Why 10% of every fee goes upstream

The mechanics, plainly

Every month we total what was billed for the accounts running each open-source project we host, and send ten percent of that total to the project — through whichever donation channel its maintainers have already set up, whether that's a foundation, a sponsorship page, or a fund one of the maintainers runs themselves. Ten percent of revenue for that project, not ten percent of company profit, and not a number calculated against something smaller so it looks the same on paper but pays out less.

If your account runs more than one app — say, Nextcloud and Vaultwarden on the same plan — the ten percent from your invoice is split across both, in proportion to what you're actually running. Neither project gets diluted by the other being on the same account; the math is per app, then summed.

A worked example, using our own prices

It's easier to see as numbers than as a rule. These are our actual published tiers, not a hypothetical:

Sixty-six cents doesn't sound like a headline. It isn't meant to — it's meant to be exactly the number the arithmetic produces, not a rounder figure chosen because it looks better. On the App Stack tier, if you're actually running Nextcloud, Vaultwarden and Uptime Kuma rather than three copies of one app, that's roughly €0.66 to each of three different projects, every month, for as long as your account is active. Multiply that by however many accounts run each app across the whole customer base, and it stops being a rounding error.

What counts as "the fee"

The base subscription for the tier you're on, plus anything billed alongside it that's specific to that account — an add-on storage upgrade, for instance. It does not include unrelated line items on the same invoice, like a domain registration bundled in for convenience, since that revenue has nothing to do with the open-source project you're running. And it's calculated on what actually clears: a payment that fails or gets refunded doesn't generate a share to send anywhere, because there's no real revenue underneath it to take ten percent of.

Where it goes when there's nowhere to send it

Most of what we host has a clear destination for this already — a nonprofit foundation behind the project, an official sponsorship page, or a maintainer-run fund. A few projects, especially smaller ones, don't have that set up yet. For those, we hold that specific project's share in a running total rather than quietly folding it back into general revenue, and we say plainly that it's sitting there unsent. The alternative — paying it to whoever happens to have a donate button, regardless of what you're actually running — would be easier to administer and worse to explain.

Why we publish it

A percentage you can't see is a marketing line. A percentage you can see is a constraint on us. Publishing the monthly total is what makes "ten percent, no catch" different from an asterisk — it's the difference between trusting a claim and being able to check one. This isn't a stance we take because it costs us nothing; it's a stance we take because it costs us something and we'd rather that cost be visible than quietly optional.

Why don't more hosts do this

Not because it's hard to build — collecting revenue by project and wiring a percentage of it out monthly is bookkeeping, not engineering. It's a permanent reduction in margin with no quarter in which it shows up as a win on a spreadsheet, and publishing the number invites the obvious next question: why wasn't this happening already? Neither of those is a technical obstacle. It's a choice about where money that used to just be margin goes, and most hosting companies — ours included, before we set this up — default to keeping it, because nothing forces the alternative.

An invitation, if you maintain one of these projects

If you maintain Matomo, Listmonk, Nextcloud, Vaultwarden, Uptime Kuma, Gitea, Jitsi, Mattermost, Grafana, Wiki.js, or another open-source project we might end up hosting, and there currently isn't anywhere for a monthly transfer to land, tell us through the ticket link below. We'd rather send it to a channel you point us to than hold it in a running total waiting for one to appear.

FAQ

How is the 10% calculated?

Ten percent of what we invoice for the accounts running a given project, that month — not ten percent of company profit, not an average smeared across every product we sell. If a hundred accounts run Nextcloud this month, ten percent of exactly what those hundred accounts were billed goes to Nextcloud, before anything else is subtracted from that revenue.

Which projects receive it?

Whichever open-source project your account is actually running: Matomo, Listmonk, Nextcloud, Vaultwarden, Uptime Kuma, Gitea, Jitsi, Mattermost, Grafana or Wiki.js. If your account runs more than one, the ten percent from your invoice is split across them proportionally to what you're running, so combining apps never dilutes any single project's share.

Why don't other hosts do this?

Because it's a permanent cut of margin with no quarter in which it shows up as a win, and because publishing the number invites the follow-up question of why it wasn't happening already. Neither of those is a technical obstacle — plenty of hosts could do exactly this tomorrow. It's a choice about where the money that used to just be margin goes, and most companies, ours included until we decided otherwise, default to keeping it.

Can I direct my share?

Not yet, in the sense of picking a project other than the one you're actually hosting — the ten percent follows the app running on your account, which is the part we can calculate honestly without guessing at your intent. If you run several apps, you're already directing your share across all of them by choosing what to run. A finer-grained choice than that is something we're open to if enough people ask for it.