Mastodon hosting is here! 🎉
tl;dr 🐘 Mastodon hosting is here, you can sign up now if you don’t want to read to end!
If you are looking for Mastodon hosting you’re in the right place.
Mastodon is a social networking web app similar to Twitter, except that you can run it yourself! It is a complex application and it requires a lot of resources. Installing it either requires using an installer from a random company, paying for a fully hosted version which won’t allow you to tune things yourself, or using a few Docker containers strung together…somehow. 🤢
You don’t have to worry about any of that when you host your own Mastodon instance on Opalstack. We’ll manage the server while you manage your community! 🧑🦰🧑🏾🦱🧔🏻
Since you’re here, you probably want to run your own Mastodon server. But if you just want a Mastodon account without running your own network you can sign up to our managed instance at https://opalstack.social. Come join our community! 🎉
With Mastodon’s federated nature you don’t have to chose just one server. You can sign up for an account on https://Opalstack.social and federate it with your own Mastodon server. 💥
Why host Mastodon with Opalstack instead of a Mastodon only host?
We provide a managed hosting environment for Mastodon (and other apps!) which means we deal with the server, operating system, and system services to make it easy for you to deploy your applications.
You also get the flexibility to run the applications you want without having to manage the web server configuration, which version of the database to install, or any of the other 1000 small details it takes to make sure your site stays online.
We also give you all the additional tools you would expect from a top tier web host:
- 📧 Fully functional email – You can send and receive email using your own domain. yourname@example.com just sounds better than the alternative doesn’t it? We provide SMTP, MX, and IMAP services.
- 🌐 World wide DNS servers – With DNS servers in the US, Germany, and Singapore your DNS lookups will be closer to your users so your page load times will be faster.
- 🔐 Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates – The days of updating SSL certificates are over. You can check the Let’s Encrypt button and have our dashboard take care of the rest.
- 🗃 Point and click database management – Create a database (MariaDB or PostgreSQL) and configure the permissions or change the password without ever leaving the dashboard.
- ⚒️ REST API – Automate all of your server tasks with our amazing API.
- Plus you can install custom applications (or use the ones we’ve built installers for already 🐍🐘✏️).
If you want to run a WordPress site, an e-commerce store, a Django app, another Rails based application, and Mastodon server you can.
You can sell your community swag and run Mastodon all from the same account — you don’t need a separate host for every site!
Or you could go with a fully managed Mastodon host and just get a single Mastodon server.
Location, location, location.
Oh, and, you can chose to run your server in any one of these cities across the globe:
- San Francisco/Fremont, CA 🇺🇸
- Dallas, TX 🇺🇸
- Atlanta, GA 🇺🇸
- Dulles, Virginia 🇺🇸
- Newark, NJ 🇺🇸
- Toronto, Canada 🇨🇦
- London, UK 🇬🇧
- Frankfurt, Germany 🇩🇪
- Singapore 🇸🇬
- Mumbai, India 🇮🇳
- Tokyo, Japan 🇯🇵
- Sydney, Australia 🇦🇺
But, the server location can vary by plan. (VPS and Dedicated plans are available in more cities than Shared plans.)
If data residency is important to you then you can host your Mastodon server in Germany and know that none of your data will ever leave the country. We also have email servers in Germany (and the US) so even your email will be stored in the EU.
Do you have users in the APAC (Asia-Pacific) region? Perfect, you can host your Mastodon server in Singapore, Tokyo, or Sydney (we also have name servers located in Singapore so your DNS lookups will be fast 🚀).
Which plan should you chose?
If you are just getting started running a Mastodon server then you should start with our 1GB Single Stack plan.
If you think your community will continue to grow then it’s best to start with a 4G VPS which can grow with you vertically (more storage, memory, and CPU with a quick upgrade).
If you have a large, growing community where media processing and speed are your main concerns then a Dedicated Server is where you should start (you get all those cores and RAM to yourself).
And if you want to run multiple Mastodon servers? Go for it. You can add more plans to your account and then scale them individually. It’s easy for you to give each Mastodon server the exact resources it needs.
Details for all plans and pricing are available at: https://opalstack.com/pricing.html
Is Mastodon hosting available right now? Other hosts have disable signups.
Yes Mastodon hosting is available right now. You can deploy your own Mastodon server right now. If you already have an account then you can jump into the dashboard and install it now at https://my.opalstack.com/apps/. More information is available at:
If you don’t have an account sign up now to deploy your own Mastodon server!