Self-Hosting a Gopher Hole vs Hosting on a VPS by Christopher Williams 2025-04-18 Updated 2026-01-26 with latest RackNerd deals. I’ve been thinking about this a bit lately: should one self-host their gopher hole or host it on a VPS? I currently host this hole on a VPS but I’ve considered hosting it on a low-powered computer at home. Here are my thoughts on it. A VPS, if you’re not familiar with the term, is a Virtual Private Server. Essentially, it’s a virtual computer hosted in a datacenter that you can do almost anything with (within reason and within the provider’s Terms of Service). Note that I’m comparing self-hosting against hosting on a VPS rather than on a dedicated server, since a VPS can be had for much less than a dedicated server so is more comparable to self-hosting in that regard. Also, I’m in the US, so all monetary comparisons will be US-centric. ------------------------------------------------------------ Self-hosting ------------------------------------------------------------ Obviously with self-hosting you have more control over your environment than with a VPS. It’s your own computer on your own network, after all. The only thing that’s not truly _yours_ is the Internet connection (you have to pay an ISP in some form to get access to the Internet). The downsides? * You’re at the mercy of your ISP for Internet connectivity. * Electricity costs money. * The computer itself costs money. # Internet connectivity Some people are blessed to have very few or no Internet connectivity issues. I haven’t been so lucky. When I had Cox as my ISP, I’d see fairly regular outages; in fact, there’s a reason people coined the term “Coxing” (as in “you’re getting a Coxing”) for this sort of thing. I switched to fiber through a different provider about a year ago which has been overall better. ISPs also typically give out dynamic IPs (they often charge more for static IPs, if they even offer them); you’ll need to set up some sort of dynamic DNS service to handle this. And even with dynamic DNS there’s still going to be brief periods where your domain name points at your old IP every time your IP changes. Then again, for a hobby like running a Gopher server those issues may be acceptable. Another downside that may be a significant issue for some people is that your domain points at your home Internet service’s IP address, largely breaking your anonymity in the process (it’s trivial to find out what Internet service you use and your general location from your IP address). Of course, an ISP might outright block incoming connections on port 70; if that’s the case then self-hosting is not even an option for you, unless you host on a non-standard but otherwise common Gopher port like 7000 or 7070, but that’s no fun! # Electricity The EIA reports that the average cost of electricity is about 16c/kWh in the US[1]. Some places have much higher costs (Alaska, Hawaii, New England) and some, much lower costs (West North Central, East South Central, Mountain), so take those costs into consideration for your particular situation if you want to self-host. If you self-host Gopher on a Raspberry Pi, which is a reasonable option given how inexpensive and low-power they are, it would cost about $2.80 per year[2]. Not bad! On the other hand, hosting on a computer like an Intel NUC (which draws about 30W) would cost about $42 annually. Then again, some residential communities (e.g., some condos) provide electricity at a fixed cost to their tenants, no matter how much is used[3]. Of course, this really means that the extra electrical costs will be spread out to the entire community, but it’s so insignificant that nobody will notice or care (unless you’re running Gopher on a beefy mainframe or something). Another downside is that residential electricity can be not so reliable (less reliable than the 99.999% reliability that datacenters often have). This can be mitigated with a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply), but those aren’t free to buy or to maintain either[4]. # Computer The computer itself costs money, obviously. In most cases this is a one-time cost, and the cost of computers drops over time (not to mention that a computer powerful enough to run Gopher doesn’t need to cost much at all). A Raspberry Pi, plenty powerful for Gopher, might cost only $45 (plus some more for accessories), for example. But it’s still something to take into consideration. Of course, this cost would apply if the computer is being used only for Gopher, which probably isn’t the case for most people even with a Raspberry Pi. ------------------------------------------------------------ Hosting on a VPS ------------------------------------------------------------ With a reputable VPS provider, you can have a server with great uptime (assuming you don’t mess up your own server) and that’s accessible from nearly anywhere in the world. The downsides? * It’s not completely in your control. * It costs money. # Not in your control VPS providers typically (or always?) give you full control over the OS—it’s your virtual computer to do with as you see fit (within the ToS, of course, usually meaning you can’t do anything malicious or otherwise illegal with it). But besides that, you don’t have full control of the VPS itself—you don’t have it in your possession, the provider can take it down at any time (though only for a good reason if it’s a reputable provider, such as if you’re spamming), and you no longer have access to it once you stop paying for it (as opposed to a computer you own which you don’t have to pay for over and over again). I know that some people object to letting third-party companies handle their data (especially anything “cloud”-like), which I can understand. So this may be a dealbreaker. # It costs money VPSes can vary widely in price. I’ll focus on the lower end since you don’t need much computing power with Gopher (the protocol was designed with low-end desktop computers of the early ’90s in mind, after all). This basically means you’ll likely be running Linux or {Free,Net,Open}BSD or another *nix OS, or basically anything but Windows (which makes sense given how unnecessarily bloated and slow Windows is). One of the lowest-cost yet highly-rated VPS offerings that I’ve found are with RackNerd[5]. Their currently least expensive offering is for 1x vCPU, 1 GB RAM, 24 GB SSD storage for $11.29/year[6]. You can find other deals if you need more RAM or storage and are willing to spend a little more: * 1x vCPU, 2 GB RAM, 40 GB SSD storage for $18.29/year[7] * 2x vCPU, 3.5 GB RAM, 65 GB SSD storage for $32.49/year[8] * 3x vCPU, 4 GB RAM, 105 GB SSD storage for $43.88/year[9] * 4x vCPU, 6 GB RAM, 140 GB SSD storage for $59.99/year[10] (Disclaimer: I earn a small referral income at no cost to you if you purchase a service through one of those links. Even if I didn’t, I still wholeheartedly recommend RackNerd—I have a VPS with them and I’m satisfied with it.) You really don’t need much to host Gopher, so a $11.29/year VPS is probably your best bet. Of course, there’s other VPS providers besides RackNerd—LowEndBox[11] gives good reviews for DediRock, CloudServer, and Server Host—so you have plenty of options. If you do the math, a VPS that costs $11.29/year is roughly equivalent to self-hosting on a computer that draws 8W (assuming electricity costs 16c/kWh), so the cost really isn’t too bad. (Many residential ISPs won’t even offer a static IP for less than that—I’ve seen one ISP offer a static IP for an extra $15 per _month_.) ------------------------------------------------------------ Which should you pick? ------------------------------------------------------------ Which you should pick depends on your specific circumstances. If you already have a computer running 24/7 or have a VPS for other purposes, for example, it won’t cost you anything to host Gopher on it. Just use what you have! If you self-host on a Raspberry Pi, that’ll cost only $2.80 per year in electricity. But if you buy a Raspberry Pi solely for hosting Gopher, you also need to factor in the cost of the Pi itself (and necessary accessories like power supply and SD card). Compared to a $11.29/year VPS, the costs break even in about 5 years (or longer if you count all of the Pi’s accessories). If you value privacy and not giving away your residence’s geographical location, a VPS may be the better option. ------------------------------------------------------------ Other options ------------------------------------------------------------ Of course, there’s other options besides self-hosting and hosting on a VPS. My intention with this post is to compare the probably two most common and most practical options to most people (and I wanted to limit it to options I have experience with). Other options have their own sets of pros and cons that you’d have to assess. A third option is to find a friend willing to run their computer 24/7 (or who already does) and is willing to let you host Gopher on it (or let you run your own computer on their network). A fourth option is to find a shared hackerspace or a similar location where you can host a computer (either your own or borrowed or rented). This gives you many of the benefits of self-hosting while slightly better preserving your privacy/anonymity. A fifth option is to simply use a shared Gopher server like a tilde or pubnix (public Unix) server. This is completely free (for you) but has its own drawbacks: you don’t get full access to the server, and you get only a subdirectory under someone else’s Gopher hole. But if all you need is Gopher space somewhere, a tilde server is a fine, and I see nothing wrong with it. In fact, I started on a tilde server before I started developing my own Gopher server; I was already renting a cheap VPS at that point, so it made a lot of sense to host my own Gopher hole on it. That’s all I can think of for now. I’m sure with enough creativity you can come up with many other ways to host Gopher that fit your circumstances. ------------------------------------------------------------ References and Footnotes ------------------------------------------------------------ [1] https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_5_6_a [2] This assumes it draws about 2W, but it depends on the specific Raspberry Pi model and which peripherals are used. [3] I have a friend who ran a Bitcoin miner years ago (and blasted their A/C to compensate) in their condo because they had such an arrangement. [4] On a personal note, those lead-acid batteries are the bane of my existence! OK, not really, but they do suck. [5] https://www.racknerd.com/ [6] https://my.racknerd.com/aff.php?aff=14276&pid=903 [7] https://my.racknerd.com/aff.php?aff=14276&pid=904 [8] https://my.racknerd.com/aff.php?aff=14276&pid=905 [9] https://my.racknerd.com/aff.php?aff=14276&pid=906 [10] https://my.racknerd.com/aff.php?aff=14276&pid=907 [11] https://lowendbox.com