David Finton
@zalasur

It's amazing that it's possible for someone to pay for their own video hosting platform on the internet for other people to enjoy. Not only do I publish my own videos and stream to a publicly accessible platform, I also federate with a number of other PeerTube instances so that people can enjoy a plethora of content from multiple creators. It is truly a wondrous time to be alive!

The flip side is that video files are large and take up a lot of room on the hosting provider. Also, video encoding is computationally expensive so I'm limited somewhat by the quality level of the live streams I upload to the instance. So I have to be careful not to let the platform costs run away from me.

That's why I've set up a liberapay account so that people can donate whatever they want, whenever they want. Donations are strictly voluntary; I do not plan on ever putting up a paywall in front of any content I upload.

To give you an idea of what the cost breakdown is for hosting a PeerTube instance on Akamai Linode as of December 2024 (prices are rounded to the nearest amount in USD):

• Object storage for 250 GB: $5/month
• Linode instance with 2 vCPUs: $24/month

Total: $29/month

Those are the minimum system requirements to host a PeerTube instance live. If I wanted to upgrade my streaming resolution from 720p to 1080p, I would need to upgrade the Linode instance up to 4 vCPUs which would run at $48/month. For storage, each 250 GB over the base 250 GB would cost me an additional $5/month.

Right now I am comfortable with paying what I am right now, but if I wanted to do more that would come from out-of-pocket and that would weigh considerably on my decision-making. Recurring costs do add up so any little bit helps.

So if you enjoy watching my videos or streams, consider making a donation. A one-time donation would be appreciated. A recurring donation would be awesome. All funds would be used to offset the current costs of running this platform, and should I make more money than I'm spending I would redirect those funds to upgrading the service I'm providing. These enhancements would come in the form of a higher streaming resolution or retaining my VODs for longer since I'd have more space to keep them around in.

Refund policy: all financial contributions are non-refundable and considered final upon completion of the transaction.

Thank you for visiting!