When I started Masto.host I was thinking that I could help a couple of people, learn a bit more about sys-admin and just have fun with it as a side project. One year later, Masto.host has become something else, it is almost a part time project and it has been requiring a lot of my time.
It was fun to see this project taking off and at times a struggle to make it run smoothly but mostly I did it with pleasure and enjoyed providing this service.
This past year, I installed close to 300 instances but over 40% of them cancelled. On average the number of days an instance uses Masto.host for is 140 days.
While it is mind blowing that I have installed that many instances, these numbers are troublesome. The churn is way too high (over 9% monthly) and although the average number of days and instance is active keeps growing, it is still way too low.
In relation to money, Masto.host was net positive since day one, if I didn’t take my time into consideration. While running this as a side project, my time was not considered, now that it is starting to take more of it when I add my time into the math, the project is still net negative.
All of this to say thank you for all the support. It was a wild first year and hopefully things continue to grow because Mastodon is an amazing platform and there is a lot more that can be done to help it grow.
toot toot