Organisations considering an installation of their own usually ask about the software first. That is the wrong end to start from: the software is the settled part. What decides whether the idea survives is the running cost — and most of it is not money.
What costs money
A virtual server. This is the real recurring expense. What you pay depends entirely on your provider and on how much traffic and content you carry, so any figure quoted here would be made up. A small community fits on a modest machine; a busy store with images does not. Ask a provider, not us. The platform is normally installed on hosting you already have, and it stays your infrastructure; buying hosting from the platform side exists as an extra option, not as the basis of the arrangement.
The platform itself, at the Server tier. Priced case by case — it depends on what you want built and how much work that comes to — and agreed with the regional representative serving your market (shopnseo.ru or qwetru.ru), not with the foundation. Below Server the arrangement is an ordinary panel subscription at published prices.
Domains. One per site that wants its own name, renewed yearly. Sites can also live on subdomains of the server, which costs nothing extra — a perfectly normal arrangement for members who do not need their own brand.
What costs nothing
Reading and taking part. Registering, reading, commenting, arguing in a forum, belonging to the place — free for your members, on every server, and that is how the platform works rather than a promotion that expires. What is paid for is creating a page or a site of one's own.
Certificates. HTTPS is free and automatic; every site on this platform runs on certificates that renew themselves.
The features. Search optimization, design variants, the reader cabinet, the AI assistant in the panel — all part of the engine, with no second payment to unlock the useful parts. The one thing metered separately is the tokens the AI burns: available at every tier, included as an allowance from the second tier upward, bought as needed at the smallest one.
What costs time — and this is the part people underestimate
A server with nothing on it is not a community. Someone has to invite the first people, answer them, settle arguments, and keep publishing when nobody is watching yet. That work does not scale down: it is roughly the same whether you have ten members or a hundred, and it is the reason most communities stop.
Technical upkeep is smaller than people fear — updates and backups, occasionally a domain to point somewhere — but it is not zero, and it lands on whoever owns the server.
What you get back
Advertising on your server is sold by you, and the revenue stays with you. Nobody takes a share of what your community earns; the foundation is not an investor and does not sit between you and your members. Whether that adds up to a business or stays a hobby depends on the community, not on the software.
If you would rather not carry the technical side
Partner studios install and set a site up for a one-off fee — the same price list at any of them — and a Server-tier installation is quoted case by case, because the work varies with what is being built. Maintenance can be arranged with them separately. Paying them removes the maintenance, not the community work: nobody can outsource being the person others came for. See the partner page.
A working example
qwetru.ru is a community server in production — dozens of sites on one installation, including demo variants and a template showcase. The practical mechanics of running one are described in How a Community Server Works, and the first steps in Start a Community.
Talk to us
Questions about costs, hosting or anything else — use the form below. We answer personally.