@andypiper (or anybody else ...)
-
@andypiper (or anybody else ...)
Somebody working with a non-profit that is considering starting up a Mastodon instance to use as part of an activism campaign asked me for a rough estimate of how time consuming it is to administer a mastodon instance. Good question! Is there a good wrteeup of this I can point them to?
-
I'd say that depends partly on how many users you have, and on your base level of technical expertise.
-
@thenexusofprivacy @andypiper @mods / @hachyderm might have some figures?
-
@thenexusofprivacy @andypiper here are some behind-the-scenes infos from chaos.social https://meta.chaos.social/
-
Agreed. My initial response was that if they don't have an experienced sysadmin they'll almost certainly want to use a hosting service. On the number of users, they realize that a smaller instance is easier, but aren't sure at what point it starts to get significantly more difficult and how much more difficult it gets.
-
Thanks very much @ConnyDuck, great info!
-
@risottobias good suggestions, thanks!
-
I don't do the tech side, but we'd be suffering if we didn't have a team with the relevant expertise.
My only experience with the moderation side is on an instance with several thousand active users, so it's hard for me to say much about scaling. I would recommend having a moderation team if your instance is anything close to that size, though. It doesn't require that much in terms of hours, but it does need a commitment to have someone checking your reports and signups at least a few times every day, and keeping an eye on the local feed periodically.
-
Thanks again. Yeah, completely agree about the importance of getting a team in place on moderation side, and great description of what to think about up front. And these are great suggestions even for a much smaller instance. If I do a post about this, is it okay if I quote you?
-
Here is the guide from @FediTips. it is very good and clear and has some discussion of moderation requirements.
-
@thenexusofprivacy I think the biggest factor is whether you have open signups or not.
My small instance has closed signups and it takes less than 1 hour a week in maintenance.
-
If you use a managed hosting service, the hosting company will do all the techy stuff for you behind the scenes. Typical prices on managed hosting are 5-10 euros per month for a small instance including all the actual hosting costs too.
Running a private instance (i.e. not open for signups) is very easy because you don't have to moderate anything.
Running a public instance (where strangers can sign up) is a much bigger commitment because you have to moderate content.
-
thanks. Good point on not having open registration, I don't think they were planning on doing that but I'll stress the importance!
My initial response was that if they don't have an experienced sysadmin they'll almost certainly want to use a hosting service. That said I'm not sure about the costs of going that route if their posts get wide visibility -- I remember Marco Rogers needing a $39/month plan for a single-user instance -- but it still might be worth doing.
-
@wizard thanks, very good point. I don't think they're planning on having open registrations but I"ll stress the importance of that!
-
Thanks!
-
I don't think you need to pay that much for a single user instance on managed hosting unless you have hundreds of thousands of followers.
I'm not sure exactly what Rogers was doing but it's rare you would need that on here, at least not when you're starting out.
Going by mastohost's estimates that kind of price would be the equivalent of 500 active users: https://masto.host/pricing
-
feditips@social.growyourown.services thenexusofprivacy@infosec.exchange I think their estimates are on the conservative side.
It's true that a single user instance can be hosted cheaply but regular things you do to fix federation issues will drive up costs.
For example, when I hosted with them I used a relay so that my content reach would expand. That drove up my disk usage costs to the tune of $20+ a month.
