A forum admin started requesting donations and threatening to kill the site if nobody pitched in because it was much too expensive and stuff. The classic wikipedia strat.

The thread was pinned and it was the first thing anyone would see when they'd go into the subforum.

Someone asked the admin how come he needed that much money monthly to keep the forum alive and asked if he could provide a breakdown of the things that needed to be paid.

Admin unpinned the thread and went silent. The amount he was asking was about $80 per month. Is that normal?

Doubt it, I pay like 50€ for my hosting every 3 months or so. Domain names can be expensive, but they can also be cheap as fuck. Mine is like 15 bucks a year or so

I mean, he could be paying for a super strong hosting because the forum generates so much traffic and has tens of thousands of users daily .. but still, 80$ monthly seems way too much. If I hosted a forum on my setup I'd probably need about 25€ a month from you guys, which should cover the server, domain and any extra work I need to do to maintain the forums and any future improvements...

It all depends, but im with you, sounds sus without any further context

@Hazarth Thanks. This has been most informative.

I pay about $10 month for hosting and it runs like 10 websites. I also pay about $10 year for each of my domains. Might be a bit more per domain. Nowhere near $80 a month for hosting.

It's not completely stupid if it was a large forum with lots of traffic. He could also be throwing a moderate amount in for his time as well keeping it maintained - which I don't think would be unreasonable.

Well, if the price justifies the value, it may also be a cheap price.

Details matter

I have come to the conclusion the seemingly inflated price is a result of the forum actually being a "forum as a service" kind of thing.