I have written about moving my blog from Blot.im to Eleventy and Netlify (free), shutting down my Mastodon server to just use mastodon.social (free), and shutting down my other Ghost blog and bringing it into this blog (free). This change frees up about $30/month. Not an insignificant amount of money. But not paying for things made me feel kinda weird?
Cost was a reason, but not the only reason I made these changes. I'm not one of those people who refuses to pay for apps and services. I want to support high quality software and software developers, especially if they are the right solution for me and saves me time and effort. I pay for a lot of services—too many really—but I want to be more mindful of who I'm supporting with my money and why. I realized that I should do more to make sure the right people are getting my money.
Running my own Mastodon instance, Linode was getting my money, not Mastodon. Running my own Ghost blog, Digital Ocean was getting my money, not Ghost. Rather than paying to host free services, I wanted to support the development of them instead. Mastodon and Eleventy are pretty critical pieces in my personal infrastructure now. So this week I have started donating monthly to Mastodon and Eleventy.
I'm not saying this just to toot my own horn—but I'm not not doing that. I'm saying more to point out that if we find value in something, and we have the means, maybe actually put some money into it.