

Mastodon needs to send confirmation links and various notifications through e-mail, and hosting your own SMTP server, while possible, is much more difficult to do reliably than to simply use a third-party provider. Comes with a monthly or yearly cost that varies depending on hardware specifications.Īn e-mail provider. How to get: DigitalOcean, Hetzner, Exoscale, Scaleway, any of the infinite number of hosting providers. Something that will run the Mastodon code that will always be connected to the internet.

Comes with a yearly cost that varies depending on domain name choice.Ī VPS. How to get: Namecheap, Gandi, any of the infinite number of domain name registrars. This is how you and others will access your server and how you and your users will be identified on the network. So you want to run your own Mastodon serverĪ domain name. Please mind that providing a public internet service involves moderation work and community management, and that such work becomes more complicated the larger your server grows. So you want to run your own Mastodon server.Why would you want to run your own Mastodon server?.Bug bounties and responsible disclosure.
