ohai.social team

We have set up a Patreon account for anyone who wants to contribute to the operating costs of the ohai.social server: https://www.patreon.com/ohaisocial

It is entirely optional to donate. We understand that not everyone is in a financial situation to spend money on a social media service and we want ohai.social to be a welcoming place for everyone, regardless of financial status.  

That said, if you are able to chip in a few bucks, we very much appreciate it.

Get more from ohai.social on Patreon

Creating a Mastodon server

Patreon
Nov 12, 2022 at 5:44pmWeb
Show threadohai.social teamNov 12, 2022

We currently estimate the operating costs of the server to be around €350 per month. I know that's a bit vague, but it's difficult to gauge costs this early on since we use a cloud provider with variable billing and it's tricky to project how many people will join in the coming days.

But just to be clear, there is no chance of ohai.social going offline even if we have zero patrons. Any donations just help reduce the amount we have to pay out of our own pockets 

Show threadwatzon Nov 12, 2022
@ohai this is with how many active users? Asking because I'm running my own isntance and will be accepting new users soon, but I don't have any idea what the scaling costs are going to look like past a certain point.
Show threadohai.social teamNov 12, 2022

@watzon We are currently just shy of 10k users.

That said right now our operating costs are a bit on the higher end of the scale because

a) We have intentionally oversized things a bit because so many people keep joining Mastodon. We can probably handle 20k users with our current infra/costs.

b) We are hosting on a cloud provider, which is much pricier than bare metal, but allows us to scale up/down more flexibly. With Hetzner our costs would probably be closer to the 100€ range.

Show threadohai.social teamNov 12, 2022
@watzon Main reason we went with a cloud provider was that we already used one for other stuff, but it came in useful yesterday when we could just double our puma/web server capacity with a click. With bare metal we probably would have gone down or slowed down for a bit while waiting for new hardware to be deployed the next business day.
Show threadohai.social teamNov 12, 2022
@watzon
And dedicated hardware is also much more tricky to scale back down, and it's entirely possible a bunch of the users that joined in the last few days may stop using Mastodon in a few days or weeks, so having the ability to cut costs without being stuck with long-running contracts or hardware is really reassuring, albeit a bit more pricy in the short run.
Show threadwatzon Nov 12, 2022
@ohai thanks so much for the reply! I'm bare metal myself right now, which I know is going to end up being fun in the long run if I have to scale more, but with the system I'm on now I think I should be good for at least a couple hundred users before I need to worry about that. Hope you can get the donations you need to keep going!
Show threadEleniNov 12, 2022
@ohai Contributed. Thanks for doing this!
Show threadJoelle A GodfreyNov 12, 2022
@ohai Where is your donation page? Still learning Tusky and the desktop app.🤔
Show threadDee In CalgaryNov 12, 2022
@jgodfrey @ohai I'm not ohai, but the link to their Patreon is patreon.com/ohaisocial
Show threadJulianna ThompsonNov 13, 2022
@ohai variable billing?
Show threadohai.social teamNov 13, 2022
@cjt Basically, we don't order server resources ahead of time for a fixed price, but dynamically use what we need and then get an invoice at the end of the month based on the actual resources we used.
Show threadJulianna ThompsonNov 14, 2022
@ohai makes sense, pay as you go
Show threadJulianna ThompsonDec 16, 2022
@ohai Hey, I can’t log into my account on another device. Where can I get help?
Show threadAethra AvalonNov 14, 2022
@ohai could you also offer crypto as a payment method?
Decentralization is key for money, and for some, me included, Patreon is basically unavailable.
Show threadohai.social teamNov 14, 2022
@aethra Not really a fan of crypto currencies in general, but we'll look into other methods of donating. But I can't make any promises as every additional donation method potentially adds a lot of accounting overhead for us.
Show threadAethra AvalonNov 14, 2022
@ohai I see, could be reasonable in your case :)
But let us know if you add something like that - will be happy to tip some satoshis :P
Show threadTanyaKaroliDec 5, 2022
@ohai Thank you so much for running this! I have just signed up on Patreon 🙏
Show threadmikebobDec 19, 2022
@ohai got yourself a new patreon, thanks for your hard work!
Show threadohai.social teamDec 19, 2022
@mikebob 
Show threadLSA232 🎈Dec 15, 2024
@ohai hi Team, I don’t see any option to donate custom amounts, currently only monthly membership or nothing. Is that intentional? I would love to give a few bucks
Show threadohai.social teamDec 17, 2024
@LSA232 You can choose a custom amount below the Anniversary Merch option by selecting 'Make custom pledge' if that's what you're referring to.