Welcome back for our next financial update. See the previous one here.

This quarter we moved to a dedicated server at $45USD per month, still with Zappie Host in their Auckland data centre. This dedicated server is significantly more powerful, having:

CPU: E3-1270v5

Ram: 64GB

Disk: 2 x 1TB SSD (in RAID 1 configuration for redundancy, so just 1TB usable)

Traffic: 10TB

Compared to the previous shared server:

4 vCPU

RAM: 9GB

Disk: 160GB

Traffic: 1TB

We also stood up https://piefed.nz/ running the PieFed software, as an alternative to Lemmy (but they federate, so they generally see the same content, with some differences). In addition there was also https://threadiverse.nz/ created as a shared help resource for LemmyNZ and PiefedNZ. Piefed.nz was registered way back in February as I've had the idea floating around for a while, so I haven't included that cost. But I have included the Threadiverse.nz domain registration as that was done in September. Lemmy.nz was paid up for a couple of years last year so no cost for that this year.

Expenses for July - September 2026: $216.82

The expenses are made up of:

VPS: $155.26 (two months of hosting, the other month was covered by the previous 6 months prepaid)

Image and backup storage: $17.29

Domains: $44.27

Expenses are allocated to the period they were paid, not to the period they cover. This is based on the actual amount charged to my card.

Contributions in July - September 2026: $559.82

This is huge! Thanks everyone 🙂

In addition to this, I've done a square up on donations reported in the platform vs cash out, and there's an additional $22.83. The platform removed fees, but also not everyone used NZD so there was actually more paid out than previously reported. This month's report is based on the cashed out value, which I will try to use going forward.

The main reason for this change is that we got a bunch of donations in other currencies which made it tricky to report on, so I have cashed out and got it all into actual cash in hand I can use for paying for the server.

We received donations totalling $559.82 this quarter, with much of that coming in a flurry after the last financial update showed a shortfall. Thanks to everyone who contributed!

Overall position: $187.97

Opening balance: $-177.86
Contributions: $559.82
Expenses: -$216.82
Adjustment for cash out difference: $22.83
Total: $187.97
Future costs covered by cash on hand: approx 2 months

Numbers are in NZD.

Donations

If you want to contribute to the cost of running LemmyNZ and PieFedNZ, see the page here.

The usual caveat: Please don't contribute if it will impact you financially. I don't want to see anyone saying "I only had $5 in my bank account but Lemmy is important so I donated my last $5" like I've seen on other instances. If you can't afford it then don't feel bad, this round is on me. I don't mind, truly. But if you can easily chip in a few bucks a month, then it is appreciated 🙂

Pātai

As usual, feel free to ask any questions!