Set Up OpenClaw on a VPS in Minutes.
And Build a Telegram Stock Tracker.

Key Takeaways

You do not need a Mac mini to run OpenClaw. A cheap Hostinger VPS handles it, and the whole setup, from sign-up to a working Telegram stock tracker, takes about an hour.

The setup in plain steps:

• Skip the Mac mini. Apple jacked the price from $499 to $699 once OpenClaw blew up, and stock is three to four weeks out. A Hostinger VPS at $8.99/month does the same job. If something breaks, delete it and redeploy from a backup in minutes.
• One-click OpenClaw deploy. Inside your Hostinger Docker manager, click One-Click Deploy, pick OpenClaw, copy the gateway token Hostinger shows you (you need it to log in), paste in your Anthropic or OpenAI API key, and click deploy. Takes one to two minutes.
• Keep API keys out of the chat. Add your Telegram bot token, Alpha Vantage key, and any LLM keys as environment variables inside Hostinger's Docker manager, not pasted into OpenClaw itself. If OpenClaw ever gets compromised, your keys aren't sitting inside it.
• Pair Telegram in three pieces. Create the bot in BotFather with /newbot (the name must end in _bot). Add the access token as an environment variable named telegram_bot_token. Then copy the pairing message Telegram gives you into OpenClaw and let it figure the rest out.
• Then just describe the app. “Build me a stock portfolio tracker that pings my Telegram at 9 a.m. and ten minutes after market close, and lets me ask for an update any time with /portfolio.” OpenClaw wires up Alpha Vantage, stores your cost basis, and you're done in about three minutes.

One honest caveat: this default setup is not particularly secure. There's a separate hardening pass worth doing before you trust it with anything sensitive. Topic for another video.

Frequently Asked Questions

Full Video Transcript

Transcript of "I Set Up OpenClaw on a VPS in Minutes (and Built a Telegram Stock Tracker)" by John Elder

Introduction: Skip the Mac Mini Jump to video

What's going on, guys? In this video we're going to set up OpenClaw from scratch, and then we're going to create a stock portfolio tracking app that messages us every day at a certain time to tell us how our stocks are doing.

Before we get into it, I want to spend just a second talking about how to begin with OpenClaw. There's a lot of nonsense on the internet about OpenClaw, and the biggest piece of nonsense is that you need a Mac mini to run it. That's the strangest thing I've ever heard. There's absolutely no reason to use a Mac mini for your OpenClaw.

If we head over to apple.com really quick, the Mac mini is $700 now. It used to be $499 before OpenClaw came around. Everyone went crazy, said you needed one to run OpenClaw, and people went out and bought every single one that exists. You can't even get them anymore. So they jacked the price up from $499 to $699, and if you actually try to buy one it ships in three to four weeks. You have to wait a month to get it. I live in Las Vegas, we've got like a dozen Apple stores, and not one of them has a Mac mini in stock. Available June 15th, today is May 13th. That's over a month away.

Don't fall for this trap. You do not need a Mac mini. We're going to set this up using a VPS, wholly online, completely cloud-based. And honestly it's a better alternative, because if you run OpenClaw on an actual computer and something goes wrong, you could lose that entire computer. There's all sorts of horror stories. If you're hosting it on a cheap VPS and something goes wrong, you just delete it and restart from a backup in minutes. Everything is perfectly fine.

Setting Up Hostinger Jump to video

The service we're going to use today is Hostinger. If you go to hostinger.com/johnelder10 it'll take you straight to the VPS sign-up page for $8.99 a month, and you can get it even cheaper using my coupon code.

You can pick 24 months, 12 months, or 1 month. The best value is 24 months. It's normally $651. Pop in coupon code JOHNELDER10 and apply it, and you're at $194 for two years of OpenClaw. That's much less than $700 for a Mac mini. Or you could do 12 months, that's $107 with the coupon. Just one month is $13.99.

One thing to note, this $6 add-on is checked by default. That's Nexus AI tokens. If you don't already have an API account somewhere, I recommend you keep it, because it gives you access to a bunch of LLM models for $5.99. That gets you five credits, which will last long enough to get OpenClaw set up. I already have my own keys, so I uncheck it.

After you sign up and pay, you'll land in your Hostinger account. You should see a banner up top saying you need to set up your VPS. Click that, choose your location (I picked Phoenix, US, the closest one to me), and it provisions the VPS. Here's mine. Click Manage, go into your Docker manager, and that's where we set up OpenClaw.

One-Click Deploy OpenClaw Jump to video

Inside the Docker manager, click One-Click Deploy. There's all sorts of things you can spin up in here. We just want OpenClaw, so scroll down and click Select.

Now this is very important: click the little eyeball icon and copy this gateway token. You'll need it to log in. Save it somewhere, paste it somewhere safe. I've got a notepad off-screen where I'm pasting mine.

If you want to use Anthropic's Opus, Haiku, or Sonnet, or OpenAI's GPT models, or Gemini, or X, or anything else, you can add the API keys right here. There's also a slot for a Telegram bot token, but we'll cover that in a minute. I'm going to pop in my Anthropic key and click Deploy.

It says 5 to 10 minutes in the documentation, but it usually takes 1 to 2. And this is really nice, because if you screw something up you can just delete this and redeploy in seconds. You don't have to worry about it.

If you bought the Nexus AI credits at checkout, they show up here too. That's helpful if you don't have your own API keys paid for somewhere else, but you do need some sort of LLM, OpenClaw won't do anything without one.

Okay, about a minute later, boom, it's running. If you ever log out and back in, just come down here, click Manage, click your Docker manager, and you'll see OpenClaw right there. You can open it from there or from the overview page, there's an OpenClaw button. Click that, paste in the gateway token you saved, and log in.

Here we are. We're in OpenClaw. Up at the top it shows I'm using the default $5 credits, but I can also select my Claude key, or any of the credits I purchased. So I'm going to go ahead and just say "Hello." That's what you want to do right when you first start, because it kicks off a little internal script that configures OpenClaw. It asks who you are and who it is.

I just say: my name is John, you can call me J, I'm in Pacific time, I live in Las Vegas. Your name is Zero, you're an AI assistant, your vibe is warm and chatty, no signature emoji. Nothing magic in there, no special prompts. Just set some ground rules, pick some names. It updated my user.md with my info and identity.md with its name. We're good to go.

Setting Up Telegram Jump to video

After OpenClaw is up, one of the first things you'll want to do is figure out a way to talk to it from your phone. You can always do it right here in your web browser, but the nice thing is you can wire it up to Telegram or Discord. Let's set up Telegram.

And by the way, I'm using voice-to-text the whole time. I'm not typing any of this, just talking into it.

Over in Telegram, search for BotFather. You want the one with the verified badge. Click on it, hit Start. We're going to create a bot.

Head back to OpenClaw. It'll give you instructions. It asks: do you already have a Telegram bot token from BotFather? If you don't and you want it to walk you through, say no, I don't, walk me through it. It tells you to do /newbot in BotFather. Important: it then says paste your token here. Don't do that. I'll show you the right way.

Back in BotFather, send /newbot. It asks for a name for your bot. I'm going to call mine Zero. Then it wants the actual bot handle, which has to end in bot and has to be unique. I tried zclaw1_bot, taken. I tried zzclaw_41_bot, taken. Eventually I land on a unique one. As long as it ends in bot you're fine.

Congratulations, you have a new bot. BotFather gives you a link to open it, but what you want is the access token. Click it to copy.

Now don't paste it into OpenClaw. Go back to Hostinger, back to the Docker manager, click Manage on your OpenClaw. Down at the bottom you'll see an Environment section. Click into it, add a new variable named telegram_bot_token, paste the token as the value, and click Save and Deploy. That respins your OpenClaw with the new variable.

What we just did is store the bot token as an environment variable in Hostinger, not inside OpenClaw. If OpenClaw ever gets hacked, your API keys aren't sitting in there to be stolen. They're safe on Hostinger's secured infrastructure. If you were running this on a Mac mini and somebody got control of it, they'd have all your tokens. Here you're insulated.

OpenClaw redeploys, and we're back. I tell it: I added the bot token to your environment variables, find it there. It'll also ask whether to pair the bot or use an allow list. We'll just pair.

Then go back to your bot link in Telegram and click Start. It'll respond with a pairing message that says OpenClaw access not configured, plus your Telegram user ID and a pairing code. Highlight the whole thing, copy it, paste it back into OpenClaw, and hit enter. OpenClaw figures it out. It restarts again, then approves the Telegram bot sender.

Now type "hello" in OpenClaw, and if everything worked, OpenClaw should reply through Telegram. First time usually takes a couple seconds. Boom: "Hey J, Telegram's working. Want to set anything up next?" Very cool.

From now on, whether you're on your phone or in the OpenClaw web UI, you can chat with your agent and the two stay mirrored. Whatever happens in one place shows up in the other.

Quick note before we move on: this default setup is not particularly secure. There's a whole list of things you can do to lock it down, and that's a topic for another video. Just wanted to mention it.

Build a Stock Portfolio Tracker App Jump to video

Let's spend a couple minutes building a quick app you can actually use, a stock portfolio tracker. I want to give OpenClaw my stock portfolio and what I paid for each position, and have it message my Telegram every morning at 9 a.m. with the current value, how much I'm up over time, and anything else useful. I also want a second message ten minutes after the market closes as a wrap-up. And I want to be able to ask it on demand any time of the day, either from the web UI or from Telegram, what my portfolio is doing.

So I tell OpenClaw exactly that. Build a stock portfolio tracking app where I give you the stocks I own, the share counts, and the original prices I bought them at. Save those. Every morning at 9 a.m. my time, send a Telegram with the current values. Do the same thing ten minutes after market close. And let me query it any time with a /portfolio command from Telegram. Find a free stock API like Alpha Vantage that we can use for prices.

While OpenClaw is thinking, I give it my holdings: 100 shares of Google at $159 each, 200 shares of Amazon at $114, and 400 shares of SCHG at $18. Remember those as the historic cost basis to compare against.

It's already done. It picked Alpha Vantage, which has a free tier. I already have an account there. If you don't, you just ask OpenClaw how to get one and it'll walk you through it. Go to alphavantage.co, enter your email, fill out a short form, and you get a free key.

I copy my key, head back to Hostinger Docker manager, and just like with the bot token I add another environment variable for the Alpha Vantage key. Save and deploy. Heads up: every time you save an environment variable, the server restarts. Don't do it while OpenClaw is in the middle of writing your app.

While that's redeploying, a quick aside: there are all sorts of ways to optimize this with different LLMs. OpenClaw runs a heartbeat every few minutes, and you want a cheap model for that. Whole separate video. Let me know if you're interested.

Server's back. I tell OpenClaw the API key is in the environment, find it. And for the output, I want a nice readable report: each stock, current price, shares, cost basis, current value, gain or loss, and a total line at the bottom. It locks in that exact format.

Testing the Stock App from Telegram Jump to video

Now the only thing left to do is try it. We send /portfolio from Telegram, and let's see.

Amazon is currently $270. That's right. Value $54,026. P&L is up $31,000, a 137% gain. Google is at $402, that's correct. Value around $40,000, up 153%. SCHG is up to $13,728, profit $6,500, a 90% gain. Total portfolio is $108,000, up $62,000 from cost basis. All correct.

Just like that, we've got an app we can query any time, day or night, to get our portfolio. There are three stocks here, but you can put as many as you want, customize it however you want. It'll also automatically push to my Telegram every morning at 9 a.m. and ten minutes after market close, so I get a little ding on my phone in the morning and in the mid-afternoon (mid-afternoon Vegas time, which is when the market closes) with the current quotes.

That's the nice thing about OpenClaw. You can build things that are insanely useful in just minutes. That took us about three minutes.

Check this out, head over to hostinger.com/johnelder10 and use code JOHNELDER10 at checkout for a bit off the top. I don't really make much from it, but you get the discount.

Have at it. Play around with this. If you screw it up, right-click your OpenClaw in the Docker manager and click delete, then go back up and one-click deploy a fresh one. It's really hard to mess up. A lot of fun. Let me know how it goes. That's all for this video.

About John Elder

John Elder has been coding for over 30 years. He runs Codemy.com, an online coding education platform where he's taught over 20 million students, and a YouTube channel with over 250,000 subscribers. He also runs JohnElder.AI, where he teaches AI, Python, and agentic workflows.

John is based in Las Vegas, Nevada and has authored multiple courses on Python, Django, Tkinter, and AI development. His teaching philosophy focuses on practical, real-world coding skills, not theory.