# Moving the forum to a different provider?

**URL:** <https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/moving-the-forum-to-a-different-provider/17751>\
**Category:** Lounge\
**Created:** [2 June 2021 13:22 UTC](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/moving-the-forum-to-a-different-provider/17751 "2021-06-02T13:22:46Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 20\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![laurent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ce7236/32.png) [@laurent](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/u/laurent)\
**Post date:** [2 June 2021 13:22 UTC](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/moving-the-forum-to-a-different-provider/17751/1 "2021-06-02T13:22:46Z")

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It looks like we've been way over the pageview limit over the past few months as normally it's 100k max and we're at 300k:

 ![image](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex028/uploads/cozic/original/2X/e/e06b5a0f36fd220e373ed4aa86441279c6f42283.png)

For now we're on the free open source plan, but to continue being hosted by Discourse it would cost $300 per month and that seems to me like a lot of money just for a forum. Even with that, we'll be at 300k/500k, which means another upgrade might be needed in a year or two.

So I'm wondering what's the best course of action here. Perhaps the forum could be moved elsewhere? Are there any other Discourse providers that charge less or maybe even have free plans for open source projects? Self-hosting I guess would be an option too, but with that traffic I'm not sure we'd save any money. Or maybe just close the forum and move to Reddit or other free online community. Any suggestion would be welcome.

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**Author:** ![meldarionqeusse](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex028/user_avatar/discourse.joplinapp.org/meldarionqeusse/32/5989_2.png) [@meldarionqeusse](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/u/meldarionqeusse)\
**Post date:** [2 June 2021 14:20 UTC](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/moving-the-forum-to-a-different-provider/17751/2 "2021-06-02T14:20:32Z")

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I think Reddit for general discussions, announcements and questions is ideal there's already a small community on reddit.

Discord I think would make sense for more technical discussions but might be more hassle to setup and manage.

Personally I just enjoy hopping on this forum stalking discussions and watchung things that people are creating with/for Joplin and keeping up with the ongoing development. I truly appreciate the work you do and the active helpful community here.

Otherwise not sure if a donation like model that is used by filefreesync would make sense. Which basicalky lets you usenthe software and get updates for a certain amount of time which is linked to your donation. So if let's say I donated £4 it would give me 4 months of automatic software updates if that time passes I can still use the software but to update to new software I would have to donate again. Something like that is fair pricing for me cause I do not have to update every single time but if thereis something exciting in a particular version I would donate to get that update. now I understand that it might not be super-practical with hoe actively Joplin is developed and the fact that it is still maturing. But just my two cents from someone who appreciates good software and who is sick of seen ing crap-ware on iPad which charges a lot of money in monthly subscriptions for inferior software and stale development.

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**Author:** ![rxliuli](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex028/user_avatar/discourse.joplinapp.org/rxliuli/32/4083_2.png) [@rxliuli](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/u/rxliuli)\
**Post date:** [2 June 2021 14:39 UTC](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/moving-the-forum-to-a-different-provider/17751/3 "2021-06-02T14:39:47Z")

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You can try the github discussions

 ![image](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex028/uploads/cozic/original/2X/3/3b655fc87d6ee4085aadbf037066648d1cd998c5.png)

[https://docs.github.com/en/discussions](https://docs.github.com/en/discussions)

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**Author:** ![whitewall](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex028/user_avatar/discourse.joplinapp.org/whitewall/32/6018_2.png) [@whitewall](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/u/whitewall)\
**Post date:** [3 June 2021 05:07 UTC](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/moving-the-forum-to-a-different-provider/17751/4 "2021-06-03T05:07:07Z")

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Wow. Talk about a good news/bad news situation.

I'm sorry I don't have any good suggestions. I'd prefer to continue to have the Discourse forum, but keeping it on the current platform clearly isn't feasible. I don't see Reddit as a good alternative even for announcements.

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**Author:** ![franzperdido](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex028/user_avatar/discourse.joplinapp.org/franzperdido/32/2980_2.png) [@franzperdido](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/u/franzperdido)\
**Post date:** [3 June 2021 07:31 UTC](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/moving-the-forum-to-a-different-provider/17751/5 "2021-06-03T07:31:31Z")

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> [@laurent](#):
>
> Self-hosting I guess would be an option too, but with that traffic I'm not sure we'd save any money.

To get some feeling for the hardware requirements, I did some research on the discourse meta:

> **[Migrating a 10m PI forum - hardware requirements & performance](https://meta.discourse.org/t/migrating-a-10m-pi-forum-hardware-requirements-performance/10075)**
>
> Hi, what kind of hardware setup would you recommend for a large forum with currently 1.2m pages, 300K users and 10m monthly PI? What did you plan for with the hosted discourse server setup at http://blog.discourse.org/2013/04/the-discourse-servers/

Here is another one

> **[1,000,000 pageviews in 2 weeks...! Why? Because Discourse. 🚀](https://meta.discourse.org/t/1-000-000-pageviews-in-2-weeks-why-because-discourse/68891/5)**
>
> I was wrong. Here are the specs: 16 GB / 8CPUs 40GB SSD 6 TB for transfer.

So even for big forums, the hardware requirements are not too bad, I think so I assume that self hosting (in the sense of the server software, not necessarily the hardware) will be much cheaper.

For example, on Hetzner (no affiliation!) for around 100 €/month you get a [dedicated root server](https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/matrix-ax) with

- 12 cores (AMD Ryzen™ 9 3900)
- 128 GB DDR4 ECC
- 2 x 1.92 TB
- unlimited traffic

Edit: One more discussion about performance from the discourse developers: [Performance, Scaling, and HA requirements - #8 by mpalmer - hosting - Discourse Meta](https://meta.discourse.org/t/performance-scaling-and-ha-requirements/60098/8)

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**Author:** ![Ahmad45123](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex028/user_avatar/discourse.joplinapp.org/ahmad45123/32/7714_2.png) [@Ahmad45123](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/u/Ahmad45123)\
**Post date:** [3 June 2021 10:32 UTC](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/moving-the-forum-to-a-different-provider/17751/7 "2021-06-03T10:32:36Z")

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GitHub discussions looks promising.

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**Author:** ![xUser5000](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex028/user_avatar/discourse.joplinapp.org/xuser5000/32/7984_2.png) [@xUser5000](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/u/xUser5000)\
**Post date:** [3 June 2021 11:24 UTC](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/moving-the-forum-to-a-different-provider/17751/8 "2021-06-03T11:24:51Z")

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This might be relevant

> **[Comparison with new GitHub Discussions feature](https://meta.discourse.org/t/comparison-with-new-github-discussions-feature/173432)**
>
> GitHub has a new Discussions feature, which you can see in action here. I’m trying to figure out whether to use Discourse for my software development community or go with the GitHub feature. Has anyone evaluated the differences?

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**Author:** ![Rob](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex028/user_avatar/discourse.joplinapp.org/rob/32/4025_2.png) [@Rob](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/u/Rob)\
**Post date:** [3 June 2021 13:30 UTC](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/moving-the-forum-to-a-different-provider/17751/9 "2021-06-03T13:30:10Z")

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I really like private forums for this purpose, and Discourse in particular. I don't much enjoy Reddit - partly for the interface and partly for the style of interaction it attracts.

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**Author:** ![tessus](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex028/user_avatar/discourse.joplinapp.org/tessus/32/13_2.png) [@tessus](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/u/tessus)\
**Post date:** [3 June 2021 14:38 UTC](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/moving-the-forum-to-a-different-provider/17751/10 "2021-06-03T14:38:11Z")

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I wish we could stay with Discourse. If self-hosting is an option (and it seems there are root servers out there that have unlimited plans), I'm all for it. More than happy to help with admin stuff.

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**Author:** ![JackGruber](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex028/user_avatar/discourse.joplinapp.org/jackgruber/32/3231_2.png) [@JackGruber](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/u/JackGruber)\
**Post date:** [3 June 2021 15:14 UTC](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/moving-the-forum-to-a-different-provider/17751/11 "2021-06-03T15:14:25Z")

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I also think that self-hosting Discourse might be the best solution.  
I would also offer myself as admin.

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**Author:** ![laurent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ce7236/32.png) [@laurent](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/u/laurent)\
**Post date:** [3 June 2021 15:30 UTC](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/moving-the-forum-to-a-different-provider/17751/12 "2021-06-03T15:30:19Z")

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Thanks for the support, doing maintenance on a self hosted instance is actually one of my worry but if there can be three of us with access it might make sense. Not too sure what kind of VPS would be needed for us though. I've read a bit the posts that @franzperdido mentioned and I think we are in the case where a major part of the read views is on a cached content, basically people finding posts via search engines to solve various problems, and those rarely change.

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**Author:** ![laurent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ce7236/32.png) [@laurent](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/u/laurent)\
**Post date:** [3 June 2021 15:32 UTC](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/moving-the-forum-to-a-different-provider/17751/13 "2021-06-03T15:32:40Z")

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That's great they have this now especially if it's free. In our case the issue obviously is that we probably can't import the existing forum content, and I'm thinking we should try to preserve this if possible.

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**Author:** ![james-carroll](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex028/user_avatar/discourse.joplinapp.org/james-carroll/32/28844_2.png) [@james-carroll](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/u/james-carroll)\
**Post date:** [3 June 2021 15:50 UTC](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/moving-the-forum-to-a-different-provider/17751/14 "2021-06-03T15:50:22Z")

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Have you got in touch with Discourse directly about the potential for any discounts? They're likely to offer them (As far as financially constrained open source high profile projects go at least)

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**Author:** ![tessus](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex028/user_avatar/discourse.joplinapp.org/tessus/32/13_2.png) [@tessus](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/u/tessus)\
**Post date:** [3 June 2021 16:07 UTC](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/moving-the-forum-to-a-different-provider/17751/15 "2021-06-03T16:07:15Z")

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> [@laurent](#):
>
> In our case the issue obviously is that we probably can't import the existing forum content,

It should be possible to just backup and restore. Discourse has backups, so I don't see why it shouldn't be possible.

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**Author:** ![laurent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ce7236/32.png) [@laurent](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/u/laurent)\
**Post date:** [3 June 2021 16:15 UTC](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/moving-the-forum-to-a-different-provider/17751/16 "2021-06-03T16:15:25Z")

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For now they haven't contacted me, but if they do I'll indeed ask for a discount. In the meantime I prefer not to contact them and see if we can keep on going on the free plan. Perhaps they'll just tolerate it since indeed it's an open source project, but that may be wishful thinking.

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**Author:** ![itge13](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex028/user_avatar/discourse.joplinapp.org/itge13/32/8126_2.png) [@itge13](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/u/itge13)\
**Post date:** [3 June 2021 16:43 UTC](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/moving-the-forum-to-a-different-provider/17751/17 "2021-06-03T16:43:37Z")

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is there an option on reddit to write even with posts older then a few months? otherwise I also think it is pretty suboptimal for a program with feature requests, updates, addons etc.

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**Author:** ![franzperdido](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex028/user_avatar/discourse.joplinapp.org/franzperdido/32/2980_2.png) [@franzperdido](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/u/franzperdido)\
**Post date:** [3 June 2021 16:54 UTC](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/moving-the-forum-to-a-different-provider/17751/18 "2021-06-03T16:54:16Z")

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I suppose @laurent was talking about not being able to migrate the discourse contents from to github discussions.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![laurent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ce7236/32.png) [@laurent](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/u/laurent)\
**Post date:** [3 June 2021 16:58 UTC](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/moving-the-forum-to-a-different-provider/17751/19 "2021-06-03T16:58:48Z")

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Yes if we move to self hosted Discourse hopefully we can also migrate all content and accounts. We can also keep the same domain since I owe it.

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**Author:** ![thejohnfreeman](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex028/user_avatar/discourse.joplinapp.org/thejohnfreeman/32/7547_2.png) [@thejohnfreeman](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/u/thejohnfreeman)\
**Post date:** [3 June 2021 17:09 UTC](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/moving-the-forum-to-a-different-provider/17751/20 "2021-06-03T17:09:33Z")

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Reddit posts are archived (locked to new comments) after 6 months and there is no option for mods to change that.

My opinion is that different kinds of conversations are served best by different fora:

- Questions and answers for users should go on Stack Overflow (which just got sold; fingers crossed they don't screw it up).
- High quality feature requests, bug reports, and design and implementation discussions should go in GitHub issues.
- Announcements, polls, opinions, and everything else in community management can be served by Discourse, Reddit, or GitHub discussions.

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**Author:** ![rxliuli](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex028/user_avatar/discourse.joplinapp.org/rxliuli/32/4083_2.png) [@rxliuli](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/u/rxliuli)\
**Post date:** [3 June 2021 17:14 UTC](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/moving-the-forum-to-a-different-provider/17751/21 "2021-06-03T17:14:52Z")

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I personally don't fully agree with this. . .

> [@thejohnfreeman](#):
>
> My opinion is that different kinds of conversations are served best by different fora:

[Next page](https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/moving-the-forum-to-a-different-provider/17751.md?page=2)