Sponsored hosting
BitFolk provides sponsored (free) hosting for a number of good causes, notably maker / hacker spaces.
What's covered?
If you are running a maker space, hacker space or other similar non-profit community service then we may be able to provide you with a free VPS to help you get started. Your project needs to have at least got past the ideas stage and either be in operation or be very close to it. If you think that describes your project and you're interested, please feel free to enquire with Support.
What's provided?
The basic specification of BitFolk VPS, which is currently 1½GiB of memory, 10GiB of SSD storage and 2TB of data transfer per 30 days.
If an upgrade from this were needed then we would be happy to discuss and may be able to provide that for free also, otherwise you can always just pay the difference in price.
Conditions of hosting
There will have to be a few simple conditions above and beyond BitFolk's standard Terms of Service. Hopefully you will agree they are not onerous. All recipients of sponsored hosting have agreed to these conditions.
- Inclusion on your "sponsors" web page.
We'd like to see a link from the front page of your project's web site to a page where you'll put all your sponsors, of which BitFolk would be one. If you don't have a sponsors page then a simple "sponsored by BitFolk" link somewhere in the small print (e.g. footer or sidebar) of your front page would be fine, but you probably will collect more sponsors over time.
- Named individual for contact purposes.
As this is a server on the Internet we need a named individual to talk to by email to resolve any issues that may arise. The email address could go to multiple people (that would be a good idea, in fact), but ultimately we need to know who is responsible.
- Only for non-profit activities related to your project.
The service would be provided to you for the purposes of operating an Internet presence for your non-profit project. If things on it make money and that helps run your project that's fine, but if it becomes a major source of income for you then it will need to be upgraded anyway, and that suggests it would be appropriate for you to pay for your hosting.
- No personal hosting.
As a consequence of the above condition, general purpose personal hosting for your members would not be appropriate. There's a line to be drawn between hosting ideas and member projects related to your main project, and hosting random personal content; we'd just ask you to use reasonable judgement there.
- Social networking mentions.
Once your project is up and running we'd like to be able to mention on social networking that we are one of your sponsors, and list you on this page.
- Reviewed yearly.
We'll be in touch yearly just to check that your project is still alive and making use of the sponsored hosting, that we have the correct contact details etc.
Other than that we would have no involvement and there would be no difference between this and a paid account.
The option of a paid account with none of the above conditions is of course always available.
Other Discounts
Sponsored hosting is only appropriate where the entire service is dedicated to the project. BitFolk also offers a 5% discount to developers of significant open source projects.
Sponsored Projects
An incomplete list of currently-sponsored projects follows.