this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2023
101 points (98.1% liked)

Fediverse

17683 readers
15 users here now

A community dedicated to fediverse news and discussion.

Fediverse is a portmanteau of "federation" and "universe".

Getting started on Fediverse;

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
[email protected]
101
What is the maximum number of active users on an instance before the financial burden gets too high for the admins? (sopuli.xyz)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
66 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Pretty straight question.

I see Lemm.ee is now the second most populated instance based on https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/list, with 3634 monthly active users.

I also know that Lemmy devs said that

lemmy.ml is bigger than beehaw, and only costs 80 euros per month for a dedicated server.

https://lemmy.ml/comment/2372503

As lemmy.ml has 3561 monthly active users, should we consider that around 3,5k-4k users is the sweet spot for an instance population, and stop recommending the ones that reached that threshold?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

You are basically asking people to work for free for you

No, the point I'm making is that it's easier to have a 3k instance requiring 80€ donations from its member, who would feel closer to the rest of the members and their administration team, than a 21k instance requiring 560€ per month.

To be honest, I also think that we should move away from the donations model to an open subscription model. 80€ per month for 3k users is 0,32€ per user, you can implement a system where users pay 0,5€ for their cost, and can even pay more and offer to cover the subscriptions costs for other users. That way you give a real sense of community among members, and allow the instance admins to have more financial stability.