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Comment by rglullis

2 years ago

> Your best bet is some of the bigger second-tier servers.

Until they get overloaded, and face the same issues as the "first tier" ones...

I know that what I am about to say is out of personal interest, but I really wish people took the analogy to email servers more seriously and started looking at commercial providers. I'm offering Mastodon services for about $0.50/user/month [0], and I have the infra to host 20-30k users efficiently.

For this type of case, there is nothing more sustainable, fair and efficient than letting the market figure things out. But if we keep thinking that accounts should be offered for free, there will be always market distortions.

[0] https://communick.com/packages

I created my twitter account when sending tweet via text was still a thing. Never really used it, so I'm not the right demographic.

But I do think your approach is the right one. I hope you succeed a breaking even and generate a margin for your time.

  • Thank you for your kind words. If Twitter/Mastodon is not what you need, perhaps I could interest you in my hosted XMPP and Matrix offerings?

    • I’m self hosting those, thanks. I did notice your offering in the prices.

      Maybe you could benefit from clearer price ? For instance not mixing group prices with prices for single accounts?

      Idk I suck at that, but I know all those services pretty well and I was having difficulty to follow prices.

      2 replies →

Is there a way for me to export if I decide to self host later?

I don't have the time to set up a Mastodon server right now, but part of the appeal of Mastodon is having more control over my data.

  • Yes, you can export your data to any new server and you can even redirect your followers to your new identity. You´d only have trouble if the instance admin blocks your account before you get to do any of that, but for anything like that to happen you'd have to have done something truly egregious and/or your admin is one shitty, petty person.

  • Yes, you can export, and most servers will put up a helpful forward pointer once you move your account so people see where your new profile is. I haven't tried it but others who have seem to keep all their followers / following seamlessly.

  • Yes, there is a button to export all your data as csv.

    Honestly, i think something better can be done around the Activitypub protocol than mastodon. And i'm not a social media guy, so i will wait until someting better is built.