Hugo Gameiro @hugo@masto.pt

@alex thanks, I was looking at SendGrid but the fixed cost for what I had in mind is probably overkill and also can’t live with the fixed daily limit on the free plan. Probably will need to test SES because I can’t really find other truly pay as you go alternatives.

Any suggestions of good and affordable ‘pay as you go’ alternatives to MailGun for transactional email?

@davidoclubb Not sure I understand. They may use the same URL because that is the registration URL for Mastodon but the email is always different and even the domains of the email change. Mostly I saw Gmail addresses.

@jaz @stux

@stux @trebach @jaz I see thousands of spam registrations going to Gmail and those are not possible to stop.

I would gladly include you @stux on the email but I really don't have a good solution. For now the only option I can think of is to close registrations.

@jaz I was writing you an email just now about that. Will send it in a minute. @stux

@begovoy@mastodon.social I accept crypto payments.

On my pricing page https://masto.host/pricing/ under payment methods it says:
"The default payment method is PayPal.

It's possible to pay using bank wire and some cryptocurrencies but only for quarterly payments.

Please contact info@masto.host to subscribe using an alternative payment method."

Any questions let me know.

@lvdd_ Leaseweb has a datacenter in Germany (not sure where). If you go to the rack collocation you see the option available https://www.leaseweb.com/colocation/rack probably they ran out on the single server option.

23M looks really good and I have contacted them and they were really great. I would honestly have them on the top of my list if I was to collocate remotely.

@lvdd_ You are in Germany right? Have you had a look at https://23m.com/en/colocation or https://www.leaseweb.com/colocation/rack-unit

@lvdd_ it really depends on the server (or blade) and usage but it's possible to find decent collocation prices in Europe for less than €100/month/server but for a collocation of multiple servers.

@moritzheiber yep but for 5 years it's usually not a significant cost. I have servers running for about that time and they never had a single part changed or maintenance done.

From experience (mine and others) after 5 years it's when it starts to be more of an issue. That's why I made the calculations for 5 years because after that it's hard to say.

I just spent some time looking at server buying+collocation vs rental for a server with an 8c/16t CPU, 128 RAM and 2x1TB NVMe.

Rental: €120/month
Buy: ~€3000 + €50/month collocation.

Cost after 5 year:
Rental: €7200
Buy+Collocation: €6000
If asking for credit to pay the server over 5 years: €7500

So, only profitable with cash at hand or if you use the server for more than 5 years (obviously doable but hard to make 5 year decisions in tech).

@maique You will have new years to celebrate after the antibiotics ;)

Get well soon. This past week I was also with the terrible "man flu" but I am feeling better now. Hopefully it's going away.

Get well soon.

@wordsmith Just decided to give this a shot because suggesting manually searching outside their installation for accounts to follow has rarely been something new users are willing to do.

@wordsmith Then they look at an empty instance where nothing happens and don't know where to start. Search will return no results and they are just left with an empty instance where nothing happens.

They invite a couple of friends, they speak between themselves a couple of times and never come back. After a while they end up deleting the installation and giving up on Mastodon without ever seeing how the network works.

@wordsmith You are correct and that will work pretty well if you are joining an instance where federated content is already present.

The reason I have made that tool is that I have seen time and again people installing Mastodon without any previous experience of the Fediverse and no list of follows to bring with them to the new installation.