KuJoe 💞May 15, 2025

If any Mastodon instances are having trouble with their costs growing out of control, ping me and see if I can help lower your bill.

Apparently a recently closed instance was paying $300/month for hosting which is insane to read considering how small of an instance it was. When we had 40k monthly users I was paying about $120/month so an instance with less than 400 total users (not MAU) should be super cheap to run even with a few TB of storage and bandwidth.

It hurts my heart to read instances closing down over costs and finding out they’re paying more than instances 10x their size. 😢

https://newsie.social/@jeff/114513118997692099

Jeff (of the internet) (@[email protected])

Attached: 1 image Another Mastodon server gone. Airwaves.Social shut down & off the air for good. Reason: Costs! https://vmst.io/@User47/114508192446827453 Running a Mastodon server isn’t free & it’s often thankless. But it is essential. If you value independent, community-run spaces, now’s the time to chip in to your favorite server/instances Your server admins can’t keep the lights on with vibes alone. Want to Suport Newsie or Journa.host? DO IT! OpenCollective: https://opencollective.com/newsiesocial#category-CONTRIBUTE PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=BCV5VZ5HRMB3U

Newsie
Show threadpescetarianMay 15, 2025
@KuJoe Let's be honest, those who say that they pay $300 for an instance are disingenuous... They want to earn some extra money, probably this is normal, but we all know that the costs are much lower in reality... Or is it not all?!
Show thread‍🌬️
@pescetarian @KuJoe no, mastohost's add on fees can get expensive quick, especially for extra storage or bandwidth. You can host for less than 150 as even a large server but you have to self host, not managed.
May 15, 2025 at 8:53pmWeb
Show threadmirabilosMay 15, 2025

@KuJoe @pescetarian @Crazypedia yeah.

For GotoSocial, the 3.90 EUR/month (later 5.90) VM turned out to be too small after all, so I now have one for 10 EUR/month (2 in the first year) with room for dozens more active users (which I’m unlikely to add to my own instance, but).

If I were to host for hundreds, I’d probably go the 30-40 EUR/month area.

Show threadKuJoe 💞May 15, 2025
@Crazypedia I agree I think the managed piece is the most expensive part. I wish I could volunteer to do the tech management for free for any instance that needed it, but who would trust a random person on the internet do that? 😂
Show threadAntiCompositeMay 15, 2025
@Crazypedia @pescetarian @KuJoe yeah, Mastohost's database pricing gets expensive quick, and their only supported methods of dealing with it are pay up or enable remote content cache deletion which breaks threads and deletes bookmarks/favorites/boosts. They don't support any of the less nuclear options. The downside of managed hosting.
Show threadKuJoe 💞May 16, 2025
@anticomposite That's interesting, I didn't realize that but it totally makes sense due to the costs of managed DB servers.
Show threadMartin ModrákMay 16, 2025
@anticomposite @Crazypedia @pescetarian @KuJoe That's not my experience, they were happy to run `tootctl statuses remove` for me to keep our DB a bit more controlled - I just had to write an email.