Funding

Running a full-featured, highly available, and performant Mastodon server, costs money. We don't have investors, run ads, or sell your data. vmst.io is funded by the membership of the server. Without you, we don't exist.

While access to your account does not require a paid subscription, for those that can afford it, we have options to help cover the cost of our operations.

Ko-Fi

Monthly subscriptions with Ko-Fi have the lowest fees and are our preferred funding method.

Patreon

Subscriptions through Patreon have higher fees than our other options but are still welcomed.

Stripe

You can also make one-time contributions directly through Stripe.

PayPal

We're also happy to take your money through PayPal.

We have some stylish merchandise available through Cotton Bureau, featuring our "Toots In / Toots Out" logo. T-shirts, sweatshirts, and tank tops, starting at $25.

Benefits

Keeping vmst.io online costs on average about $2 per active member. The ideal situation would be for every active user to be a subscriber for that amount, but we recognize that's not always possible. The real difference between the tiers is how much you feel your usage of the platform is worth.

Everyone who helps fund our operations gets their first contribution posted by our @funding. bot.

All tiers get the "Subscriber" badge on the user profile visible to other vmst.io members.
Those who sign up for the Blue tier or higher will always be included in a recurring shoutout post by @vmstan.

Members who provide financial support are still subject to the same rules of the road that all members must follow.

Subscriber Badge

The vmst.io Subscriber badge is only visible to other vmst.io users through the Mastodon Web interface, Elk, Phanpy, or other third-party clients that may support viewing badges. Non-vmst.io users will not see your status regardless of their client choice (unless they view your account profile directly from our servers) as these badges are not federated to other servers.

The process of adding the Subscriber badge to account profiles is currently not automated, so please allow us a couple of days after you activate your subscription to add the profile badge. We make an attempt to identify the subscriber based on the name and e-mail address provided by the subscription platforms. If we cannot positively identify your account, we may contact you via the relevant payment platform.

If you've not seen your subscription appear within a reasonable amount of time, reach out privately to @vmstan.

Processing Fees

We want you to make an informed choice about how you spend your money to help support vmst.io. Each of our providers has different rates, and some vary based on the size of your support.

Frontend	Transaction
Patreon	8% per donation & 5% + $0.10 under $3 or 2.9% + $0.30
Ko-Fi	$6 flat fee per month & 2.9% + $0.30 in fees

An example of how far your donation goes based on each monthly tier:

	$2.00		$4.00		$8.00
Patreon	$1.64	18%	$3.26	18%	$6.83	15%
Ko-Fi	$1.64	18%	$3.58	10%	$7.47	7%

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Rules

We want to foster an environment where people of all types and stripes feel welcome. Fundamentally we require all of our members to treat others with respect, even when there is disagreement.