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Ask HN: What is it like to run a VPN as a business?

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Re: Ask HN: What is it like to run a VPN as a business?

#31

Post by rsync »

mtmail wrote: post #12
todd3834 wrote: post #8

The fact that it is easy to set up a VPN does make this more competitive but that doesn’t mean you can’t build a business. Think about who your customers will be. Is there an underserved niche that you can reach? It might take a HN reader 10 minutes to set up a VPN but my mom wouldn’t be able to figure it out if you gave her 10 months. My battle plan for assessing whether or not I would pursued this would be the foll…

Adding an example of a niche: Those who wish to crawl Google/Bing/Amazon/Youtube results for SEO analysis around the world. You'd write a wrapper or other positive list of domains allowed through the proxy.

One very interesting niche that I recently learned about was providing a VPN with a "residential" IP block that could be used to geo-shift netflix viewing:

https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/138668/vps-for-us-netf...

Apparently there are a lot of people who would like to watch "US Netflix" but cannot do so from their location.

Re: Ask HN: What is it like to run a VPN as a business?

#32

Post by icebraining »

qrbLPHiKpiux wrote: post #4
cube00 wrote: post #2

The problem is that just like you're able to quickly run up a VPN on a cloud provider, I can do the same. There are plenty of drop in containers for this now and the barrier for entry is low. I think you're just opening yourself up for a world of legal pain and costs given what most people will use VPN services for.

Your saying that if you use a VPN you are up to something nefarious?

No, that's not what cube00 said. The HN guidelines ask you to assume good faith and eschew flamebait, please do so.

Re: Ask HN: What is it like to run a VPN as a business?

#33

Post by SiqingYu »

VPN has a vast potential market in China, which has blocked most providers. I've used ExpressVPN for two years, and its connection is not always stable. I've also used the Lantern proxy with a premium account for a year. Somehow it didn't work most of the time. Maybe you can use more advanced technology and networking infrastructure to provide better service to such areas.

Re: Ask HN: What is it like to run a VPN as a business?

#34

Post by FireBeyond »

Your best bet, from an ideological perspective, is NOT a cloud hosting provider or a dedicated host, but buy rack space, and put your own servers in.

Control access to the machine/s.

This is more expensive, and not foolproof. But other hosting providers have so much access to track or log things, even if you don't want them to.

Re: Ask HN: What is it like to run a VPN as a business?

#36

Post by mv4 »

maltalex wrote: post #20
mv4 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been looking for something like this, thank you. Do you mind sharing what type of hosting you use, and what kind of VPN traffic it supports?

If you're interested in setting up your own VPN, take a look at streisand [0]. Also, running the VPN in a docker container is rather nice. There are a bunch of existing containers for that[1]. Oh, and if you're interested, Aruba Cloud [2] offers a 1 Core, 1GB ram VM in CZ and IT for 1 Euro/month. It comes with more than enough bandwidth for personal use. [0]: https://github.com/hwdsl2/docker-ipsec-vpn-server [1]: htt…

awesome, thank you.

Re: Ask HN: What is it like to run a VPN as a business?

#37

Post by chefkoch »

Klathmon wrote: post #25
CraneWorm wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how much information about your users are you going to collect Not collecting any data would be the obvious choice.

Which isn't legal in many parts of the world, especially if you take any kind of payment for your services.

If you don't collect data you can't give it to the authorities.

Re: Ask HN: What is it like to run a VPN as a business?

#38

Post by geofft »

One possible option is to sell VPN service to friends/family/acquaintances, for a price that is (clearly to them) cheaper than comparable commercial VPNs, in exchange for a promise to not do anything that would get you in legal trouble. You can trust the promise more than you could trust standard terms-of-service because you know them, and hopefully the lower price means they see it as you offering them something as a convenience from your side project instead of a "real" business and the problems of doing business with friends don't apply as much.

Re: Ask HN: What is it like to run a VPN as a business?

#39

Post by robben1234 »

rsync wrote: post #31
mtmail wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adding an example of a niche: Those who wish to crawl Google/Bing/Amazon/Youtube results for SEO analysis around the world. You'd write a wrapper or other positive list of domains allowed through the proxy.

One very interesting niche that I recently learned about was providing a VPN with a "residential" IP block that could be used to geo-shift netflix viewing: https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/138668/vps-for-us-netf... Apparently there are a lot of people who would like to watch "US Netflix" but cannot do so from their location.

It's the main usage of VPN (as well as region locked mmos) for those who are not doing it for security.

Re: Ask HN: What is it like to run a VPN as a business?

#40

Post by throwawaymath »

wild_preference wrote: post #35

One of my "favorite" evil business models is Hola VPN ( https://hola.org ), a free browser VPN extension. Hola VPN users unknowingly become exit nodes for residential IP address proxies for sale at https://luminati.io .

While this is correct and worthy of discussion, technically it doesn't really have anything to do with what the OP is asking. The way Hola/Luminati works is not a good template for understanding the VPN cottage industry more generally.
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