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Show HN: Serverless VPN, pay as you go, unlimited devices, no subscriptions
- ApolloFortyNine 3y agoKind of interesting idea, but looking at the per gb price, not really sure who this is targeting. 100gb is $4, which is at or more than the monthly price of many vpn companies. So downloading is out of the question, leaving only just web browsing really. Honestly I feel vpns are just kind of like gym memberships, it's not expected for everyone who gets one to use it every day, even though they could.
- hackan 3y agoYeah, the price is huge! I use terabytes of VPN traffic per month...
- WheatMillington 3y agoSurely though you realise that's not typical.
- FinnKuhn 3y agonor the intended customer base. This seems more for someone who needs to use a VPN occasionally, for example to watch a specific movie or VPN back into their home country while on vacation
- KomoD 3y agoEven on vacation it could probably be more than a normal 1 month subscription.
- FinnKuhn 3y agodo you go on vacation every month?
- KomoD 3y agoI never said so? Just dont pay for more than 1 month lol??
- FinnKuhn 3y agoMost of them a subscription services though? When you are using little bandwith every now ans then this service could be the better option. Not saying it is better for every use case, but I can see situations where it is more practical and easier to use (no subscriptions to cancel)
- Crosseye_Jack 3y agoDon't forget the per/hour connected price if you stayed connected 24/7 for 30 days thats $14.40 + BW charges. The only real use case I can foresee this for is for people who might use a VPN for a few hours, a few times a month. With that kind of usage pattern $10 (The min topup value by the look of it) could last you a fair few months so works out cheaper than some of the other mainstream VPN providers who offer a flat fee service.
- gigapotential 3y agoI like your analogy of gym membership to other VPN providers! If I may use analogy to describe UpVPN - its like buying Milk - you pay upfront you bring it home consume it and go to grocery store and buy more. UpVPN is an option in spectrum of VPN providers. Only you can determine based on your usage if this option makes sense for you. What UpVPN does provide (unlimited devices without subscription and your never expiring balance stays if you come back months later) other providers do not. And vice-versa UpVPN for its pricing model does not provide unlimited usage.
- 22c 3y agoThis is the kind of service I would use for travelling (where I'm already on roaming mobile data). I will keep it in mind!
- lxgr 3y ago> Serverless! How? [...] We provision a VPN server on-demand when you connect. You keep using that word...
- gigapotential 3y agoI agree its a misnomer, however appropriate to technically describe whats happening in one word. Its a computing model people recognize .. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serverless_computing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serverless_computing
- GordonS 3y agoBut wouldn't this be more appropriately termed IaaS (infrastructure as a service) than serverless?
- koito17 3y ago...or "on-demand VPN server" in the case of UpVPN. But none of these alternative names market as well as "Severless", so we're stuck with "Serverless" whether we like it or not.
- lxgr 3y agoIt's just a consumer VPN service... as a service! Nobody calls Netflix a "serverless VOD platform" either, or Verizon a "serverless wireless carrier".
- slim 3y agowhy is it important to me as a user, that you provision servers on demand ?
- lxgr 3y agoBut is it even appropriate in this context? To me, "serverless" means "you'd normally be setting up a server yourself in some way (whether low-level and manually, or via a standardized VM or container image orchestration solution), but here you don't have to". As a VPN user (of this type of VPN in any case; corporate VPNs are a different beast), I've never had to set up a server myself – I'm paying to use somebody else's server! In other words, we also don't call Gmail "serverless".
- hackan 3y agoPretty neat idea, but it leaks DNS requests unfortunately: see point 5 "When We Share Information" in [privacy policy](https://upvpn.app/privacy-policy/ https://upvpn.app/privacy-policy/). If they used some sort of disposable or "trustable" DNS server, it would be awesome!
- crisopolis 3y agoInteresting, if they were going to provision a disposable vpn, couldn't they have done the same with the DNS.
- gigapotential 3y agoIf you use the UpVPN app it configures DNS=1.1.1.1 and not configurable yet. However, when you use Web Devices, a configuration file or QR code is generated with DNS=1.1.1.1 but you can change it before using.
- hackan 3y agogreat tip, although this situation should be way clearer than it is...
- beardog 3y ago>We provision a VPN server on-demand when you connect. >We deprovision it when you disconnect. Do you still share an IP address with the other users? One of the main ways a VPN grants privacy is because everyone shares a handful of IPs. There is still demand for dedicated IPs though, because they trigger blocking less. I have a need for a good "residential"/"mobile" proxy/VPN service, but I have yet to see a company that I was confident that they were ethically sourcing the servers.
- KomoD 3y ago> I have a need for a good "residential"/"mobile" proxy/VPN service, but I have yet to see a company that I was confident that they were ethically sourcing the servers. If your willing to manage/self-host it yourself, some ISPs do provide hosting as well, my old ISP provides a VPS at ~$10/mo with a completely clean IP identical to their broadband customers.
- gigapotential 3y agoYes IP address is shared with other users - by pooling users on single server. However, if you find provisioning time to be greater than few seconds then its a good assumption that you're the only one using the server.
- alam2000 3y ago[dead]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- vbezhenar 3y agoJust write simple script. Why this service is needed. Provisioning VPN server is not a rocket science.
- notavalleyman 3y agoI really thought this was a reference to the dropbox showhn - "you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
- anaganisk 3y agoBut in this case it actually is a onliner to spin up a VPN and the relevant mobile/PC client apps are already there. One click deploy scripts are available for digital ocean, AWS, GCP, Azure etc. This OG Dropbox comment was too snarky, for a genuine use case, the solutions in those comments were actually complicated than using Dropbox, while spinning up your own VPN is actually safer and better wrt streaming services etc, not easy but serves the purpose in a safer and better way.
- quickthrower2 3y agoThere are plenty of VPN users “intersect” never used the command line. And maybe a smaller set like me who are geeks but prefer not to manage their own server even from a script. As if using such a script means no problems and you wont be googling for why x y or z isn’t working.
- xen2xen1 3y agoMad haxorz skill?!?! I'm leet!
- hfkwer 3y agoThe ip space is what's valuable about a vpn service.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- r_lee 3y ago$10 per month +$0.05 per connection +$0.02 per hour +$0.04 per GB (I use about 300 GB) So in total: $10 + about $12 + $1.5 (30x connections per day) = $23.5 per month Mullvad is $5. Using the big 3 for a VPN is suicide. You do not want to host a business based on bandwidth on those. A cool tech demo but definitely not viable as a business. Also, why a California LLC?
- codetrotter 3y agoMullvad is awesome, but it’s not even about the price.
- pierat 3y agoBunches I know are fleeing Mullvad due to their 'no port forwarding" policy now in effect. ProtonVPN still allows forwarding and is what quite a few fellow pie-rats are now using. Mullvad is dead.
- codetrotter 3y agoMullvad has a policy of not keeping logs, and they have gone to extreme lengths to implement the technical side of things to ensure that this really is true. Other VPN providers claim to not keep logs and you have to take their word for it. But then whoops it turns out they did keep logs after all. Mullvad is the only VPN provider that puts its money where its mouth is. Swedish police recently tried to raid Mullvad, but the tech ensured there were no logs for them to take https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/21/23692580/mullvad-vpn-raid-sweden-police https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/21/23692580/mullvad-vpn-raid... Meanwhile ProtonMail was legally forced to reveal one of its users IP logs a few months ago. https://www.privacyaffairs.com/protonmail-surrenders-user-logs/ https://www.privacyaffairs.com/protonmail-surrenders-user-lo... What reason is there to believe that Proton will be in a better position to protect their VPN users, than they were at protecting their Mail users?
- protonmail 3y agoIt's important not to confuse the various Proton services. Proton Mail is considered to be a communication service, and in most countries (including Switzerland), communication services are regulated to some extent. Privacy isn't a blank check to break the law with impunity, and all companies need to comply with the local law. That being said, Swiss law is very restrictive, and there are a lot of hurdles that one needs to jump through to get a court order. And even with a court order (and has been proved multiple times in court), there is no way to break Proton Mail's encryption. Privacy is not the same as anonymity, and due to the way the internet works, if anonymity is what you are going after, you have to exercise proper infosec and take preventive measures, such as using Tor or VPN. Under Swiss law, the treatment of VPNs is different. So VPNs can indeed be no-logs. No-logs VPN, is also possible in other countries as well. What makes Switzerland different, and possibly unique, is that within the current Swiss legal framework, Proton VPN also does not have forced logging obligations. So, a no-logs US VPN could for instance, get a NSL (National Security Letter) to start logging particular users, but that's not possible in Switzerland. In addition to that, VPN is mostly impossible for law enforcement to ask for something reasonable, as there's no "identity" for the traffic going out of our server. There's practically no chance of law enforcement to know what account to ask for. Finally, it's worth noting that in October 2021 (after the case you mentioned), Proton won in court against the Swiss government and as a result, email services cannot be considered telecommunications providers, and consequently are not subject to the data retention requirements imposed on telecommunications providers. You can find more details here: https://proton.me/blog/court-strengthens-email-privacy https://proton.me/blog/court-strengthens-email-privacy.
- AnotherGoodName 3y agoFor streaming that doesn't get detected as being via a VPN the only successful way i've found is to use a custom VPN server on an IP no service knows as a known VPN. My home country has TV networks that refuse to work on any of the known VPN providers. They've actually gone to the trouble of IP blocking known exits and the VPNs don't seem to change that often enough. I know enough to buy a lowendbox and set it up as a VPN and use that and it works (provided the host is oddball enough not to be a known datacenter based IP). But i wonder if the above would work better than the more regular VPN providers.
- hnav 3y agoOnce the OP has ramped up their business, they can have a discounted P2P offering where you use each other as exit nodes.
- jandrese 3y ago$10/month is already double what most unlimited VPN providers charge, and then you're putting bandwidth and time costs on top of that? Even worse, for the ultra-premium price you are getting...an AWS IP address. So enjoy your CAPCHAs and service denials from bot detectors.
- avarun 3y agoIt doesn't seem to be per-month. It's just $10 to open an account.
- gigapotential 3y agoOpening account is free. There is no per-month cost. $10 is a prepaid balance you start with (which never expires) and consume by using UpVPN. One you run out of balance say few months down the line - you purchase again.
- jandrese 3y agoIt is very confusing on the website.
- gigapotential 3y agoThank you for your feedback, making a note to improve it.
- KomoD 3y agoTrying to open an account sent me to a stripe invoice.
- boomskats 3y agoI know you're taking a lot of shit from everyone else on this thread, but you should know that your landing page and onboarding experience are absolutely flawless, and that you've just made at least $10.
- gigapotential 3y agoThank you! This is my favorite comment. I love your support! Taking any feedback and criticism is part of being on Hacker News.
- danpalmer 3y agoI feel like this needs a pricing calculator. 3 different pricing axes makes it really hard to know how much you'll use. Perhaps you could present some common use-cases with example prices? If you're avoiding doing that because it should show the pricing to be too high, then perhaps that's something that needs to be worked on. In general pay-as-you-go pricing should be lower for the same outcome than the all-you-can-eat version of the same thing, because you should be able to not pay for the downtime.
- convalescindrey 3y ago> In general pay-as-you-go pricing should be lower for the same outcome than the all-you-can-eat version of the same thing, because you should be able to not pay for the downtime. Could you clarify why this should be true? In the long run, given the costs are the same, then the income of the company also needs to be the same. This means that on average you'd pay the same. Some power-users would pay more with pay-as-you-go, some rarely-users would pay less, since they are cross-subsidizing the power-users in subscription models. I can imagine some dynamics caused by power-users avoiding pay-as-you-go plans, so subscription plans see different usage patterns. But it's not at all obvious to me why this should be cheaper. On the contrary, all those on-demand resources need to exist and there needs to be infra for spin up/down etc, so I'd actually expect higher pricing.
- danpalmer 3y agoFrom the customer perspective there needs to be an advantage to paying by usage. The reason PAYG phone plans exist is to appeal to those who don't need or want everything a monthly contract provides, particularly for budget conscious users. Contracts/bundles/etc appear to charge less because they bundle together things on the assumption that consumption will follow a predictable distribution, however they are actually a mechanism for raising average selling price by giving people more than they need/want/use and charging them more for it. They build in a margin on top of the average, or somewhere above it on that curve. This means the average user is likely paying more than for their share of usage. Sure, from the company's perspective they have to keep the resources around, but that's a scaling and cost-base issue for the company, not the concern of the user, and if the company scales well it shouldn't be much of an issue. Ultimately with this service, the competition is $5/m for effectively unlimited usage. If this service costs the average user $10/m, then only a small fraction at the bottom end of the usage distribution are going to make a saving, and find it a compelling offering, all things being equal in terms of product quality etc. This doesn't apply to everything of course, different industries, product categories, etc, are priced in different ways and have different customer expectations, but it's common and I think it applies here.
- heipei 3y agoThe fact that they have "Falkenstein" as one of the German locations already tells me they're gonna be using Hetzner VPS to provision the VM :P
- jrhizor 3y agoseems very expensive
- KomoD 3y agoMinimum charge, billed by hour and bandwidth, no mention of what provider the ips belong to, no bueno for me. I'd rather just use Mullvad for €5/mo. 12 hours of average usage for me would cost $4 Also: you say "when you end your VPN session, we promptly delete the record from our database that links your session to the specific cloud server", does it also get deleted from the database backups? (assuming you do any)
- stainablesteel 3y agoso now the log policy is up to whoever owns whatever server they use?
- rvwaveren 3y agoI think a lot of people are getting tired of subscriptions everywhere. For the average user, it's not possible to spin up a VPN because of lack of technical knowledge. So, if you are an infrequent VPN user and hate subscriptions, this could be a nice service.
- gigapotential 3y agoI get your "tired of subscription" sentiment, it resonates with lot of us for certain products. Even if someone can spin up VPN server, UpVPN makes it much much quicker and hassle free to do it with one click or one cli command.
- chrisallick 3y agoDoes it work on airplanes and websites that actively detect/deny vpn servers? any ad block features?
- caust1c 3y agoThis couldn't at all be related to the submission 34 days ago talking about building a VPN on Fly.io with Tailscale (or even Headscale) could it? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36064305 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36064305 My take is it's either a very quick copy, or the feds. Perhaps both.
- TechBro8615 3y agoNot everything is connected to HN's sychophantically favorite buzzwords.
- caust1c 3y agoJust saying it happens to have come out of nowhere and their locations are suspiciously similar to Fly's regions.
- TechBro8615 3y agoYou'd have to try the service and test the IP addresses to be sure, but yeah maybe it's running on Fly. Or any other cloud network(s) with servers in those locations, which could be any (or multiple) of them - it's a fairly common set of regions. The reason most cloud providers have overlapping datacenter locations is generally explainable by the fact that they all rent space in the same physical buildings (e.g. an Equinix datacenter), where they peer with each other and classify the building as an "internet exchange point" (IXP). These buildings tend to congregate near each other for historical or geographical reasons, like proximity to the landing terminal of an undersea cable, or inheriting a building from the old DARPA network. It's actually quite annoying how clouds will label their region e.g. "gcp-eu-1," but it's actually just a reference to some rack space that Google rents in the same London Equinix datacenter as AWS and Azure.
- KomoD 3y agoBingo, the website and api itself is hosted on Fly.io at least. ~ ipinfo upvpn.app - IP 213.188.207.130 - Anycast true - City Chicago - Region Illinois - Country United States (US) - Currency USD ($) - Location 41.8500,-87.6500 - Organization AS40509 Fly.io, Inc. - Postal 60666 - Timezone America/Chicago
- shortcake27 3y agoThis is unrelated to the product, but I’m on mobile and I can see your website is using a full-height scrollable container instead of allowing the document to scroll naturally. This causes buggy scrolling and prevents default browser behaviour - the address bar doesn’t collapse and tapping the top of the screen doesn’t scroll to the top of the document.
- gigapotential 3y agoThank you for the feedback!
- lost_tourist 3y agoHow can I pay with this with cash via snail mail?
- cpursley 3y agoJust signed up after spending all day messing with self-hosted Algo & OpenVPN. A real shut up and take my money moment. Very slow and actually quite expensive. However, works well with Wireguard app on iOS!
- gigapotential 3y agoThank you for your feedback. Your comment beautifully describes why upvpn exists: It saves you time and makes it hassle free if you're setting up VPN servers.
- huhtenberg 3y agoThis sure reads like a botnet being resold as a VPN service. In other words, the pitch is suspiciously light on details that actually matter to back their "serverless" claim. The only technical way to parse "serverless" is that their exit nodes are spread over end-user devices. So how did they end up there?
- cpursley 3y agoIf you translate this site & product into Russian, Farsi and Chinese and accept crypto, you're going to a make a lot of money. Those countries activity block the well known commercial VPNs and I'm sure others.
- dns_snek 3y agoWho is this for, exactly? The only way this makes sense, in my eyes, is if you're: 1. Someone who uses VPN very infrequently, likely a couple of times per year while using less than 500GB of traffic, and 2. Someone who doesn't use a VPN to bypass georestrictions, excluding most travelers, and 3. Someone who doesn't mind being classified as a bot That must be an extremely tiny group of people, right? Pricing is outrageous for daily VPN users, while your use of datacenter IPs means it's going to be almost useless for evading georestrictions. Besides, I'm struggling to wrap my head around the concept of a "serverless VPNs". If you're actually spinning up a VPS for each customer then that seems like a very wasteful use of resources for no reason.
- hank_z 3y agoCurious to know how long this VPN can survive in China
- vpnuser 3y agoInteresting - but expensive and limited! This seems to just be a different take on the company that did it first called ValeVPN.com - except they give you unlimited options and also multi-protocols and configuration options - and they work in all the clouds... So how is this better? It is more expensive and more limited? I like the design though...
- maxbutler1 3y agoTrue, the design of UpVPN is quite nice! But JUST the design) The privacy policy of UpVPN worries me.... Although they assert that protecting user privacy and data is a TOP priority, their logging procedures and data retention guidelines raise some red flags. By the way, I highly recommend ValeVPN, which you used as an example, to anyone looking for a trusted VPN service to protect their privacy and improve their online experience. I've been a subscriber for over 4 months now, so I checked it out by myself!
- Michmoor84 3y agoAgree. Also, I don't see the freakin' difference between buying credits or getting a subscription for a VPN. But here's the deal: a subscription seems more damn convenient 'cause you know the exact sum of cash you're gonna shell out, no surprises there. With their fancy credit system, who knows how much extra they'll squeeze outta you? It's like they're playing games with your wallet. I ain't into that. Keep it simple, keep it transparent. That's how I roll.
- JoBarrel97 3y agoAre you able to unlock different geo-restricted services with it?
- Ameliatay32 3y agoI get where you're coming from, but honestly, it feels like VPNs these days are just copying each other. They claim to offer something unique, but in the end, it's all about making money off users.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- nojvek 3y agoI love the no subscription, pay as you go pricing model. Is it a bit expensive than a full month for other providers? yes. I wish they made the data pricing cheaper or included in bundle. Quite hefty if you want to stream a show while roaming.