Question triggered by the other post about instances shutting down due to costs

Summary of the answers:

  • lowest number so far: lemmy.ml with 0.03€ per user per month
  • a few others (feddit.uk, lemmy.zip) have around 0.11$ per user per month
  • obviously single user instance have higher costs
  • Admiral Patrick
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    2 months ago

    Good question!

    Mine’s a small instance and runs on my existing infrastructure, so my only real cost (aside from a crazy amount of unpaid time and stress) is the domain name which is about $20/year.

    If I moved it to dedicated infrastructure, I’ve estimated it would cost me about $65/mo for just the backend, UI, and database services (to maintain the same level of performance, anyway. Could probably host it for less and take a performance hit). Object storage for pict-rs would probably be around $10/mo since I force it to use webp and have a 512 KB limit for user uploads.

    Those numbers may be a little high, but they’re based on my existing VPS provider which has amazing SLAs and uptime.

    • Blaze (he/him)OP
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      252 months ago

      Thanks for sharing! What would be the reason to move it to a dedicated infrastructure, you not needing your existing infrastructure?

      • Admiral Patrick
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        2 months ago

        What would be the reason to move it to a dedicated infrastructure, you not needing your existing infrastructure?

        Yeah, that, or if I decide one day I don’t want to deal with my own hardware anymore. I’ve got a hybrid cloud infrastructure currently, and most of the heavy services (DB mostly) run on my own hardware for cost/performance reasons (and I have fiber, so might as well use it lol)

        • @SirDerpy
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          62 months ago

          Would you mind sharing your active user count?

            • @SirDerpy
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              112 months ago

              For others, the number is 8 “monthly active users”.

              As this instance is partially operating on “free” hardware, it’s unlikely one can host an instance for much cheaper.

              • abff08f4813c
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                32 months ago

                For me it’s zero. In addition to reusing existing hardware, I have a subsidized internet connection that I reuse to connect my instance, and even the domain name is free.

                Of course I also have fewer users - excluding me, zero.