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Comment by dclusin | Hacker News Reader

Thought about doing this. Questions:

-Which VPN server software did you use? -Did build your own custom client wrapper, or did you have people download something like OpenVPN and enter the configuration info themselves

-How many customers did u end up getting? -Was it hard to acquire customers? -Were people more price sensitive or feature sensitive?

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I used OpenVPN. Didn't have enough time to build custom client wrapper. So our customers used some openvpn client, or viscosity.

We had about 400 registred clients, of course not all were active and paying.

Getting paying customer is quite hard. Some people just register. Others register, pay, but do not start using. Some of them use service for 2 months, then leave. After 2 months they come back.

There different requirements, but most of people want super easy install process. But all of them have different network configurations, so even with simple client you will have to spent time helping people to start using service.

My service was low-end, it was 3$/month.

FWIW, that customer churn and on again off again usage pattern might not be anything to do with your service. I use inexpensive VPNs where I can register with an anonymous prepaid credit card and a "throw away" email address - I'll then use the service until the credit runs out and then switch to another inexpensive VPN provider. I think of it as "spreading my needle across as many haystacks as possible".

Probably. But they used the same email. Simply they used service from time to time

How many active users did you have in your peak? And how large was your server to support them?

We had 6 vps in different countries. It was about 20-30 active users, with total number of users - 250.

I also used OpenVPN. We started out by making a wrapper over the OpenVPN client on windows. Hindsight being 20/20, I would recommend for someone starting out with building a VPN provider to start on focusing on building a great infrastructure and not worrying about having your own client applications from the start. Stand on the shoulders of giants, the OpenVPN client(s) are great.

We didn't realize this but in creating this application we sort of inherited all usability problems from OpenVPN, without inheriting their solutions and known workarounds.

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