LowEndSpirit Is Not a For-Profit Site and Will Never Be Pay-to-Play
Due to recent changes in related communities, I'd like to take this time to remind our visitors that LowEndSpirit is NOT a for-profit website nor will ever be in the future while under @mikho and my dual ownership. LES also does not and will never charge hosting providers nor community members to participate here.
These are some areas that set LES apart:
Our costs are transparent. I've outlined our specific costs to operate this site. Comes out to ~$30/mo and some change (3x Hetzner VMs ~$15/mo, monthly runcloud sub $15/mo, yearly mailcheap email hosting ~$2/mo). All of which I'm paying out of my own pocket without any issue.
Our ownership is transparent. @mikho and myself have full control over LES and its properties. We do not run LES as a business, but as a community-focused discussion space. We are the only admins at the moment, no moderators.
No membership fees... ever. We will never charge our members to participate here -- business-owners and private individuals alike. Doing so would be counterproductive to our goal of fostering a welcoming and all-inclusive community. Our ideas for generating revenue to fund development or pay for content have always been non-intrusive donations or sponsorships of blog posts from providers (i.e. "this month's technical blog post brought to you by TwonkRacks").
Ad-free. We don't have ads and won't be adding them. Period.
Community-powered Decisions. We believe before making any decision that impacts the community at-large, the first step is to gather input from those that will be impacted. Many many many feedback threads have been posted over the past couple years to gather community feedback to drive our decisions here at LES.
Feel free to reach out to me directly with any questions or concerns.
Cheers,
-Mason
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Happy to be here. I lurk mostly on LET but the surprise $100 invoice in the inbox left a bad taste. Seemed too urgent and desperate for comfort.
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The legend himself. Welcome, Sir!
Head Janitor @ LES • About • Rules • Support
So, LES is going to F2P route ? pay $100 for a chance to obtain shiny top ultra mega rare provider tag.
Current plan is to introduce loot boxes, but they'll have super shittly low-end prizes. Like free 3 day shared hosting trial, one of those ancient off-white IBM keyboards (you pay shipping), and a NFT for that picture of a server in a cardboard box at FDC
Head Janitor @ LES • About • Rules • Support
Where can I donate? I can't afford a marketing budget so I can only donate to support communities I enjoy,
ExtraVM
Can't agree more. I've seen open source projects live and sound with donation programs. Put a $1/month sponsor button for us to show support for the community.
UpCloud free $25 through this aff link - Akamai, DigitalOcean and Vultr alternative, multiple location, IPv6.
I just set this up at Donorbox as I was just using my personal PayPal in the past. Should make things easier as I've used Donorbox for a gaming group in the past with good success. A thousand thanks and heaps of appreciation to all who donate.
https://donorbox.org/lowendspirit-donations
Head Janitor @ LES • About • Rules • Support
This actually might be worth something.
Bunch of weirdos /they/ are. Wish I could delete my LET account altogether.
Michael from DragonWebHost & OnePoundEmail
👏🏻 Bravo
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That's the spirit!
That’s the LowEnd spirit !
FTfY
———-
blog | exploring visually |
Woohooo! $22k/year seems a bit excessive to me from LET, maybe they need to start thinking with the Low End Spirit
Thanks @Mason and @mikho! Providing value to all community members with costs so low that donations and personal contributions are enough to keep the forum afloat
Not to toot my own horn, but Beep, Beep!
Sent a donation, matching the provider tag …
LES is more!
“Technology is best when it brings people together.” – Matt Mullenweg
This. Done.
Good work, @Mason & @mikho!
It would be interesting to see the (change in the) analytics of LES in a week from the announcement on LET.
You can, just say under GDPR and they push the button 😂 stick the ticket in and heck I’ll even do it for you. DM me first before you send the ticket so I can be on to grab it.
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While most of the community members are here (as can be seen from the thanks list), it seems that the spirit of the original community is lost in forum transitions such as this and I don't think this place would become active just because of this. Maybe providers need to run some specials just for this community to increase engagement (yes, that sounded Biloh-esque but it's coming from a good place).
Sorry to hijack this thread but what are the requirements for the OG tag? I'd like one too and I feel I meet the requirements.
It was/is for the first group of people who signed up.
I totally see your point here.
Thats kind of how the userbase increased in LET middle-age. (Can’t say early days, since it was another interest back then).
“Technology is best when it brings people together.” – Matt Mullenweg
Thanks @Mason and @mikho
Transparancy goes a long way to keeping things as a community.
Appreciate the hard work you put in. Happy to help support things where possible.
Hats off for the decision
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(Not affiliated with the Russian Handyhost Website in any way.)
Faith in LowEnd community restored
Why?
You help by being an active part of the community.. 👍
)
we love the users here (even if some push our limit
Be active, post answers, help others, ask questions, be curious.
This is a couple of things you can do that only ”cost” a little bit of your time.
And if time is limited, there is the donor option.
We will, in light of transparancy, disclose the amount of donations.
At this moment, we wont disclose the name of the donors. To avoid feeding that ”we and them” feeling that might grow.
We don’t make a difference if you donate or not.
We are all a part of this community and the bread and butter which makes it a better place.
https://donorbox.org/lowendspirit-donations
“Technology is best when it brings people together.” – Matt Mullenweg
Thank you for the disclosure @Mason.
Finally decided to join.
Donated.
[ IncogNET LLC ] - Privacy By Design
We believe that privacy and freedom of expression are two very important things, so we offer solutions to accessing and publishing content safely.
[ USA: Liberty Lake, WA | Kansas City, MO | Allentown, PA ] [EU: Naaldwijk, NL ] [ CL Shared | KVM VPS | VPN | Dedicated Servers | Domain Names ]
Welp, here we go
Just joined LES - was thinking to join already from a long time.
I really like the transparency here, and personally believe that the cost of running the forums shouldn't be too much.
I myself have run different forum communities for many years that were related to gaming, which were really active.