Mastodon is free and open-source software for running self-hosted social networking services. It has micro-blogging features similar to Twitter, which are offered by a large number of independently run Mastodon Servers (technically known as instances), each with its own code of conduct, terms of service, privacy options, and moderation policies.

Benefits of Having Your Own Mastodon Server:

• Build a community of users around your brand or topic.
• Moderate posts on your server. You can block any user, either on your server or on any other Mastodon server!
• Connect to any user on any Mastodon server (over 4,000 servers). You can search for like-minded users and invite them to participate in your community.
• No ads! Unless you choose to, no ads will be shown to the members of your community.
• Mastodon is part of the Fediverse which is the future of decentralized social networks. Having your own Mastodon server positions you for the future which is how social networking will work instead of corporately owned central networks that use algorithms to determine your content feed and generate ad revenue from your content.
• The Zojax Mastodon installation fee of $500 ($250 for non-profit organizations) and monthly ongoing costs of $24 from Digital Ocean means that even small organizations can have their own micro-blogging platform.
• Whether you are a large company, a political party, an international news agency, an NGO or a government institution, you should consider having your own Mastodon server with all technical issues handled by Zojax.

Having your own Mastodon micro blogging server means you are in control of content delivered to your users.

Zojax offers a turn-key Mastodon server installation.

• Mastodon server software installed on your server or a hosting service like Amazon or Digital Ocean.
• DNS configuration
• SMTP mail configuration
• Initial Mastodon Server Configuration
• 30 Days support and consulting on how to use Mastodon
• Help in configuring your content feeds

The cost of the service is $500 ($250 for non-profit organizations) with a turnaround time of 24 hours.

Ongoing Costs

Example: Digital Ocean VM (virtual machine) instance.

Digital Ocean recommends a VM instance of:

• 4 GB RAM
• 2 AMD CPU’s
• 80 GB SSD
• 4 GB Transfer
• Cost: $24 per month

This VM can be used not only for your Mastodon server but for any web applications including your current web site.