Help keep Escargot going!
Only donate if you really want to, we aren't in a state of desperation, so never stretch yourself
thin to donate to Escargot.
All old donations will still be honored, what exactly that means for special benefits for early
access, we aren't sure yet. It will likely come into play as we expand into Live Spaces and so forth.
We do NOT sell any of your information, monitor your conversations, nor do we bombard you with ads,
and as such we don't have a lot of money to go around. In order to deal with our hosting costs and
to help our development team, we have rely on supporters like you.
Preferred methods
If you're interested in donating, please select an option below donate whatever you feel like.
Be sure to include your Escargot username in your donation message for faster response.
Rewards
A limited number of awards are available, and are subject to change over time. If you have reached a tier
in the past no longer listed here, you are still at that tier, it just means we currently
have no offerings available at said tier.
FAQ
- How long does a donation last? If I donate now, do I keep the rewards forever?
- There are no expirations on donations, once you've reached a reward tier (in table above), you
remain there forever.
- If I donate $25 today and $25 in two years, does that count as a $50 donation?
- Yes, you can donate more over time and join a new reward tier (in table above), however
if long enough exists between donations you may need to let us know so we can total up all of your
previous donations, this way you aren't missed.
- What is an "ad-free experience"?
- On services where we have ads, we will not display ads where possible. In some cases clients will show
ads regardless because there's no way to tell which user is requesting the ad service.
- Do you take hardware/VM/hosting donations?
- No, and not under any circumstances -- we don't even want them for free.
- Why don't you want my hardware/VM/hosting? It's great and I'm super trustworthy, I swear! You know me!
- That doesn't matter, after 30 years of online experience with hosting, something always goes wrong: people
don't keep their stuff up to date and it gets hacked, they don't pay their bills and it goes down disrupting
service, they get mad at someone and force it down, they share data that's on it for no reason other than just
because, they accidentally destroy the VM because they thought it was another one: I swear it won't happen again,
they were on vacation when the server went down so it took them a month to get it back up,... and so on, and so
on, and so on. We've heard it all, and don't ever want to hear it again. We'd just rather pay for it ourselves
and keep the service up, than have it go down for a really ridiculous reason that you claimed was never going to happen.
- My host is better, you should use this account or service.
- We've priced everything out and we structure everything with care, we don't do fly-by-night switchovers to new
servers nor would we subject users to that. Please stop suggesting it, either because the host is so cheap it's
unreliable garbage, or it's more expensive than you think it is compared to other things -- remember bandwidth
has costs as well, and we use a lot of it, it isn't just about a VM with a lot of RAM and CPU. We've
managed to keep the service more stable than it was previously by not making decisions based on VM price alone.
- If I donate or become a Patron, does that mean I still have to follow the rules and are expected to behave myself?
- Yes, and to patrons who withdraw their patronage and donors who ask for refunds for being muted or banned for constant
rule breaking on the forums are regarded by the community as petty and immature -- and very much unwelcome.
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