Web Presence

Social Media

• tbd: link to FB
• tbd: link to Twitter
• tbd: link to ...

Real-Time Chat

Slack (current solution)

• For us limiting the slack to 250/under overall users would be against our mission.
• Slack has been a great tool for us, and pretty dang reliable
• It's not a replacement for Google Groups
• I don't know if Discord would be a replacement for Slack
• If we had to pay for Slack it would not be worth it to our organization
• The more social platforms we have the more fractured the memberbase becomes

Drawbacks

• 3 months of slack history (regardless of the 10,000 message count)

Pricing

• if we have less then 250 members, the slack instance would be free
• “weekly active members” seems to be around the 40-55 range
• Looks like slack doesn’t charge for “inactive” members. https://slack.com/help/articles/218915077-Slacks-Fair-Billing-Policy
• their regular price after the increase would be around $4350 per year, or $652.50 ... $55 a month basically ... (for 50 users)
• “Pro Plan: We offer workspaces with 250 or fewer members a free upgrade, and an 85% discount for workspaces above that size.” [ed: for non-profits]

Element.io

• Jitsi Integration
• End-to-End Encryption

Discord

• "I will say Discord's own tos and coc is kind of a dumpster fire..." (seen on our Slack)

Discussion Forum

Google Groups (current solution)

Big Features

• Bi-Directional Email Sync

Drawbacks

• Q: Do we have limited retention on Google Groups, like Slack?
• A: No. (to the best of my knowledge. -Jot)

Wiki

Current

MediaWiki 1.19 (ca 2012)

Coming Soon

"I've threatened to upgrade before, but this time I mean it!" - Bob Bushman, Summer 2022

Office Suite

Current

Google Docs

Big Features

• Integration with Google Groups and Google Calendar.

Cloud Hosting Provider

"I suggest that anything hosted in the cloud NOT be created/hosted under an individual’s account. A HSL owned account should be created and everything placed under that." - Jeff Sittler

"I prefer not to run images. If we use our own deploy process we are free to lift and shift to another provider." - Bob Bushman

Big 3

Google

I think that's the right link. I couldn't find bare Linux servers.

"We can get $400 of free credit (for 90 days I think) to play with it if people are interested. I could create the VMs and then setup access so configuration/installation could be." - Jot Powers

• Pre-built versions can be deployed. Estimated cost is <$5/month. Bitnami Mediawiki bundle on Ubuntu

Microsoft

"I don't know how many Azure folks we have but the lab has $2,500 / year free there too. I can certainly get anyone started but we would need more than one person for the reasons already mentioned" - Eric W

I can't figure out how to get a straight price or HDD size for bare Linux instances from their interface. - Bob Bushman

Provider Comparison Table

To try to get comparables, I picked the least expensive 2 GB instance. I run 1 GB instances for my wikis, but I figure HSL will have more load.

Prices are based on month-to-month pricing.

"To me, Namecheap is the right choice because they are local, use RAID 10, and because of their principles. I already use them for DNS, and as a result of this dive into their principles, I'm going to start shifting my personal hosting there." - Bob Bushman

Provider	VPS Plan	Monthly Price	vCPU Cores	RAM	HDD	Data Xfer per Month	Notes
Aquatis	KVM - 2G	$5.00	2 Cores	2 GB	10 GB SSD	1 TB	Small Storage, Out of Stock, could not confirm price is month-to-month
Interserver	VPS 1	$6.00	1 Core	2 GB	30 GB SSD	2 TB	Offers 1-click MediaWiki (though having our own deploy process makes lift & shift easier)
Namecheap	Pulsar	$9.88	2 Cores	2 GB	40 GB SSD RAID 10	1 TB	Phoenix Local, RAID 10, Supports Net Neutrality, Fought Facebook (and settled), Opposes Invasion of Ukraine, Supports Solo Entrepreneurs and Women Entrepreneurs Supports EFF, Supports Privacy
Amazon Lightsail	Virtual Server 3	$10.00	1 Core	2 GB	60 GB SSD	3 TB
NDCHost	Cloud Server #2	$10.00	1 Cores	2 GB	50 GB SSD	2 TB	Listed on EFF as having full support for CertBot.
Google Cloud	LAMP Stack	$12.70	1 Core	2 GB	10 GB	??	Small Storage, offers 1-click Bitnami Mediawiki, price is for LAMP - bare Linux instances are $25.95
Hostinger	VPS2	$12.99	2 Cores	2 GB	40 GB SSD	2 TB	Europe-based (Lithuania)
Spry	SSD KVM Milli	$20.00	2 Cores	2 GB	40 GB SSD	??
Microsoft	Linux VM B1ms	$15.11	1 Core	2 GB	??	??	I cannot find what 4 GiB of "Temporary Storage" is, how much HDD space it comes with, nor how much data transfer is included.