Hermes Agent on Hostinger VPS

Hostinger VPS vs Hostinger Shared Hosting

Hostinger sells two product families that get confused: shared hosting (LiteSpeed, cPanel, no root) and KVM VPS (full root, Ubuntu/Debian, your own kernel). Hermes needs Docker, which means the VPS plans — not shared. If you're on a shared hosting plan today, you'll need to upgrade.

The other Hostinger product worth knowing: their AI Assistant template, which pre-installs Ollama and Open WebUI on KVM 2/4. That's a different stack than Hermes — useful if you want a chat UI, not useful if you want a multi-platform autonomous agent. Pick the bare Ubuntu 24.04 image for Hermes.

Pick the Right Hostinger Plan

Hostinger's introductory pricing (~$5–7/mo for KVM 2) requires a 24- or 48-month commitment. Renewal prices spike. If you're comparing total cost of ownership over 3 years, factor that in — managed Hermes hosting on OpenClaw Launch is $6/mo flat with no renewal trap.

Provision the VPS

1. Buy a KVM 2 plan from hostinger.com/vps-hosting. Pick a region close to your users (US-East, Brazil, India, Singapore, NL all work).
2. OS template: select Ubuntu 24.04 (clean image), not the AI Assistant template.
3. Add an SSH key in the hPanel before provisioning — root login by password is enabled by default and you'll want to disable it.
4. Wait 2–5 minutes for provisioning. Note the IPv4 address.

Harden SSH (Recommended)

Hostinger boots VPS instances with password auth on by default. Switch to keys-only:

# As root, edit sshd config
sed -i 's/^#*PasswordAuthentication.*/PasswordAuthentication no/' /etc/ssh/sshd_config
sed -i 's/^#*PermitRootLogin.*/PermitRootLogin prohibit-password/' /etc/ssh/sshd_config
systemctl restart ssh

# Confirm your key login still works in a second terminal before logging out

Install Docker

apt update && apt upgrade -y
apt install -y ca-certificates curl gnupg
install -m 0755 -d /etc/apt/keyrings
curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | \
  gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg
echo "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) \
  signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg] \
  https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu noble stable" \
  > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list
apt update
apt install -y docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io docker-compose-plugin

docker run hello-world

Run Hermes Agent

mkdir -p /opt/hermes/data
cd /opt/hermes

cat > config.yaml <<EOF
gateway:
  port: 3000
  auth:
    token: "$(openssl rand -hex 24)"
models:
  default: openrouter/anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.6
  providers:
    openrouter:
      apiKey: "${OPENROUTER_API_KEY}"
channels:
  telegram:
    enabled: true
    botToken: "${TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN}"
    dmPolicy: pairing
EOF

docker run -d \
  --name hermes \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  -p 3000:3000 \
  -e OPENROUTER_API_KEY="sk-or-v1-..." \
  -e TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN="123:ABC..." \
  -v /opt/hermes/config.yaml:/app/config.yaml \
  -v /opt/hermes/data:/data \
  ghcr.io/nousresearch/hermes-agent:latest

docker logs -f hermes

Wire Up a Domain

Hostinger sells domains too. Point an A record from hermes.yourdomain.com to the VPS IPv4 in hPanel → Domains → DNS / Nameservers. Then run Caddy as a reverse proxy:

apt install -y caddy

cat > /etc/caddy/Caddyfile <<EOF
hermes.yourdomain.com {
  reverse_proxy localhost:3000
}
EOF

systemctl restart caddy

Caddy negotiates TLS automatically. Hermes's gateway UI is at https://hermes.yourdomain.com.

Hostinger-Specific Gotchas

• Renewal pricing. Intro $5/mo becomes $15.99/mo after the term. Set a calendar reminder 30 days before renewal so you can shop again.
• hPanel reboots. If hPanel reboots your VPS, Docker--restart unless-stopped brings Hermes back. If you used a manualdocker run without restart policy, the container stays down.
• OS templates with bundled software. The AI Assistant template installs nginx + Ollama + Open WebUI. If you picked it by accident, either reinstall the OS to clean Ubuntu or stop the auto-started services before running Hermes (it conflicts on port 3000).
• Bandwidth. KVM plans include 4 TB/mo. A chat-only Hermes bot won't come close. Local model inference (Ollama serving large models) can.
• SLA. Hostinger's SLA is 99.9% but enforced via credit, not automatic. If uptime matters and downtime would hurt your business, factor in managed hosting alternatives.

Hostinger vs Managed: When to Switch

Hostinger KVM 2 is great for one project, one bot, one weekend of setup time. The math changes when:

• You add a second or third bot (now you're managing multi-tenancy)
• The renewal price kicks in (KVM 2 jumps to ~$16/mo, more than managed Pro)
• You hit an outage at 2am and have to debug nginx/Docker/Caddy alone
• You need backups, monitoring, or staging environments

Managed Hermes hosting on OpenClaw Launch starts at $3/mo for the first month (then $6/mo flat). Auto SSL, monitoring, backups, 99.9% uptime, no renewal traps.

Skip the Setup

Related Guides

• Hermes Agent on Hostinger (Overview)
• Hermes Agent on a Generic VPS
• Hermes Agent on Hetzner
• Hermes Agent Docker Guide