Cost Overview
Income
The majority of our income comes from monthly subscriptions through Ko-Fi and Patreon.
Any other funding that comes through one-time tips or shop purchases are also represented below.
| Subscriptions | $426 per month |
| Tips & Merch | $1298 total |
Numbers reflect raw donation numbers in USD, not reflective of Patreon or Stripe fees and/or exchange rates.
Last Updated: October 5, 2023.
Expenses
At the moment all of our staff are volunteers, and our only expenses are monthly bills to our various server providers.
| Vendor | Monthly |
|---|---|
| DigitalOcean | $540 |
| Elastic | $44 |
| AWS | $1 |
Money is set aside to cover any tax expenses, or unforeseen costs. Additional funds have also been used to make donations to open source software projects that we use, such as Mastodon and Elk.
We also periodically test different service offerings to decide if their long term use would be a good fit. After a period of review and testing, we may discontinue such offerings if they do not contribute to the community as shown by use.
Last Updated: April 1, 2024.
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 have 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% |