Trust No One

Run your own VPN in 5 minutes

2025-11-30

Most commercial VPNs are lying to you. They say “no logs,” but you’re just shifting your trust from your ISP to a random company in Panama. If they get subpoenaed or hacked, you’re exposed.

The only way to be sure is to own the server.

“If you don’t pay for the product, you are the product. If you do pay, you’re still often the product.”

Outline lets you run your own VPN. It allows anyone to set up a private server in hostile internet environments.

The Google Paradox

Yes, Outline is built by Jigsaw, an incubator inside Google.

It feels like a bad joke. The world’s biggest surveillance engine giving you a tool to hide your data. “Don’t be evil,” heh?

The irony is thick, but the saving grace is transparency. The code is 100% open source. You don’t have to trust the giant’s intentions; you only have to trust the code.

Why it’s different

It is not a service; it is a tool.

  1. You are the provider: You rent a cheap VPS (like DigitalOcean or Hetzner for €5/mo), install Outline, and you control the keys.
  2. Harder to block: It uses a protocol designed to look like random traffic, making it resilient against deep packet inspection (DPI).
  3. One-click setup: You don’t need to know Linux. The “Outline Manager” app handles the server setup for you.

How to start

  1. Download Outline Manager on your desktop.
  2. Connect it to a cloud provider (AWS, Google Cloud, DigitalOcean).
  3. Share access keys with your devices or your team.

Stop routing your life through someone else’s black box.

The Nuclear Option - When Outline is not enough

Outline is great. It’s simple, it works. But in high-censorship zones (China, Iran, Russia), basic Shadowsocks protocols are now getting flagged. The “Great Firewalls” are learning.

If Outline is the shield, Marzban is the ghost.

“To survive surveillance, you don’t need to be strong. You need to be invisible.”

Marzban is a proxy management tool powered by Xray-core. It’s not just a VPN; it’s a traffic shapeshifter.

The Killer Feature: REALITY

Most VPNs look like VPNs. Marzban, using the REALITY protocol, looks like you are browsing google.com or yahoo.com.

It eliminates the “TLS Handshake” fingerprint. To an ISP or a government censor, your encrypted traffic appears indistinguishable from a normal visit to a boring, legitimate website. They can’t block you without blocking half the internet.

Why it destroys the alternatives

Marzban solves the UX problems that Outline ignores.

  1. Subscription Links: Stop sending new keys manually every time a server burns. You give users one link. You update the server, their app updates automatically.
  2. Granular Control: Set precise data limits (e.g., 10GB/month) and expiration dates.
  3. Multi-Protocol: It supports VLESS, VMess, Trojan, and Shadowsocks simultaneously.

The Setup (Docker)

It’s slightly more technical than Outline, but the payoff is worth it. You need a server with Docker installed.

sudo bash -c "$(curl -sL https://github.com/Gozargah/Marzban-scripts/raw/master/marzban.sh)" @ install

Once running, you get a slick web dashboard to manage hundreds of users without touching a config file.

Verdict

Use Outline for your family who wants to watch Netflix abroad. Use Marzban if you are building a lifeline for people in hostile environments.