Consider this service End Of Life

I started this service because I want it to be easier for people to have their own instance. But I fear that I got in a bit over my head. The fact is that I have a job and that I the experience that I have in hosting is simply not adequate. I've been hosting for myself for several years, and I have a few public services I maintain. But when you host for other people, you make a commitment. The fact is that I couldn't live up to it. I would still like to see it be easier for others to have their own fedi instance. But the fact is that I feel much more comfortable in my role as a developer, so maybe I can make a difference there.

I am sorry it has to end like this.

Thank you everyone who has joined me on this journey!

If you are looking for other managed hosting services for fedi servers, check these out. If you'd like to do managed hosting for Akkoma, please do!

The fediverse is a collection of social network platforms. One thing these platforms have in commons is that they allow connections beyond their own borders.

Let's say that Alice, who has an account on outerheaven.club, wants to talk to Mary, who doesn't have an account there, but does have an account on a different platform, namely snowdin.town. On traditional social media platforms, this would be impossible without creating an account on this other platform. And to follow what Mary posts, Alice would now have to keep track of timelines on two separate apps, that's crazy!

This is where the strength of the fediverse comes in. Instead of trying to lock their users on their own platform, platforms work together and allow cross-platform communication. Alice can search for Mary from her own outerheaven.club account, and then message or follow Mary. Neither of them need to leave the platform they are on, and neither need to create multiple accounts just to connect to each other.

People involved in the fediverse generally believe that decentralisation of social media can help in countering many problems we see in traditional social media today. But such decentralisation implies many platforms, and not everyone wants to become a system administrator.

The aim of this project is to allow people to run their own platform for themselves and maybe a handful of friends, while offloading the technical aspects of installing, running and maintaining the software and machine it runs on.

Akkoma is a software which, once installed, provides you with a micro blogging platform who is part of the wider fediverse. A platform which is part of the fediverse, is also often called an “instance”. Through this project, you can request your own Akkoma instance for yourself and maybe a handful of friends.

The project is supported by donations. One advantage is that this gives a lot less overhead since payments don't need to be tracked. On the other hand it's an extra risk, because without enough donations, the project simply wont last.

The aim is to provide an Akkoma instance for one or a few people. While the price is pay-what-you-want, a price of €6/month for an instance seems reasonable for a small, starting instance and should be able to at least cover expenses and eventually support this project's secondary goals, namely supporting Akkoma, the wider fediverse, and in general the concepts of cooperation. You can read more on the roadmap.

When instances grow older, more resources may be required due to increased database size and connections to other instances. This may eventually imply higher costs and thus a higher suggested price. For reference, I'm running my instance for over 4 years now, and €6/month is still more than enough to cover the cost of resources.

THERE ARE NO GUARANTEES WHATSOEVER REGARDING UPTIME, CONTINUATION OR QUALITY OF SERVICE, OR ANYTHING ELSE!

It's this project's goal to do our best to provide a good service, but it's really a one-person project, 100% in my free time, and fully dependent on the donations it receives. Please take that into account. If worst comes to pass and I decide to stop this service, I will try to give at least a three months notice, but I'm not making promises whatsoever.

The offer of the service may change in the future, but here's how I currently see it:

• You get an Akkoma instance
  • The provided front ends are Akkoma's flavour of Pleroma-fe and Admin-fe
• Hosted in the EU
• A weekly job purges old threads from the database. Threads with local or recent interaction wont be deleted.
• Regular back-ups
  • You can also request a backup if you want to move out for example.
• You are expected to have your own domain, you'll need to add a CNAME or ALIAS records.
  • If funds allow, a free subdomain will be possible.
• By default there's no mailer enabled, you can do that from the admin-fe.

If you want to migrate an existing instance to this service, you can ask, and we'll see what can be done.

If you are interested in having your own Akkoma instance like this, please send the following via mail, filled in, to hosting@ilja.space. Please consider donating money as it helps ensure the feasibility and survival of this project. The suggested price is €6/month for an instance.

Note that, at the moment, you're expected to get your own domain. If funds allow, we may get a domain for the project and provide free of charge subdomains, but we're not there yet.

From: <your_contact_email>
To: hosting@ilja.space
Subject: New Akkoma instance <my.domain.tld>

Hello cool people!

I'd like to have an Akkoma instance provided by hosting@ilja.space

* I have my own (sub)domain to use for the instance, <my.domain.tld>. I have properly set up the DNS records already[1]. I understand that nothing else can be hosted on the (sub)domain.
* My contact email is <your_contact_email> and is the same one as I used to send this mail from. This may be used to contact me, be used for the admin account, and be used as the general contact for the instance (i.e. when a contact is asked during Akkoma setup, this mail address will be provided).
* I understand that THERE ARE NO GUARANTEES WHATSOEVER REGARDING UPTIME, CONTINUATION OR QUALITY OF SERVICE, OR ANYTHING ELSE!
* I understand that this is a pay-what-you-can service, but that €6/month for an instance is a good price to keep the service financially healthy[2].
* I understand that I can follow hosting@ilja.space on fedi for updates about the service, updates on planned downtime, etc.
* I have read and agree with the privacy policy[3] and terms of service[4].


[1] We point to a subdomain of the form akkoma-<yourdomain-but-with-dashes-instead-of-dots-or-underscores>.ilja.space.
If your domain is example.net and you want to use the subdomain fedi.example.net, then please set the following CNAME record for your domain
```
fedi 900 IN CNAME akkoma-fedi-example-net.ilja.space.
```

If you use the domain example.net directly, you need to use an ALIAS record instead
```
@ 900 IN ALIAS akkoma-example-net.ilja.space.
```

[2] Donation possibilities: https://hosting.ilja.space/start#donate

[3] Privacy Policy: https://hosting.ilja.space/wiki:privacy_policy

[4] Terms of Service: https://hosting.ilja.space/wiki:terms_of_service

Kind regards,

See the deeper parts of this wiki if you like tumbling down rabbit holes ૮₍ ˃ ᵕ ˂ ₎ა

If you are interested in a similar fedi service, but don't think this project is a good fit for you, check out what other managed fedi hosting projects there are.

Questions, remarks, etc. can be done through hosting@ilja.space either via mail or fedi.

The following are ways to donate money to the project. If you wish to donate through other means, please let it now and I'll see what I can do. To have an idea of current expenditures and income, see our Money page.

BTC: bc1qanet5ek94vffc8tvkpg60nw8caqkwpnymyrugq
Liberapay: https://liberapay.com/HostingAtIljaSpace/