- I want the project to grow in developers.
- I am afraid that you will eventually get burnt out and leave the project.
- I would also love to have more features and I have been told that for some of the additions I propose you need more developers.
This sounds like paying for dlc on a game lol…
(Me joking there).
I am all for a donation button/reoccurring donation for people that want to give some support (I have very limited funds been disabled) and use Hestia for educational purposes.
I would give a little amount per month to show my support but paying for features goes against what the panel was thought of in the first place (been reading the forums for years and years).
At the moment it’s developed out of love for the developers and there friends but it will become a job when more and more features are paid for…
I personally would love to see the community help in development more to help the developers.
Personally what I am doing is. Bought a old rack server, purchased a few courses on udemy and learning PHP, SQL etc so that some day I may be able to help in some way or another…
Now I have vm’s to learn on (when I am well enough, some days are worse than others).
My age doesn’t help tbh, learning isn’t as easy as it once was. It at least I am trying and I used to program in basic and Pascal back on the day (a little java script aswell) so I have some basic knowledge.
Anyways so this isn’t to much of a wall of text the I am hoping to learn Hestia
I personally don’t give any **** if somebody is unable to donate anything… Also for the users with only 1 server that host for a few friends or even some clients. Use Hestia for free and enjoy it as much as you like.
And every donation and it doesn’t matter if is 1 euro / dollar or changes to Hestia CP < GlotPress or any commits via Github or even a “Thank you” is always appreciated.
But the software there are also a lot of web hosting companies who use HestiaCP on a server with several 100 domains each. It is there full right to use HestiaCP as there main control panel instead Cpanel / Plesk / Directadmin. They still depend on a system that if it has a security issue all the data of their clients / them self are lost. And if their servers got hacked due to an security bug inside Hestia I am sure we will know about it …
They depend on this software for their company. More as I do…
Moving to a different control panel is not a pleasant thing with for example 10 clients. And even worse with 700 clients.
There are users who telling use that “HestiaCP is opensource” so we have to provide him support for free when he needs it. Sorry I have a terrible night and wake up at 8 AM I might not “able” to think and just don’t cry for support…
We also have considered multiple options
- “Paid” access to apt
- “Paid” access to apt server with delayed releases in case of bugs in updates
- “Paid” bonus pack
- Only access to Discord / Forum after an donations / “payment”
- Paid “Premium” Support only.
All of the above options have advantages but mostly disadvantages and most disadvantages are all around extra work / effort.
A lot of users don’t under stand how much effort goes into the development to keep everything up to date…
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Hi All,
I am quit surprise about this topic and the discussion.
There is a wonderful button called Donate on the main guthub page of HestiaCP: Donate. It works just very well – I can confirm. I guess everyone using a browser and having internet connection as well as any credit card on file should be able to use it, too.
HestiaCP is a wonderful help to administrate all basic admin needs on a very nice and a reliable way. I appreciate it very.
@jlguerrero: Just a thought, if you think some good feature should be developed maybe you could start a crowdfunding for exactly this one? Maybe beginning with a pull if there are enough people willing to join? A timetable for such projects would be useful as well I guess, since developing a new feature doesn’t begin and it doesn’t stop with a developer doing his job.
Many, many Thanks to you All making this Panel so great!
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It seems to be no interest in the community in crowdfunding anything. This post was to test that interest. Too little support to make the effort worth it.
I am all for paid and community support.
For those that say it’s open source so you have to provide free support… you have it wrong, they don’t have to give any support… it’s the Devs free time and no-one has the right to free support
But that’s what makes this panel amazing, the Devs give support even though they don’t have to and they keep development upto date with security fixes and adding more and more fixes and features, I have seen them handle difficult and Nasty people and they do it anyway.
You may also think about adding an option to do an install for a fee, for people that can not install it and don’t know how to use SSH etc but then again this can end up been a pain in the arse…
Considering it takes like 20 mins tops to install then it would be easy money
Keep up the good work guys
This is a very interesting discussion and I am happy with the fact that I see it here. I am a supporter for donations with the mentality that I contribute money for what I have right now. Not for what I will need/want in the future. With this thinking, no one should have any higher expectations/demands after donating money to the project.
I like how the team is handling the project. For the core team, Hestia is better to stay as a side project than as a full-time job. Because sometimes you lose your project-vision when you transform a project/hobby into a business. However, the core team should have the funds to hire a contractor/developer to help with specific feature/implementations (like for example the IPv6 we all want, but from what I understand it is a huge-huge effort).
I also like the @falzo idea that we do not want a cPanel alternative with hundreds of features that almost no one uses.
I understand that donations to the project and bounty for new features are two different things that can run in parallel. I mean that someone could donate to the project (1) and at the same time put money in the bounty (2) too for a new feature. Funds from #1 will go to the core team to manage as they think fit and funds from #2 will go to the person developing the new feature. It would also be nice to have an auction style bounty for developers (I don’t know if that’s possible though). Like for example DeveloperA says (s)he needs X€ for the feature, where DeveloperB needs Y€ for the feature. The persons putting funds in the bounty can decide whom to assign the development.
One note on bounties: Before starting the development of a bounty (or even before even starting the bounty), we should have the green light from the core team, that they agree with the implementation of that feature. That way we will avoid situations where funds have been spent on a feature that will never see its way into the main code.
I too agree that to help Hestia the best anyone can do is to contribute their efforts. There are however people way more skilled in getting new customers and/or making shiny new deals (i.e. money bringers) than writing code and debugging systems. That is the main reason that donations/bounties should exist.
It was also mentioned that there are companies using Hestia. I think that in some countries it is hard (or impossible) for a company to donate funds without a tax invoice. However, issued invoices need to have a valid reason/service. It could be something trivial like “Forum/repository access payment for year 2021”, so that those companies do not raise any silly/unreal expectations in the future and avoid situations as @liamgibbins mentioned. As far as I know, donating with invoice is not possible now. Or is it? (Please DM me if it is)
My opinion is that we should not restrict access to non-paying users, before exploring every other option. I am especially against restricting access to or delaying deployment of security fixes, because this will bite us back in the future. Delayed access to bug fixes and (non-security) updates (as @eris list) might be OK. @gahia suggestion about GitHub Sponsors should be explored as well (I have not used it so I do not know anything about it or if it could fit Hestia).
Exploring other option to fund the project, might be by providing paid support to users who cannot solve their issues themselves. Paid support could be offered by anyone interested (provided that the core team have run some background checks on the person offering the support), and the funds could go directly into the project. That way sysops like me could better help Hestia 
The downside with this is that it will require a lot of time to setup and even maintain. Time that might be better spent on Hestia itself. However, if the demand for paid support gets higher in the future, it might be an option worth exploring.
Last but not least. As @jlguerrero already pointed out, I too am concerned that at some point people from the core team will eventually burn out. We need to do everything in our ability to avoid such a situation! 
P.S1. I am using the term core team to refer to people like @eris @Raphael @lupu and others. I am not using the term Hestia team for them, because in some respect I consider people like @falzo, @jlguerrero, and others I “see a lot in the forum” to be part of the greater Hestia team. I even consider myself part of the greater-greater Hestia team Apologies if some of the people I mentioned are indeed in core or vice versa.
P.S2. Apologies for the long post. I reworked it too many times, trying to keep it short, but still….
I totally agree with this.
If it were not possible right now it would be very easy to register Hestia as an NGO and get a VAT number for the donations. For instance, to do that in Spain you need the signature of three people and the following day you can be opening a bank account.
Yes, I think that security issues should be fixed for free.
Or split earnings with the person who solved the problem and the project. Same with new development of features.
Something like a fiverr for HestiaCP
Yes. They keep saying that it will not happen but I am afraid that when their vital status changes… maybe have kids or get married or find a new job, they may be leaving the team one by one.
Currently Hestia is not a “legal” identity so it might be difficult unless we the “legal” way and register an NGO / “Company” I don’t know if @Raphael and everybody else is interested as also mean “real” costs for banking and so on.
Made a list of our “Income” over the last 3 months and it was about 70 / 80 euro a month without our “exenpses” (+/- 15 euro) as those sponsored by @Raphael. Is it worth to spend a lot of time on it for a relative low income…
See above… If it was a stable “income” of xxxx euro / month it would make sense. I don’t know how it works in Switzerland as the rules may differ…
As discussed we are not a fan of "restricting access as it may just become a security hazard. Also I don’t want to explain ever week 10 times how to build your own packages as with ARM installs.
Unless we are going to kill off “Community” support or at least do it way less other wise users going to use that. Even with “difficult” issues that are not easy solvable are just let say 50 euro is still a lot even for a Dutch “IT” person and it is dirt cheap…
That is a brilliant workaround! Companies can “sponsor” the expenses. For example, when the core team needs more VPSes, a company can rent/pay for those. Companies get their invoices (from Hetzner/netcup/etc) and Hestia gets the needed infrastructure.
Other than that, for such a low “income”, it’s not even worth discussing yet the possibility of forming a legal entity 
(cause the expenses to maintain the legal entity will be orders of magnitude bigger)
We don’t need “al lot of” infrastructure. We have currently have more than enough servers available.
Hestia runs on 1 VPS for the website/forum. 1 VPS for the packages and the last one is the demo… If the monthly costs are going above the 20 euro’s a month it is high. Even with the CI system the monthly costs are relative low… Don’t for get we host our own websites and servers…
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Not only that you can register as a charity, this does not mean that the product as it is has to be free!!.
In the UK there is also do a CIC that is a community focused company a bit like a Ltd company and a charity, and the community is people with a similar interest etc, helping people become hosting providers without excessive costs etc…
There are a lot of types of companies out there you can research more if you like.
There are alot of pay me programs out there that give receipts, I dont mind changing my hestiacp monthly donation to what ever you decide (its not alot but at least its something)
I have a big VPS (to big for what I need tbh) and a home lab the costs of running both is quite high.
The resources needed for Hestia are not that high. Most load “generating” part is the forum…
Both docs and website it self are static files. The only moment we need “system” power is when we build the packages. We currently build them on computer. In the future we just rent for 10 min 4 or 5 or 6 VPS servers and let it crunch for a few minutes and it is done…
The current costs for Hestia are about 21 euro / month.
The most “expensive” part is man power and time…
Well I am learning PHP, html etc, have a background in Pascal, basic, a little java and a tiny bit of C++, yes Pascal is very very old but showing my age now lol and that was mainly used when I was into programming and Java was just emerging, everyone was saying at university it won’t catch on lol.
It’s getting time and the nice weather that’s keeping me away from the keyboard at the moment, so I appreciate you guys finding time. I don’t know how you do it with work, families etc
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