Question 1

What exactly am I paying for?

Accepted Answer

Paperclip itself is open source and free. PaperCloud charges a $99/month managed-service fee — cloud infrastructure and AI provider usage are billed separately — for running it as a production service for you: a dedicated cloud server per subscription, the official install performed for you, a managed subdomain with HTTPS, and a dashboard to deploy, restart and monitor it.

Question 2

Could I not just run it myself?

Accepted Answer

Absolutely, and the official docs walk you through it. It means Node 22, corepack, pnpm, a Postgres instance, a VPS, a domain, TLS, a process supervisor and re-running upgrades by hand every release. PaperCloud is for teams who would rather not own that.

Question 3

Do I need an AI provider API key?

Accepted Answer

No. You connect Codex on your instance with your existing ChatGPT plan: the dashboard shows a sign-in code, you approve it once, and the login stays on your own server.

Question 4

How do updates work?

Accepted Answer

Your instance is installed with the latest published Paperclip release at deploy time and pinned to that version, so a restart never changes it. We notify you in the event timeline when a newer release appears; continuous automatic upgrades are on the roadmap.

Question 5

Is my data shared with other customers?

Accepted Answer

No. Every subscription gets its own dedicated server with its own database. Nothing runs alongside another customer except the PaperCloud dashboard that starts and stops those servers.

Question 6

What happens when the trial ends?

Accepted Answer

The trial runs seven days. Unless you cancel, the subscription continues at $99/month. If you cancel, your instance stays online until the end of the paid period, then goes offline with its data preserved — reactivate any time, or ask us for a copy.

Question 7

Can I bring my own domain?

Accepted Answer

Your instance runs on your own subdomain of papercloud.ws with a Let's Encrypt certificate. Custom domains are available on request.

Question 8

Are you affiliated with the Paperclip project?

Accepted Answer

No. PaperCloud is an independent hosting service for the open-source project, run with respect for its licence and its maintainers.

Frequently asked