title: Running your own server description: menu: docs:
weight: 9999
parent: user
{{< hint style="warning" >}} 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. {{< /hint >}}
Here is what you need:
How to get: Namecheap, Gandi, any of the infinite number of domain name registrars. Comes with a yearly cost that varies depending on domain name choice.
How to get: DigitalOcean, Hetzner, Exoscale, Scaleway, any of the infinite number of hosting providers. Comes with a monthly or yearly cost that varies depending on hardware specifications.
How to get: Mailgun, SparkPost, Postmark, Sendgrid, any of the infinite number of e-mail hosting providers that expose a SMTP API. Comes with a monthly cost based on volume of e-mails sent.
How to get: Amazon S3, Exoscale, Wasabi, Google Cloud, anything that exposes either an S3-compatible or OpenStack Swift-compatible API. Comes with a monthly cost based on the amount of files stored as well as how often they are accessed.
There exist a number of dedicated Mastodon hosting providers that take care of many if not all of the above requirements, that you can choose if you're interested in someone else taking care of all the technical stuff. Usually you still need to buy your own domain name though. Some of such providers are:
{{< caption-link url="https://masto.host" caption="Masto.host" >}}
{{< caption-link url="https://hostdon.jp" caption="Hostdon" >}}
{{< caption-link url="https://app.spacebear.ee/mastodon" caption="Spacebear" >}}
{{< caption-link url="https://ossrox.org" caption="Ossrox" >}}
{{< caption-link url="https://weingaertner-it.de" caption="Weingärtner IT" >}}
{{< caption-link url="https://fedi.monster/" caption="Fedi.monster" >}}
{{< caption-link url="https://cloudplane.org" caption="Cloudplane" >}}
{{< caption-link url="https://ungleich.ch/u/products/mastodon-hosting/" caption="ungleich.ch" >}}
Managed hosting solutions are great for those who do not have experience or desire to install and maintain software. However, being in charge of all components on your own hardware gives greater control over scaling, performance and customization.
We provide a DigitalOcean 1-Click Install Image that you can put on a DigitalOcean droplet of your choosing which essentially gives you everything you would otherwise have after following our installation instructions through an interactive setup wizard.
{{< caption-link url="https://marketplace.digitalocean.com/apps/mastodon" caption="Mastodon 1-Click Install Image on DigitalOcean" >}}
That however does assume a single-machine setup. Mastodon scales quite well horizontally. If your needs outgrow the capacity of a single machine, Mastodon can be divided into multiple app servers, background workers, multiple Redis backends, PostgreSQL replicas -- but 1-click install won't cut it.
If you're interested in installing everything on your own, proceed here:
{{< page-ref page="admin/prerequisites" >}}