Platform updates

What Rippin Host is

We built Rippin Host as a self-service hosting portal where customers get their own Docker containers on shared physical servers — without managing the underlying infrastructure themselves. Each subscription maps to a real, isolated container with its own hostname, SSL certificate, and routing. You pick a stack, choose a name, pay (or get provisioned if exempt), and we handle the rest.

Today the catalog includes n8n Hosting ($14.95/mo), Uptime Kuma Hosting ($4.95/month), and OpenClaw Hosting ($39.95/mo). n8n and Uptime Kuma run on our primary node01 host; OpenClaw runs on a dedicated high-capacity node02 node (32 GB RAM, 32 cores, 1 TB storage) because of its heavier resource profile. Where a plan includes a database, we provision and attach it as part of the stack — PostgreSQL for n8n, MySQL for Uptime Kuma.

Sign-up, accounts, and security

Registration is email-based. New users confirm their address before they can sign in, and we provide a resend flow if the confirmation link expires or gets lost. Once in, customers manage their display name and password from a profile page. Every form action is protected with CSRF tokens and session-based authentication, so the portal behaves like a proper web application rather than a loose collection of scripts.

Billing that matches how people actually buy containers

Stripe powers all paid subscriptions. Checkout uses the embedded Payment Element so customers never leave the site to enter card details. Rather than forcing a separate subscription per container type, we model a single Stripe subscription as a bundle — you can mix n8n, Uptime Kuma, and OpenClaw on one invoice, each with its own quantity.

When someone wants more containers mid-cycle, the add-nodes flow calculates a prorated amount and shows an invoice preview before charging. Renewal dates, hostnames, and line items are visible throughout subscribe and add-nodes so there are no surprises. After payment, webhooks activate the subscription and provisioning kicks in automatically. Customers can update cards or cancel through the Stripe Customer Portal from the billing page.

We also built billing-exempt accounts for partners and internal use — those users can add containers without going through Stripe at all. On the operations side, admin tools sync subscription state directly from Stripe and only treat billable statuses (active, trialing, past_due) as authoritative, which keeps the local database aligned with what customers are actually paying for.

The customer dashboard

After subscribing, the dashboard is the control center. It lists every container with live status pulled from our provisioning backend, one-click URLs to connect, and actions to start, stop, refresh, or delete. If payment completed but a container has not appeared yet, the system retries provisioning on its own. Subscribed and billing-exempt users can add more containers at any time from the same portal.

We also added a dark/light theme toggle that remembers your preference and respects your OS default when you have not chosen one yet. The logo and Stripe payment form follow the active theme.

OpenClaw in particular

OpenClaw needed more than a generic deploy button. When we provision it, we set the customer’s account email and password as the OpenClaw login credentials so they can sign in immediately. From the dashboard, a Variables modal lets them configure LLM and integration API keys — OpenAI, Anthropic, Groq, xAI, OpenRouter, and many others — which we store encrypted and push to the running environment on save.

Gateway access was another piece: we generate a gateway token, surface it in the dashboard with a copy button, and provide a direct link that includes the token so authorized users can connect without hunting through env files. The OpenClaw stack also ships with a browser automation sidecar.

Infrastructure and admin

Behind the portal, everything talks to our container orchestration layer over API — deploy, start, stop, environment sync, and status refresh. Services route to the right physical node automatically, and hostnames follow a consistent pattern under rippinhost.com.

For operators, an admin area shows every user, their deployments, and subscription state synced from Stripe. Admins can grant or revoke admin access and billing exemption per account, and the summary view shows paying customer counts and total deployments at a glance.

The public site

The marketing landing page, login, register, and this updates page are indexable and carry proper SEO metadata — titles, descriptions, Open Graph and Twitter cards, JSON-LD on the home page, plus robots.txt and a dynamic sitemap. The goal is a credible public face for the same product customers use once they sign in.