Page 2 – Deciding where to host your VPN Server

Okay, You’ve Convinced Me – What Now?

I’m going to show you how to set up your own personal VPN server for free or dirt cheap. The first step is to secure a place to host your server. The two top choices, from my experience, are Amazon EC2 or DigitalOcean. Both of these have pros and cons, however.

Benefits of Amazon EC2

If you’ve never used it before, it’s free for your first year.
Netflix works with it, in most cases.

Pitfalls of Amazon EC2

You only get 750 hours of usage and 15GB of bandwidth with the free tier. The hours might be fine if you’re only using a single device, and you don’t use the VPN from home. However, if you download large files, have multiple devices connecting through the VPN, or use it from home, you’ll burn through that in a matter of days.

The Ups of DigitalOcean

For $5 per month, you get 1TB of bandwidth and unlimited hours.
It’s slightly easier to set up than with Amazon EC2.

The Downs of DigitalOcean

You won’t be able to stream Netflix.

So, once you’ve decided which is your favorite option, go ahead and sign up for that choice. If you’ve decided on Amazon EC2, here’s what you’ll need to do to get everything ready for Algo, our VPN server.

Proceed at your own risk. The next steps do require some basic UNIX familiarity, even though they’re easy to follow.

Visit the Amazon Web Services page and create a free account. If you already have an Amazon account, you can link the two.
When you’re logged in, click Services > IAM in the Security, Identity, & Compliance tab.
Click the Users tab, on the left
Click Add User
Create your user name, and then check the box beside Programmatic Access. Once done, click Next.
Click Attach existing policies directly.
Type “admin” to search through the policies, looking for one called AdministratorAccess. Click the checkbox next to it, then Next.
On the last screen, click on the Download CSV button. You’ll be downloading a file that includes numbers and access keys required when you set up Algo. Finally, you can click Close, and you’ll be good to go.

What If I Picked DigitalOcean?

If you decided to go with DigitalOcean, just visit their pricing web page and sign up for the $5/month account. There’s no need to create a Droplet there; Algo will do that automatically.

Up next: Downloading and Configuring Algo

8 thoughts on “Set Up Your Own VPN Server in the Cloud for Free or Cheap”

You made a bit of an error. Earlier, you said you said No to whether you wanted the CA certificate retained, but at the end you said that you could update users—using a method that requires the CA certificate to be retained.

Thanks! Set up my own vpn server.

Thanks, Jamie! We all do our best 😀

I’m really enjoying your articles, Jeff (and Melissa, and Bob etc.). Great user-ccentric technical articles are something I’ve really missed as they’ve become less common on most Apple sites these days. This is something I really appreciate about TMO.

It’s what I do, Ducky. It’s what I do 🙂

Interesting. Thanks

@geoduck: I have good news for you! DigitalOcean has data centers in other regions than the US. Specifically, they have data centers in Amsterdam, Singapore, London, Frankfurt, Toronto, and Bangalore. Installation is so simple that you can destroy your existing droplet and create a new one in a matter of minutes, so changing locations from day to day isn’t too strenuous.

The one issue with this is the location of the server. I’m specifically looking for a server outside of the US, and other Five-Eyes countries. I like existing services because I can run my Mac through Germany, one day, the Netherlands the next and have my phone going through Singapore. If my personal VPN server is set up in the US, then it’s a fixed target in a vulnerable location.