So I've been reviewing our server plan here at QOTO to figure ut an upgrade plan...
The mastodon instance itself runs on a 32 gig memory system that is maxed out and thats costing me about 120/month. The bulk of that cost is the result of our very high federation count (we are the top 20 most federated english servers). We have to process so many external statuses it costs a lot of resources. the advantage means when someone posts your posts federates to the maximum number of public feeds possible, so our users have one of the largest voices in the fediverse. It also means we have a huge database of text searchable toots going back years.
If we want to maintain that level of federation the next step is to double our server costs up to 240$ /month. Thats just for the main mastodon server. Our NextCloud, PeerTube, Gitlab, Funkwhale, and other auxiliary services add somewhere to the tune of 500$ / month on top of that.
I guess this is the price of fame :)
Yes, indeed. Mastodon is pre-historic, as the chosen name says. Move on with the times, there are better alternatives.