Mastodon is embracing new ways of bringing in money
For a long time the alternative social media platform Mastodon has relied heavily on donations to keep running. The non-profit organization also makes use of grants, but now it has announced plans to branch out into new areas of making money.
The plan is important to achieve financial sustainability, and as part of this Mastodon says that it is “now ready to expand on the success of providing these services to organisations”.
In a post on Mastodon, the organization says: “We’re taking another step in building a sustainable financial base as a non-profit. Today, we’re announcing new hosting and support offerings, tailored for larger organisations and public institutions. These enable organisations to own their social identities, on their own infrastructure”.
What does all of this mean?
Well it is flexible. Mastdon says that it could look like a “fully operated server under the organisation’s own domain run by our team (with moderation included, on request)”. Equally, there is a willingness to “work with an organisation’s in-house operations team, via a support contract”.
Mastodon is keen to stress that making money in this way is not going to be its primary focus, but it remains important. It says:
We’re taking this step of offering paid hosting, moderation, and support for larger organisations to establish a reliable recurring revenue stream. It is vital that we broaden our income - but, our aspiration remains that Mastodon should be predominantly funded through community contributions in the future.
It is also fundamental that Mastodon as a network must not be centrally hosted or managed. The Fediverse is decentralised, by design. This makes it resilient to change, and it means that people have a free choice to join communities that match their interests, needs, and cultural expectations. To be clear, we’re extremely grateful to everyone that runs a Mastodon server as part of the network, including all the companies that manage Mastodon services for groups, communities, organisations, and individuals.
There are a couple of suggested options at the moment, the first being an All-in-One Managed Service, which Mastodon says is Tailored for large organisations:
- We handle everything - from infrastructure, security, backups, updates, moderation, legal takedowns.
- Perfect for organisations that want fast access to their own Mastodon server with guaranteed compliance and low resource investment.
- Including Hosting, Moderation and Support:
The second option is single service, which is aimed at organisations that want to stay in control:
- You stay in control. You can decide which services you want to run yourself, and where to get support from Mastodon.
- Ideal for organisations that already have internal resources or want to build internal capabilities.
- Choose one or multiple services from Hosting, Moderation or Support
Mastodon says that any institutions that are interested in the hosting service should get in touch via this new web page.