Hostinger OpenClaw, managed or VPS: what you get and what you pay

Which Hostinger OpenClaw you are buying

The two products are easy to mix up. Both are sold as one-click OpenClaw, their starting prices are fifty cents apart, both renew at $11.99 on a two-year term, and both checkouts tick the same model-credit add-on. The managed plan’s page is at hostinger.com/managed-openclaw and its checkout is headed “AI automation apps”, with OpenClaw chosen from a list of four apps. The VPS lives at hostinger.com/applications/openclaw; its checkout is headed with a KVM plan name and asks you to pick a server location, offers a $3 daily-backup add-on and a free domain. Hostinger describes the VPS as having “user-managed updates and server security” and the managed plan as having “no root access”, with security and updates handled for you.

If you buy the managed plan and find you need the VPS, Hostinger offers one free switch from managed to its smallest VPS within 30 days of purchase. Its pages do not say whether your agent’s data comes with it, or offer the switch the other way.

What it costs

The plan covers one app at a time: OpenClaw, Hermes Agent, n8n or Paperclip. Switching to another app does not carry over your settings or conversations, and running two at once takes two plans.

Model usage is bought as credits. The checkout’s “Ready-to-Use AI” add-on is ticked by default at 10 credits for $11.99, with other sizes from 5 credits for $5.99 to 100 for $119.99; untick it and no credits remain in the order. What a credit buys depends on the model: Hostinger’s credit table prices a million output tokens from Claude Sonnet 4.5 at 16.5 credits and from Gemini 3 Flash at 3. OpenClaw’s heartbeat runs every 30 minutes by default and, in Hostinger’s words, consumes credits “even if the agent concludes there’s nothing to do”. When credits run out the agent stops answering until you top up. Hostinger is moving its credits to a new system, Hostinger AI Router, at 100 new credits for each old one; under it a request your balance cannot cover is declined. You can skip credits entirely with your own OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini or xAI key, or sign in with a ChatGPT Plus or Pro subscription.

There is a 30-day money-back guarantee. Credits are not refundable and are deducted from the refund, and a refund cancels the service and deletes its data.

Setting it up

After paying and creating a Hostinger account, setup runs in the Hostinger dashboard. If you skipped the credits, you paste a model key. Then you choose a chat app:

• WhatsApp: scan a QR code from WhatsApp’s Linked Devices screen. This links your own WhatsApp account to the agent.
• Telegram: create a bot with Telegram’s BotFather, paste its token, and open the bot to pair with it.
• Email: a Hostinger Email mailbox you have not yet set up can be connected here (the checkout offers an “Agentic Mail” add-on at $2.49 a month); otherwise you give the agent your mail server details later.

Discord is listed on the product page but, in the setup guide, as “currently under development”; Slack appears in the product page’s FAQ and nowhere in the setup guides. Once the agent is deployed, you open OpenClaw’s own dashboard with an access key the Hostinger dashboard gives you, and say “Hi” to start OpenClaw’s first-run interview.

What Hostinger handles, and what’s left to you

The server is Hostinger’s: you get “a secure, dedicated Docker container”, with no root access and a browser command line confined to that container. Hostinger does not state its processor, memory or base storage; a storage upgrade to 50 GB is sold. heise’s test of the product in May 2026 found no dedicated resources, which it compared to shared hosting, no support for local models such as Ollama, and that installing extra software meant contacting Hostinger.

Updates: Hostinger says it keeps the app “always on the latest stable version” and handles “testing and compatibility”. Its management guide also shows an Update button beside the installed version, and some features name a minimum version, so check that version line now and then. Whether you can stay on a version is not stated.

Backups: the product page says Managed OpenClaw “handles all security, updates, and backups”, but no Hostinger guide for OpenClaw says how often a backup is taken, how long it is kept, or how to restore one. For its managed Hermes, n8n and Paperclip apps, Hostinger documents daily backups kept for seven days with restore and download. Ask before you rely on it. OpenClaw’s own backup command needs only a command line, and Hostinger gives you one inside the container.

When something goes wrong, the dashboard shows the app’s status and live logs, with a button that has an AI read the logs and suggest a fix, which can be an OpenClaw command for you to run in the command line. Restart and Delete are there too; deleting cannot be undone.

The dashboard you manage it from

Hostinger sells web hosting, WordPress, domains, email, VPS servers, a website builder and more, and all of it lives in one dashboard. OpenClaw sits under “AI agents” in its sidebar, and its screens use hosting vocabulary: environment variables, gateway token, logs, rotate key. If you already host a website with Hostinger, it is familiar ground; if you have never used a hosting control panel, this is the part of the product you will spend time in. An optional Hostinger Connector lets the agent read and manage your Hostinger account from chat, including domains, DNS, email and billing, so weigh what you are handing an agent before you switch it on.

Bringing an agent in, or taking it out

Hostinger documents no import of an existing OpenClaw agent and no export. Its pages do not describe getting an openclaw backup create archive out of the container, or restoring one made on another computer. Moving OpenClaw to a new computer covers the move itself, wherever it goes.

If it doesn’t fit

Hostinger’s plan is a low-cost way in if you are happy to pay two years upfront, buy model credits as you go and find your way around a hosting dashboard. If you would rather pay monthly with model usage included up to a cap, so the agent pauses instead of running up a bill, and manage it from pages built for the phone, Everpod gives your agent a private computer of its own at $29 a month. Managed OpenClaw hosting compared puts Hostinger beside eight other hosts.