[a254613e]

Perhaps I'm missing something from the home page, but which additional features does it offer exactly? Automatic system updates, which is possible to do with just normal linux distributions anyway?

I mean it says "MoonHome is not a browser-based cloud IDE. You get full access to a remote server over SSH.". So you get ssh access, just like you would with a VPS.

All I see on the main page as far as technical functionality goes is just VPS features phrased differently.

[blunte]

From what I've read on the main page plus some of the documentation pages is that it gives you

- preconfigured dev environment with some tools already installed (using asdf, which is easy to add more tools with)

- preconfigured firewall (which of course is easy to do yourself, but it's done already)

- instructions on how to do some of the ssh tunneling things necessary to connect your local apps/tools with the remote ones

- "managed" OS (kept updated for you)

- support, someone to ask for help if you're stuck trying to do something

None of these are particularly difficult to do on your own, but this just packages them all into a service.

If you roll your own with a VPS, then you do have some setup to do if you want to harden and configure it. Then you have to choose/use a tool to manage that configuration so you can spin up and blow away an instance on demand.

It may be some (a lot?) more expensive than a bare, plain VPS, but perhaps the it is worth 10-20$/mo for a dev who wants to travel light (cheap laptop/chromebook) and have one less thing to worry about.

[freemint]

It is awesome that you parsed all that out. I wish those were advertised on the front page clearer instead of Hetzner Clouds server pricing structure for a higher price (I would say some upcharge like at most almost double) with a little bit misleading pricing. I was mislead for 5 min. Maybe a switch over the table between X hours per month and 24/7 could make that clear.

Also scouring many cloud providers and finding the most performance per dollar one is also a service the person provided once. If they will always to try to get the best deal for their customers, let them know that.

I am not sure how many of those features could be implemented by just a docker container or something similar.

> If you roll your own with a VPS, then you do have some setup to do if you want to harden and configure it.

I actually considered doing something similar using Hetzners cloud API once. An end point for distributed computing and Hetzner was place that seemed to cheapest performance/dollar with hourly billing. [1]

[1] https://github.com/freemin7/discount-cloud-geekbench-5