Heliohost Finances

[HelioHost]

HelioHost has decided to be more transparent about our financial situation. The fact of the matter is we're running out of money pretty quickly. It costs us nearly $600.00 USD each month to continue providing great free hosting to people from all around the world. We've been doing this for 12 years now, but the last 2 years we've lost money. The advertising revenue just isn't keeping up with the bills anymore. Rather than slowly dwindle and fade into history we've decided to fight back by buying a new server, and expanding/improving our service. December of 2016 has been our most profitable month in years, and it was because of all of you, our users. We never had any idea that you all could be so generous with your donations.

 

Thank you so much. It has given us quite a bit of hope and a renewed sense of purpose to continue.

 

The fact of the matter however, is we've been in the red for quite a while now, and the money we have in our accounts won't keep us operational forever. It is very expensive to operate a webhosting service, and our only sources of income have always been advertising and donations. Not everyone can afford to pay for hosting. We understand. That's why we believe in what we do, but if you're fortunate enough to be able help us stay in business we would really appreciate anything you can spare. We can receive donations via Paypal or Skrill sent to the address admin@heliohost.org.

 

In order to keep our faithful users updated on our status we've created a new graphic that shows exactly where we stand for the month. If we don't reach our goal we lose money, and we take a step towards going out of business. If we reach the goal by the end of the month we stay in business for at least a month longer. It's as simple as that. If we exceed our goal you can be certain we're going to put all of our profits into providing even better service and maybe even buying more servers in the future. Nobody is getting rich off of HelioHost. We're all volunteers, but we love what we do, and we hope you appreciate what we provide without a price tag.

[nyten]

It's not visible anymore

[Byron]

When it's not visible, it means we've reached our goal for the month.

[nzgeek00]

Do you have a mechanism in place to automatically renew the hosting accounts associated with regular donors?  If so, what is the most effective way to make a recurring donation?

Since Johnny died, I've been considering starting over on Tommy (and, when available, Lily).

[wolstech]

We currently have no way to accept recurring donations, though it may be possible for a donor to set something up on PayPal. It's worth noting that Tommy accounts don't need continued donations to keep them. It only needs to be logged into once a month.

 

We have considered a few ideas such as a credit system where you earn points for various things like donating, helping on the forums, etc. in the past but haven't implemented any of them. Using said points to "buy" a few months of exemption from the 30-day login requirement was one idea that was floated. The big thing we were trying to figure out is how to balance it all. We want anything that's offered for pay/donation to also be obtainable for free with reasonable effort (think about how tommy accounts are now).

[Krydos]

Setting up a recurring donation is easy. Just go to https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=P63828V7WFM54 and check the box labeled "make this a monthly donation" and then proceed with the donation.