It started with a simple task: spin up a server to host a small API.
I had done this dozens of times before. Purchase a VPS, generate SSH keys, configure the firewall, set up a reverse proxy, point the DNS, wait for SSL certificates to propagate. The usual routine. But that afternoon, as I sat there waiting for yet another DNS change to take effect, I realized something that had been nagging at me for years.
This is absurd.
The 60-Minute Tax
Every time a developer needs to deploy something—anything—to the cloud, they pay what I call the "60-minute tax." It's the hour (or more) spent on infrastructure setup instead of actually building things.
Here's what that typically looks like:
- 15 minutes purchasing and provisioning a virtual machine
- 10 minutes generating and securely storing SSH keys
- 5 minutes connecting via SSH and updating packages
- 5 minutes installing your runtime (Node, Python, whatever)
- 7 minutes configuring firewall rules and security groups
- 10 minutes setting up a reverse proxy with authentication
- 4 minutes configuring DNS records
- 4 minutes debugging why nothing works the first time
That's an hour gone. And if you're not deeply familiar with Linux administration, you can multiply those numbers by five or ten.
What Developers Actually Want
After talking to dozens of developers and reflecting on my own experience, I realized what we actually want is surprisingly simple:
- A running server that we can reach from anywhere
- Authentication so not everyone on the internet can access it
- A subdomain that points to our server
- HTTPS without thinking about certificates
That's it. We don't want to become DevOps engineers. We don't want to learn the intricacies of iptables or nginx configuration. We just want to deploy our code and move on.
The Gap in Existing Solutions
There are plenty of options out there, but they all have tradeoffs:
Platform-as-a-Service (Heroku, Railway, Render): Great for specific use cases, but you're locked into their ecosystem. Need to run something slightly unconventional? Good luck.
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (AWS, GCP, or other providers): Maximum flexibility, but you're back to the 60-minute tax. Every. Single. Time.
Container platforms (Kubernetes, Docker Swarm): Powerful, but now you need to learn an entirely new paradigm. The complexity overhead is real.
What was missing was something in between. Something that gives you a real server—with full control—but handles all the boring setup automatically.
How Clawdy Bridges That Gap
That's why we built Clawdy.
The core idea is simple: you should be able to go from "I need a server" to "I have a working server" in under a minute. Not an hour. Not thirty minutes. Under sixty seconds.
Here's how it works:
- Choose your server configuration (size and region)
- Select your access method (HTTP proxy, WebSocket—SSH tunneling coming soon)
- Deploy
That's it. Behind the scenes, Clawdy provisions the server, configures authentication, sets up the proxy, and gives you a subdomain. All the pieces you'd normally spend an hour configuring are handled automatically.
But here's what makes it different from a traditional PaaS: you get a real server. Full SSH access if you want it. Install whatever you need. Run any workload. The authentication proxy sits in front, but the server is yours.
Who This Is For
Clawdy isn't trying to replace every deployment solution. It's specifically built for:
- Side projects that need more than a serverless function but don't warrant a full infrastructure setup
- Development environments where you need a real server to test against
- Internal tools that need to be accessible to your team but not the public internet
- AI assistants and agents that need persistent compute with authenticated access
- Quick experiments where you want to try something without committing to infrastructure
If you're running a production system at scale, you probably need something more sophisticated. But for the 90% of cases where you just need a server that works, Clawdy gets you there fast.
What's Next
We're just getting started. Our roadmap includes:
- More cloud providers (Google Cloud, DigitalOcean)
- SSH tunneling for direct access
- Team management and shared infrastructure
- Custom domains with automatic SSL
- Usage-based billing so you only pay for what you use
The goal is to make infrastructure deployment so fast and painless that it becomes invisible. You think about what you want to build, not how to deploy it.
Try It Yourself
We built Clawdy because we were tired of paying the 60-minute tax. If you've ever felt that frustration—staring at a terminal, waiting for DNS to propagate, wondering why your nginx config isn't working—give Clawdy a try.
Your time is better spent building things that matter.
Have questions or feedback? Reach out at hey@clawdy.app. We'd love to hear from you.