Most social networks make the bulk of their income by running ads on their platform.
Despite its Twitter-like appearance, Mastodon is not like most social networks, their de-centralized setup discourages ads.
Although being decentralized can make it hard to work out how to join Mastodon, it is also the key reason why they don’t need to be aggressively focused on money-making.
If Mastodon was set up on one website it would require a huge amount of processing power and infrastructure to run which would require lots of capital to maintain.
Some people ask us why Mastodon isn’t a single website. A single website that can serve the whole world requires so much computing power, infrastructure, and engineering, that it is practically impossible to do without big capital and monetization.
— Mastodon (@joinmastodon) October 31, 2022
So they don’t need to spam users with ads to keep the network running, nor do they need to go public and sell shares, they do however make money in a number of different ways:
1. Patreon
Mastodon accepts donations via Patreon.
Currently, they have over 8,000 patrons contributing over $30,000 a month.
2. Sponsorships
Mastodon makes money from sponsorships.
They sell three sponsorship packages:
Rosegold Tier – $100/month:
- Your medium-sized logo
- A followed link
- A mention in Mastodon documentation
Gold Tier – $200/month:
- Your medium-sized logo
- A followed link
- Brand mention on the sponsors’ page
Platinum Tier – $500/month:
- Your medium-sized logo
- A followed link
- Brand mention on the sponsors’ page
- Visibility for your brand on the joinmastodon.org frontpage
You can see current Mastodon Platinum tier sponsors at the bottom of this page.
3. Feediverse Subscriptions
If you want to set up your own space or a space for a small group on Mastodon you can do so with a Feediverse subscription:
- $6/month (+tax) for up to 5 users
- $9/month (+tax) for up to 20 users
- $19/month (+tax) for up to 100 users
Screenshots from here
4. Community Fees
If you want to set up a community on Mastodon you will need to set up a server, you can buy a subscription from masto.host at the following price points:
- $39/month (+tax) for up to 500 active users.
- $89/month (+tax) for up to 2,000 active users
- …for bigger plans you can contact them for pricing inquiries.
5. Selling Storage Space
For $10 a month (not including tax) you can buy cloud storage.
$10 will get you 4 Processing Threads, 4 GB of Database, and 40 GB of Media Storage.
6. Elastic Search Fees
Mastodon is spread across different servers, when you search on one server for something you will only find mentions of that thing on the server you are currently on.
If you pay the Elastic search subscription fee of $10/month to cover the server resources needed then you can use the elastic search function to search all Mastodon servers.
Leave a Comment