Frequently asked questions

DeskBoot is an on-demand cloud desktop service. You sign up, pick an OS (Windows or Linux) and a size, click Launch, and about a minute later you can RDP into a fresh machine hosted on AWS. When you're done, click Stop or Terminate and the meter stops.

Around one minute for Linux, one to three minutes for Windows. Chrome comes pre-installed, audio is enabled, and you can start working immediately.

Download the .rdp file from the session detail page and open it with Microsoft Remote Desktop (Mac, Windows) or any RDP client (Remmina on Linux). Credentials are shown once on the session page — copy them into a password manager.

An RDP client. Microsoft Remote Desktop is free on all major platforms. Nothing else on your local machine.

Per second. A RUNNING session is billed at the hourly rate shown on /pricing divided by 3,600. When you Stop, compute billing stops — only a small storage charge (~$0.08/GB/month) keeps ticking. Terminate to stop everything.

Card (Visa, Mastercard, Verve), M-Pesa (Kenya), bank transfer, and USSD — all via Paystack. Balance is prepaid — top up any amount, sessions run against it.

Running sessions auto-stop within a minute of the balance hitting zero. Your disks are preserved. You then have a 3-day grace periodto top up — if you don't, we terminate the sessions and wipe the disks so storage charges stop growing. We email you at each stage.

Yes, if you've saved a card. When your balance drops below the threshold you set (default $2), we charge your default card the auto top-up amount (default $10). If the charge fails — expired card, cancelled authorization, insufficient funds — we email you so you can add a new card before the grace period expires.

Yes — the encrypted disk keeps existing, so AWS charges storage at roughly $0.08/GB/month. For a 100 GiB Standard tier that's about $8/month if left indefinitely. To stop all charges, click Terminate.

Windows Server 2025 (Windows 11 UI generation), Windows Server 2022, Windows Server 2019, Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, Debian 12, Fedora 41, and Kali Linux rolling.

Yes — a session is a full desktop. Install anything the OS allows. Windows sessions come with admin rights; Linux sessions are set up with sudo on the default user.

Stopping a session preserves the disk. Starting it again brings back everything you installed and every file. Terminating a session wipes the disk permanently.

Five AWS regions: Cape Town (af-south-1), Virginia (us-east-1), Ohio (us-east-2), Dublin (eu-west-1), and Mumbai (ap-south-1). Pick the region closest to you for the best RDP responsiveness.

The one geographically closest. RDP is sensitive to round-trip latency — above ~80ms it feels sluggish. Full breakdown with per-city numbers on our region guide.

Yes — attach an Elastic IP at launch or later, $5/IP/month. Useful for VPN allowlists, self-hosted services, or SSH known-hosts stability.

Yes — every EBS disk is KMS-encrypted at rest with per-session keys. Traffic to the session uses RDP's native TLS.

Yes. Every session gets its own security group (locked down by default), its own key pair, and its own encrypted disk. Nothing is shared across customers. Details on /security.

No. We don't inspect session contents, snapshot your files, or train models on your data. Our Privacy Policy has the full picture.

The disk is wiped, the security group is deleted, the key pair is destroyed, and any attached elastic IP is released (unless you own it). Termination is permanent — no backups, no recovery.

Unused card-funded balance is refundable when you close your account. M-Pesa top-ups are one-way (Safaricom limitation), so those aren't refundable to M-Pesa but the balance is still usable indefinitely. Full policy on /refunds.

Contact support and we'll walk you through it. Any active sessions are terminated first; unused card-funded balance is refunded to the original card.

Yes — with authorization for the target you're testing. See our Acceptable Use Policyfor what's in scope. Kali Linux is pre-configured and ready.