For auth one can use Caddy and basic auth. Yes it takes a bit of work but it isn’t that bad. Plus zero subscription costs if your VPS is a Raspberry
The difference with exe.dev is multiple VMs. I have over 20 now with isolated apps, branches of the same app, etc.
Agreed, it takes a few hours to set up everything. But just did it with Claude the other day, and I was up and running in no time! :-)