OpenClaw Hostinger Setup Tutorial - Step by Step

Key Takeaways

Hey, I'm Dan and in this video, I'm going to show you how to set up Open Claw on Hostinger step by step. First, we'll deploy Open Claw to a VPS or a virtual private server. A VPS is basically a computer in the cloud that keeps your assistant online 24/7 and Hostinger makes this really simple with a one-click deploy. After that, we'll connect it to an AI model using an API key, we'll set up a messenger so that you can message your assistant from anywhere and I'll show you how to start adding skills to expand what it can do. By the end of this video, you'll be able to message Open Claw from anywhere and you can start to put it to work. Step one is to sign up for your Hostinger VPS. To get the best deal on your VPS, make sure to sign up using our exclusive partner link in the description down below. That will get you an extra 10% off any Hostinger plan. After clicking that link, you'll join me here on the Open Claw deploy page. The first thing you'll do is to select your VPS plan. Hostinger recommends KVM 2, but you can actually start on KVM 1. I'm going to go ahead and select that here. KVM 1 is enough to get started and you can always upgrade later if you need more resources and this will let you test your setup more affordably. Once you've selected your plan, go ahead and click deploy. On the next page, you'll choose your billing period. I recommend going with either 12 months or 24 months to save the most. You should note that our exclusive link won't give you a discount if you select the one-month plan. Scrolling down the page, you'll see some optional add-ons. For now, I'm going to turn off these credits and then scroll down to the daily auto backup. This is worth considering because if anything breaks in your Open Claw environment, a backup gives you an easy way to roll back, but I'm going to skip this for now to keep the cost down. At the very bottom, you'll choose your server location. The default is usually fine here as Hostinger will select the one with the best latency, but if you want to change this manually, you can. I'll keep mine selected as United States. When you're ready, scroll back up, make sure your exclusive discount is applied and then click continue. On the next page, go ahead and register your Hostinger account using one of these accounts or enter an email address and then a password. Then click register. Next, enter your billing address and then click continue. Then, enter your payment information and then click submit payment. Now that you've signed up for your VPS, you'll land on the Open Claw configuration page once your payment processes. Just as a heads-up, this page changes fairly frequently, so yours may look slightly different than what I have here. But the first thing you should see is your Open Claw gateway token. Go ahead and click the I icon to reveal it, then select it and copy it and then save it somewhere safe like a password manager. Treat this like a password and don't share it with anyone. Next, we need to create an API key with one of the AI models. I've been using Anthropic's Claude lately, but the process is similar for most of these keys. Under the key you want to use, you'll find a link to get that key. So, I'll copy this one, console.anthropic.com, and I'll open that in a new tab. Once you're here, you'll need to sign in or create an account if you don't already have one. I'm going to create an account from scratch so that you can follow along with each step. Here, I'll enter my email and then I'll continue. Here, you may need to enter a verification code sent to that email address or in my case, I was given a sign-in link. So, I'll find that email and then click this link to sign in. I'm going to close the original Claude tab and then I'll enter my full name and a nickname before continuing. I'll choose an individual account and then you'll land here in the Claude console. Before you create your API key, we'll need to enable your billing and add some credits. To do so, come over to the left-hand menu, scroll down and under manage, select limits. Then in this menu, select billing. Then, buy credits. I recommend starting with $40. Here's why. At $5, you're going to be on tier one with Anthropic and the setup process for Open Claw can be token heavy. If you hit that limit while setting up, your bot may stop responding without sending an error message. Even though you can start with as little as $5, I'll be starting with 40 because that automatically moves you up to tier two. That gives you higher limits and makes the setup process a lot smoother. And realistically, if you plan to use Open Claw for a real use case, you should expect to spend those credits anyway. I'll change this to $40. Then I'll enter my billing address and my credit card info and then I'll purchase those credits. Once you've added your credits, now you need to create your API key. If you see this pop-up, you can create it here, but if you don't, let me show you where it is. Under manage, click API keys. That will bring you to API keys in the submenu and we can click this button here to create one. Give your key a name. I'll call mine Open Claw Claude and then I'll click add. Click here to copy that key that appears and save it somewhere safe just like a password. Make sure you copy it now because they're only going to show you this key once. Once you've copied your key, return to your Hostinger tab and paste that into your Anthropic API key field. If you would like to use multiple models, you can repeat that process for other keys. For now, I'm going to continue with just the Claude. I'll scroll down and when you're ready, click deploy. Here, you may get a survey about your VPS. You can answer these questions if you'd like or you can scroll down and click skip. In the Hostinger dashboard, you'll see that we're under Docker manager and projects. So, that's how you can get back to this screen if you're not already there. Your project will start deploying and this can take a few minutes, so just sit tight. When it finishes, you should see a green check mark and the status will say that it's running. Now that your API key is set up and Open Claw is running, let's open the dashboard. On this screen, there's a few useful things next to your Open Claw project. This gateway token button lets you quickly copy your token again. And to open your dashboard, you can use this open link to open your dashboard in a new tab. But let me also quickly show you how to get here if you're coming directly from the Hostinger HPanel homepage. So, if you log in and you're on the homepage, start by clicking VPS and then manage. Docker manager takes you to where we just were, but you can copy the gateway token here and this Open Claw button will get you to the same place. Here's where you'll be prompted to enter your Open Claw gateway token. Click here, paste your token and then click login. That should land you in the chat tab by default, but there's one thing that we should check just to make sure you're connected. Click the overview tab and make sure that you have your gateway token entered. If you don't, enter it here and then click connect. When everything's working, you'll see a green connected status. Now that we've accessed the Open Claw dashboard and we made sure that we're connected, let's go ahead and send a message in the chat. Come back to the chat tab and send a simple message like hello. That will trigger an onboarding process and the goal here is just to give your assistant a foundation. Who it is, who you are and how you want to work together. Open Claw will ask you these questions to get to know you and what you need. Go ahead and answer all of these questions naturally. Once you've given it some information, Open Claw will save everything to a file called soul.md. This is your bot's persistent identity and it will remember all of this in every future conversation. That means that every time you come back, your assistant already knows your preferences, your tone, and your context, so you're never starting from scratch. Now that your identity is configured, let's set up a way to message your assistant from outside of this web dashboard. Right now, you can only talk to Open Claw through this web interface, but the whole point of this tool is that it can live in your pocket. Open Claw supports a number of messaging platforms including WhatsApp, Discord, Slack and more. For this tutorial, I'll show you how to use Telegram because it's one of the easiest to set up with bots and tokens. To get started, I'll instruct it to say, let's set up Telegram. And Open Claw will come back with a set of instructions for you to follow. Your message might look a little different than mine, but the main steps should be about the same. The first thing we need to do is to start a conversation with the Bot Father on Telegram. So, I'll open the Telegram desktop app here and then I'll search here for the Bot Father. Click here to open it and then click start. Then, you can type out to create a new bot or you can select the command from the list here. Then you need to choose a name for your bot. I'll use something like my email, medicsmediadan10. Then you need to choose a username and it must end in bot. So, I'll use medicsmediadan10bot. Once your bot is created, Bot Father will provide you with an API token. Just like the others, we're going to treat this like a password and we're not going to share it. Go ahead and copy this token and then return to your Open Claw dashboard. Following the instructions, I'll paste that in the chat. Then I'll send this message. After a few messages, Open Claw will confirm that Telegram is connected and will restart. Now we just need to start our bot, get a pairing code, and paste that here. So, let's go back to Telegram and click the link here that Bot Father provided to start a conversation with the new bot. Once you've opened that, click start. Once your bot provides a pairing code, copy that code, return to Open Claw, and paste your pairing code into the chat. Then go ahead and send that message. Once you get the success message confirming the pairing, let's go back to Telegram once more and test it out. In Telegram, I'll ask if everything is set up, and I'll send it. And if you're connected correctly, you'll get a response right here in Telegram. Now that you can message your assistant from Telegram, let's talk about skills. Skills are basically plugins that teach your assistant how to do new things. Those could be things like connecting to your Google Workspace, managing your calendar, searching the web, or monitoring your inbox. Without skills, your assistant can chat and answer questions with your AI model, but with skills, it can actually take action. There are two ways to find skills for Open Claw. First, you can browse the official skills marketplace at clawhub.ai. I'll include a link to that in the description below. Or, you can simply ask your bot directly. And because we're set up in Telegram, I can do that right here. I'll type out a message and then send it. Because I've told Open Claw that I'm a content creator, it's even going to pull some ones that are relevant to me right away. And then to install these skills, all you have to do is ask your bot to install it by name. Then it will walk you through every step required to set it up. One quick note before you start installing skills. Because Open Claw is still growing, there are some malicious skills out there. Before installing anything, check the VirusTotal security report on the skills page in clawhub. Your assistant can actually help you review a skill before installing it, so don't hesitate to ask. You can see here that before I even asked it directly, Open Claw is making a call out for the VirusTotal report. And it's always a good idea to get an understanding of what's going to happen before you proceed. Now that you know how to add skills, the last thing I want to show you is where you can manage your snapshots. Because Open Claw can actually reconfigure its server environment, and occasionally things can break. Let's first return to Hostinger, and under VPS, choose manage, and then backups and monitoring on the left side menu. If you didn't choose daily backups when you first signed up, you'll notice a banner at the top offering to upgrade here for $3 a month. This is the same option I skipped during the initial setup to keep the cost down, because you can always upgrade here if you want that added protection at any time. By default, you're on a weekly backup schedule, which you can see at the bottom of this section. If you're going to make a big change in your setup though, I'd recommend taking a manual snapshot first. To do that, scroll down to the snapshot section, and then click create snapshot. This captures the current state of your entire VPS, including files, configuration, and system settings. If anything breaks after a change, you can restore right back to this point. So, I'll click create. After a few moments, you'll see your snapshot created. It will show the created date, the expiration date, and the time to restore. When you want to restore, just click this button right here. Now, if you ever want to start completely from scratch, you can do that, too. Over on the left, return to Docker Manager, then click the three dots next to your Open Claw project, and click delete. Confirm the deletion here. Once that's deleted, if you want to spin up a new Open Claw project, click catalog over on the left, then search for Open Claw. Select it, and that will bring you right back to a similar onboarding flow that we went through at the very beginning of the video. Just keep in mind that redeploying will generate a brand new Open Claw gateway token. So, make sure you save this like we've done before. And that's all there is to it. Now you have your own Open Claw assistant running on Hostinger, and it's ready to message from anywhere. If you've only been following along so far, and you haven't signed up for your Hostinger VPS yet, make sure to use the first link in the description. That link applies our exclusive discount and gives you an extra 10% off any Hostinger plan. Thanks for watching, and best of luck with your new assistant.