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Comment by messh | Hacker News Reader

There are plenty of alternatives out there. I built https://shellbox.dev, which gives you instant vms via ssh where unlike exe you pay only for what you use-- scale to zero. It is also regular linux, supporting vscode and zed remote, Nested virtualization, etc.

If you're looking to invest im fine with only $5M :)

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Neat service. Website doesn't provide enough information for me to trust any workloads to it. Not clear where the underlying infrastructure is, what security guarantees I get, etc.

Thanks for the feedback. Ill improve it. In the meanwhile, there are more technical details on this blog post: https://shellbox.dev/blog/race-to-the-bottom.html

I quickly grokked the product and pricing from Exe's website. You need a page with less text, less scrolling and more specifics. Can VMs not autostop? Will an API call to a service on a stopped VM fail at the first attempt? Your pricing formula is simple but I don't want to do the math on my phone. How do payments work exactly (processor)?

Running Shellbox 24/7 is ~25% cheaper than Exe, with 2x storage but 50% of RAM. Exe seems to provide additional features (which I don't need). Not presenting this information upfront and in an easily digestible format makes me suspicious.

I dig the overall aesthetic and may give Shellbox v2 a try.

The other day I vibed a very stable codeserver (vscode in browser) instance with zellij browser mode (console in browser), syncthing (filesyncing), ssh, pi agent and wireguard. No exposed ports, every web frontend is password secured.

I don't want to make that public, it's my way of an isolated dev environment and it runs on my private raspberry behind my tv. Costs me nothing.

I hope you have a good success with your service.

I'm saying this in complete humor... but your comment reminds me of the infamous Dropbox annoucement comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

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