know your business, your clients, your email conventions, or how you prefer to communicate. One of the most-upvoted guides in the r/openclaw community described the real setup process:

"Out of the box OpenClaw is dumb. It will loop, repeat itself, forget context, and make weird decisions. You need to add guardrails... anti-looping rules, compaction summaries, task checking. The agents that work well are the ones with heavily customised instruction sets." — r/openclaw, 510 upvotes

SetupOpenClaw includes 15+ pre-installed skills, which is a real head start compared to bare-bones hosts. But pre-installed skills still need configuration. Knowing how to do email follow-ups is different from knowing how you do email follow-ups, for your clients, in your voice.

2. Manage memory — or watch context disappear.

OpenClaw's memory management is a known pain point. When the context window fills up, it compacts, and anything not explicitly saved to a file is lost. A community member wrote a 3,000-word guide just about fixing this:

"Session memory dies on compaction. If it's not saved to a file, it's gone. This is the number one mistake new users make." — r/openclaw, 345 upvotes

This requires setting up SQLite databases, vector search, decay classification, and daily file scanning. SetupOpenClaw's dashboard does not change this underlying behavior. It is an OpenClaw problem, not a hosting problem.

3. Pay for LLM costs on top of hosting.

SetupOpenClaw's $19-79/month covers the server. AI model costs are separate. You either purchase credits through them or bring your own API keys.

Real OpenClaw operating costs from community documentation:

• Initial configuration: ~$42 in API tokens (Claude Opus is recommended for setup)
• Monthly ongoing: ~$60/month (carefully optimized, with deliberate model routing)
• Worst case: doom loops can drain your balance overnight without warning

"It got caught in a doom loop once — no matter what I did couldn't stop it from eating credits/tokens from a variety of services. I still have no idea what happened." — r/openclaw user, 361 upvotes

Your real monthly cost on SetupOpenClaw Pro: $39 hosting + $40-80 LLM APIs = $79-119/month, with no ceiling and no predictability.

4. Navigate the skill security ecosystem.

SetupOpenClaw runs GDPR-compliant servers with encrypted dedicated instances. Their infrastructure security is solid.

But you are still running OpenClaw. The security issues live in the OpenClaw layer, not the hosting layer:

• 6 CVEs documented against OpenClaw itself
• 824+ malicious skills in the OpenClaw skill marketplace
• 41.7% of popular skills contain serious vulnerabilities
• CVE-2026-25253: a single malicious link achieves full remote code execution
• ZeroLeaks security score: 2 out of 100

A German server with GDPR compliance does not protect you from a malicious skill installed from the marketplace. That skill runs inside your instance, with access to everything you have connected.

Cora vs SetupOpenClaw: Honest Comparison

Where SetupOpenClaw wins: This is the best-designed managed OpenClaw experience available. If you want OpenClaw, this is how to run it. The dashboard is excellent, the GDPR compliance is real, the 15 pre-installed skills save you time, and dedicated servers mean your data is not shared with other users. For privacy-conscious European users who have committed to OpenClaw, this is a strong option.

Where Cora wins: If you want to send a voice note after a client meeting and get a follow-up email drafted, process a receipt by snapping a photo, or have your inbox triaged every morning, Cora does that now. No configuration, no memory management, no unpredictable API costs, no dashboard to log into. You use WhatsApp, which you are already using.

The Real Cost Comparison

SetupOpenClaw Pro (most popular, realistic solopreneur use):

• Hosting: $39/month = $468/year
• LLM API costs: ~$60/month (optimized) = $720/year
• Initial setup tokens: ~$42
• Time investment: 20-40 hours first month, 2-4 hours/month ongoing
• Total first year: $1,230+ plus 40+ hours of your time

Cora Starter ($49/month):

• Plan: $49/month = $588/year
• LLM costs: included
• Setup time: 3 minutes
• Maintenance: zero
• Total first year: $588 plus 3 minutes of setup

Even if you value your time at $50/hour, those 40+ hours of OpenClaw configuration in month one add $2,000 in opportunity cost. For a consultant billing $150/hour, that is $6,000 in time spent becoming a systems administrator instead of serving clients.

The comparison is not just about dollars. It is about what you are spending those dollars and hours on. SetupOpenClaw's $39/month buys you good infrastructure. Cora's $49/month buys you a secretary that handles your email and receipts from the first message.

Who Should Still Choose SetupOpenClaw

SetupOpenClaw is the right choice if:

• You want the best user experience in the managed OpenClaw market
• You are based in Europe and need GDPR compliance with EU data residency
• You are technical and enjoy configuring AI agents as a project
• You want autonomous agents running 24/7 tasks (web scraping, cron jobs, multi-step workflows)
• You need SSH access, a built-in terminal, and full file management
• You want to bring your own API keys and control every model decision
• You have already invested in OpenClaw and want the best host for it

If you have decided OpenClaw is your platform, SetupOpenClaw is one of the best ways to run it.

Who Should Choose Cora

Cora is built for you if:

• You want admin handled without configuring anything
• Your needs are email, calendar, receipts, meeting notes, and client follow-ups, not custom AI pipelines
• You already work from WhatsApp and do not want to learn a new dashboard
• You want a fixed monthly bill with no API surprises
• Privacy matters to you. Cora uses TEE-based hardware enclaves that prevent even Cora's own team from seeing your data
• You are in Europe and need GDPR compliance but want it without 40 hours of setup
• You want something that works on day one, not after a month of tuning

A Note on Platform Risk

SetupOpenClaw has built something good. But it has been forced to rename itself twice before getting here (Clawdbot, then Moltbot, now OpenClaw Cloud), each time because of trademark pressure from Anthropic related to the OpenClaw project name.

That history is not a knock on the SetupOpenClaw team. It is a structural reality of their business model. Every decision that matters (the project name, the framework, the marketplace, the security posture) is made upstream by a community they do not control.

Cora does not have that dependency. The product, the task logic, the memory system, the privacy architecture are all built and maintained for solopreneurs from the ground up. There is no OpenClaw changelog that breaks Cora. There is no upstream trademark dispute that forces a rebrand. There is no skill marketplace with 824 malicious entries to navigate.

The best-hosted version of OpenClaw is still OpenClaw. The question is whether OpenClaw is what you actually need.

Try Cora Free — 50 Actions, No Credit Card

Start with 50 free actions per month. Forward an email. Snap a receipt. Send a voice note after your next client call.

No server. No skills to configure. No memory management. No API keys. No waitlist.

Just open WhatsApp and say what you need.

Try Cora Free — 50 Actions, No Credit Card

Last updated: February 24, 2026. SetupOpenClaw pricing and features sourced from setupopenclaw.com. OpenClaw community quotes from r/openclaw with post scores noted. Security data from Gartner, ZeroLeaks, Northeastern University research, and the CVE database. Rebrand history sourced from public community records. Cora is a product of Cora AI. This page is maintained for accuracy — if anything is out of date, contact us.