I moved from my self hosted Mastodon instance to a micro.blog account

My experiment with running my own Mastodon instance is over. I’ve decided to move on for a few different reasons, but the tldr is that it was costing me too much money.

Running costs, Digital Ocean

My instance ran on a DO droplet, with assets stored on S3. The US Dollar is a lot higher than the Australian one at the moment, so last month, the whole set-up cost me $23 AUD. I enjoy Mastodon but not to the level of $23/month.

Also, I just don’t want to give Digital Ocean any more of my money. I’m still dirty at them for acquiring my favourite web dev resource, only to fire those who worked on it. Why?!

With all that said, my droplet had maxed out on memory (I don’t know if this was due to me having accrued over 1000 followers or just general ineptitude at managing an instance). If I wanted it to keep running, I needed to upgrade to a bigger one, so it was time to find an alternative.

I didn’t want to run my own instance any more, I didn’t want to use someone else’s instance, but I also didn’t want to leave the mastodon community I’d followed. It is a chill, nerdy vibe in there that I quite enjoy!

To micro.blog

I recently learnt that micro.blog accounts can federate with Mastodon, so I decided to try it. It only costs $5 USD/month and creates no sysadmin/ops work for me. I am technically storing my data with “someone else”, which is what I was trying to avoid by running my instance, but the company seems like a small group of people trying to make a product people like, and as someone who works in a small group of people who trying to make a product people like… that appeals to me.

Micro.blog lets me read all the updates of the Mastodon users I follow, which is what I wanted. There are a few things missing, though

• I can’t like people’s posts
• I can’t boost people’s posts
• I can’t see when people have liked my posts
• I can’t see who has followed me/how many followers I have

These are conscious choices made on micro.blog’s part. They don’t want to provide vanity metrics or create a system encouraging engagement-seeking behaviour. Honestly, I don’t mind it. There’s something freeing about not being aware of those numbers. The only thing I feel bad about is not being able to like people’s replies to me - I used to use them like a read receipt. So I’m replying back instead.

You can follow me on your Mastodon instance at @rach@status.rachsmith.com.