Networking and hosting
Private access, exposure, DNS, servers.
My default
4 tools in this layer.
Expose a service on a private box through a custom domain, without opening a port.
Pricing: Tunnel itself has no charge and is available on every Cloudflare plan. An Access login in front of it is free for up to 50 users on Zero Trust Free, then $7 per user a month (pay-as-you-go).
Unbeatable price for an always-on box. CPU caps and no serious GPUs.
Pricing: KVM plans from 1 vCPU / 4 GB (KVM 1) to 8 vCPU / 32 GB (KVM 8). Intro prices $6.49 to $25.99 a month paid upfront for the term, renewing at $11.99 to $49.99 a month. Weekly backups and a dedicated IP included.
Whichever platform hosts the app.
Pricing: Route 53: $0.50 per hosted zone a month for the first 25 (not prorated), $0.40 per million standard queries; alias queries to AWS resources are free. Cloudflare DNS: no charge for queries on Free, Pro or Business; a Free zone created since September 2024 holds 200 records.
Love it. Easy, secure access from my machines to private AWS resources.
Pricing: Personal: free for non-commercial use (6 users). Standard: $8 per user a month; Premium: $18. Plans include 50 tagged resources (servers, subnet routers), then $1 each a month. For comparison, AWS Client VPN in Sydney is $0.15 per subnet association an hour (about $110 a month) plus $0.05 per connection-hour.
Where they're used
The jobs that pick or avoid a tool from this layer.
Want this stack in your AWS account?
Cloudless Labs is a Sydney consultancy. We migrate on-premises systems to AWS, build serverless apps on this stack, and coach teams to ship with Claude Code and Codex.