We Need Your Support Please
We want to make sure Fosstodon stays around for the foreseeable future, but we need your help.
Fosstodon has nearly 7,000 members!
I think it’s fair to say that when Mike and I started Fosstodon back in 2017, we didn’t think we would be the biggest FOSS based instance on the Fediverse. That’s just awesome and we love the fact that our little corner of the Fediverse is growing so well.
However, as our community grows, our hosting requirements do too. Over the next day or so we will be upgrading our servers again to ensure we continue to have the great performance and uptime that our members have come to expect from us. The problem is, as the servers grow, so do the hosting costs. After the upgrade our running costs will be approximately $90 per month. I’m sure most of you will agree that this is quite a lot of money for something that started out as a pet project for two guys.
We need your help
Our monthly Patreon income (which includes monthly donations from both Mike and I) is $87. So we’re already running Fosstodon at a loss. We’re also growing fast, so the next time we need to upgrade, that loss is going to get bigger and bigger. A loss which Mike and I will need to fund personally, and we will be happy to do so as we’re so proud of what we have all built with Fosstodon.
That $87/month, which Patreon take a cut out of, comes from 30 glorious Fosstodonians - but that is just 0.42% of our members.
We said in our post about the longevity of Fosstodon that we would like to keep 6 months of hosting fees as a float, then anything over and above this will be donated to open source projects. With our Patreon income being so close to our expenditure, we don’t think we will be able to donate to other projects if our income doesn’t increase inline with our size.
Like I said, we currently receive funding from 0.42% of our members. If just 2% of our members signed up for our lowest Patreon tier of $1/month, we would be all set for the foreseeable future.
We currently have around 10 months worth of funding in our Paypal account, so we’re not desperate yet, but we wanted to canvas for help before we get desperate. The last thing we want to see is this incredible community of fantastic people fall by the wayside.
If you feel you get enjoyment from Fosstodon and can spare just $1/month, it really would make a huge difference to the longevity of the Fosstodon project.
Thank you
We wanted to end this post with a quick thank you to all of our members, whether you donate or not, Fosstodon would literally be nothing without you guys. Thank you all for everything that you do, and remember, be excellent to each other.