ElfHosted has survived our first year, passing the following milestones:
> 100,000 orders in the store (daily orders being a PITA, more on that later)
> 1,200 Elves in Discord
As you'll see below, we're improving month-on-month on every positive metric, but we're not profitable or even breaking even on cash expenses yet. August 2024's pricing model update, plus the deprecation of ElfStorage resources, will hopefully bring us closer!
For a look back at far we've come, here's the July 2023 Elf-Disclosure report for comparison! (those CPU/RAM graphs look so cute and tiny in comparison!)
To get us started, here are some shiny stats for July 2024, followed by a summary of some of the user-facing changes announced this month in the blog...
The stats below illustrate CPU cores used (not percentage), and as expected, tenant workloads remain the highest consumer of CPU, followed by an ever-decreasing collection of internal services. The screenshots below were taken after the subscription pricing/updates, which caused us to shed ~50% of original/daily subscribers, so there's expected to be a bit of flux regarding resource usage this month.
The "last" values on the chart are specific to when the snapshot was taken, but compared to the previous month, there's not a lot of change in overall tenant CPU usage (which is good, most of the resource pressure is on network and storage I/O).
Examination of the kubectl top nodes output shows the removal of ElfStorage / Ceph HDD nodes (the dwarves), and the rebalancing of dedicated resource reservations as users migrated from contented nodes (elves) to rangers and hobbits.
This graph represents memory usage across the entire cluster. Tenant workloads are now the top consumer of RAM, with rook-ceph (which needs RAM for caching) demoted to second place, after the removal of ElfStorage.
Other high consumers of RAM:
csi-rclone: used for mounting all rclone-compatible storage mounts, primarily RealDebrid libraries
kube-system: the Kubernetes control plane, including the cilium agents which manage the networking / policy enforcement (currently 11K flows/s across 30 nodes)
traefik: all inbound access to the cluster / services
As more users migrated to semi-dedicated Hobbits/Rangers, and after the RealDebrid fair-use policy changes, and their rate-limit updates revealed some inefficiencies around how Zurg "repairs" content, it became obvious that dedicated 10Gbit nodes were no longer necessary, and the giants were decomissioned.
The contended nodes (elves) have the most inconsistent load profiles (as you'd expect):
The 10Ge ceph nodes (goblins) occasionally peak over 1Ge during backups / intensive library activity:
And the semi-dedicated nodes (rangers and hobbits) are typically quiet in the week (when this snapshot was taken), other than an as-yet-unfixed issue causing library updates/analysis in some cases (the Aars are the primary suspect, followed by Plex/Jellyfin..)
Last month (Jun 2024)'s for comparison:
These are the traffic stats for egress from Hetzner. They exclude any traffic to/from Hetzner Storageboxes or ElfStorage, since this traffic is not classified as "external".
Last month (Jun 2024)'s for comparison:
Retrospective
Pricing changes
The most obvious Jul/Aug change is our pricing model, which underwent some flux during July, and has now settled for August.
With a mind to (a) become profitable, and (b) be simpler to understand, the previously-geeky-and-convoluted pricing calculation method was replaced with:
We've done away with free ElfBuckz and trials (a vector for abuse and user confusion), and moved instead to a (currently informal) 14-day refund policy.
With the transition to monthly billing, and the removal of trials, it's now safe to re-instate the Elf-erral program!
Here's the deal - every user you refer with your unique referral code gets $5 off their first order, and you get a $5-off coupon! ($10 free ElfBuckz, reborn!)
Bundle-hopping
With the simplification of pricing tiers and bundles, we can now take advantage of the store's ability to "switch subscription".
For exapmle, if you're on a $29/month Infinite Streaming "starter kit", and you want to upgrade to a Hobbit, the store will automatically handle that for you, and charge you the difference based on your current subscription.
You can also transition between bundles (i.e. Aars to River, or plex_debrid) by performing a $0 "change subscription" under your account.
Note
"Bundle hopping" isn't supported on pre-paid plans however, but an ElfVenger can manually assist you in this case.
Comet blazes past RD IP restrictions!
Newcomer Stremio addon Comet was launched, with the unique ability to "proxy stream" your RealDebrid content. This allows a user (at the expense of ElfHosted's bandwidth) to share one RealDebrid account across multiple devices in multiple locations, simultaneously, without risking a RealDebrid account ban.
Activating Comet's ProxyStreaming requires an additional addon from the store, to cover the bandwidth usage, but stay tuned for an upcoming "generic" ProxyStreaming addon from the MediaFusion dev, which would allow users to ProxyStream from public addons! (i.e., you'd still subscribe to the Proxy Streaming feature, but an addon subscription wouldn't be necessary)
Comet gets revenue sharing!
Comet is an "Elf-illiated" Premium Stremio Addon - the developer maintains an active support channel (#elf-comet) in our Discord community, the app itself is tuned to work perfectly with ElfHosted "out-of-the-box", and 30% of your subscriptions are contributed to the developer!
We've had our own fork of the plex_debrid repo for a while, to manage a few fixes (like Trakt auth), but @ron has taken it to a whole new level by adding Zilean support, and a parametized watchlist search interval (original is hard-coded to 30m).
Rather than running your ElfBot commands in the (janky) Filebrowser CLI, we now have a fully-functional terminal-in-the-browser for this...
ElfTerm is a full POSIX (fish) shell on your Filebrowser pod, running inside a tmux session, with state saved to ~/.config.
ElfTerm supports all ElfBot commands, includes Kubernetes access via kubectl, and allows you to navigate your config and storage volumes via the CLI - useful for advanced renaming / processing of files, examining of symlinks, etc.
Merch arrived!
Today, to great delight of my children who all tried to claim it, the first of my ElfHosted merch arrived!
(You, too, could be rocking this fine "kiss-cut" sticker)
Thanks @BSM for making the merch happen!
RIP Glime, welcome Spanky-9000
Our AI Discord bot, Glime, was deprecated by its creators on 15 July.
We have a new AI bot though, Spanky-9000 (an instance of Wallubot) lurking in our Discord channels. We over-used him and exhausted his credits during July, but I've dialed back his enthusiasm a bit for Aug, and you'll see him popping up to answer questions he feels qualified for. You can also interrogate him directly by @mentioning him, or posting a question in the #elf-ai-rtfm channel!
PlexTraktSync in ElfTerm
PlexTraktSync is a tool which syncronises a Plex library with a Trackt library. It's now built into ElfTerm!
Try running plextrakt sync to sync your Plex library with your Trakt account - you'll need to jump through a few hoops to setup your Trakt OAuth credentials, but this presents a viable option for users wanting to migrate from plex_debrid to an Arr / Riven design!
Riven gets 100% revenue
With the advent of hobbit / ranger bundles, we revisited the 30% revenue sharing deal with the Riven developers, and agreed to up our contribution to Riven to... 100%. The rationale is that Riven brings in subscribers, and ElfHosted profits on the Plex-and-friends components, while the Riven devs have a platform to provide support to ElfHosted users.
This month's contribution from 52 ElfHosted users to Riven was... $US468!
We want your EEPs
Inspired by Kubernetes' KEPs, we now have EEPs (ElfHosted Enhancement Proposals).
We've been working for months on the idea of providing multi-region ElfHosted clusters, both for streaming performance and for disaster recovery planning.
The first of these clusters (elfhosted.us) is undergoing private testing with the ElfVengers currently, and should be ready for community testing within a week.
Got ideas for improvements? Send us an EEP (ElfHosted Enhancement Proposal) here!
How to help
If you'd like to make a donation in recognition of our infrastructure costs, our open-source resources, or our friendly support, a simple donation product is available at https://store.elfhosted.com/product/elf-love/
Another effective way to help is to drive traffic / organic discovery, by mentioning ElfHosted in appropriate forums such as Reddit's r/plex, r/realdebrid, and r/StremioAddons, which is where much of our target audience is to be found!
I am new here, but today I learned realized that Elfhosted is one of the best free and open source software communities I've seen, and FOSS communities have been at the center of my life since the 90s (Perl, PHP, Symfony, Drupal, Ethereum, etc.). Great open software built by great people who care = great community, and that is something special.
You've done an amazing job @Funky Penguelf with the platform you provide and this place has an awesome mix of active community caretakers and software creators that I've seen here so far like BSM, Spoked, LayeZee and other elf vengers. Keep up the energy, productivity and community and take time to enjoy it and appreciate each other!
I self host and share a fully automated ‘arr stack with Plex. Been doing so for around 4 years. Also recently got into real debrid and hosting a Comet and Annatar for Stremio. The amount of time and head banging I’ve put into it is in the hundreds to thousands of hours. From setting it up to keeping it running smoothly. Let’s not forget the cost of my server and how much it cost to keep it running.
Anyway I wanted to see what ElfHosted was about to compare. Yeah I had the whole thing setup in just a few hours. It also passes the headache of maintaining it to ElfHosted. Will I keep it no because nerdy things and maintaining my server are my hobby and quirky passion project. Will I recommend it to my friends who don’t have the money up front to buy a server, the knowledge to maintain it or desire.
Just my server alone was $2k. Power cost to keep it on yearly is $250ish, annual memberships to RD, Usenet and indexers are around $100. Then whatever a value my free time at. Which is currently at minimum my hourly pay at work or more. Yeah so take the monthly cost of all that and compare to ElfHosted Ultimate Stream package at $39 monthly, add RD to the cost and get nearly all your time back is incredibly cheap.
Lastly it seems like a lot of people forget how quickly an ultimate cable package used to cost. Or how quick paying for every stream service would add up to. Which when using ElfHosted with RD is essentially and more what you get. Quick hint it’s far above the asking price.
As a happy Elfhosted customer—who also self hosts MANY things across about 10 severs (dedicated, VPSes, and VMs running on Synology), I wouldn’t switch to self hosting the services I get from Elfhosted. They just work with very little effort configuring things, and the support the owner and his team provides is second to none. Plus I love being part of a fledgling—but quickly growing—enterprise.
I recently found ElfHosted and decided to start out with the Infinite Starter Kit. Within a week I realized that this was for me and upgraded to the Hobbit plan. Give it another week and I was up to the Ranger plan.
I just love the simplicity and the fact that things just work. For years I've ran a home server and between the constant maintenance and always upgrading harddrives, it became apparent I wanted to make it easier on my self. Enter ElfHosted.
Setup was super easy with the guided documentation and the discord community. It seems that somebody is available at all hours of the day to help with questions. I started with the Aars, which I knew from my prior hosting... but saw a newer product called Riven. I decided to jump in feet first. I enjoy being on the front end of an up and coming replacement for the Aars and will soon be upgrading to the annual plan!
I’ve been using this service for a while now, and honestly, it’s a game-changer compared to anything else I’ve tried for managing my media library. The support is fantastic—super quick, and if the staff aren’t around (which rarely happens), the community steps up right away. I can’t imagine going back to any other platform.
Before this, I had my own setup with a NUC, NAS, and tools like Sonarr and Radarr. It worked pretty well for a while, and my internet speed was high enough to stream without any buffering. But in the end, it wasn’t worth the time or headache of managing all the storage and keeping everything running smoothly.
Now, with this service, everything runs smoothly in 1080p+ with no buffering issues. The interface is really easy to use, which makes managing everything a breeze. Plus, having a whole community of smart people available for guidance is a huge bonus.
I was sold from the start, which is why I quickly upgraded from a 1-month to a 3-month subscription, and I’m planning to switch to a 1-year plan soon. This service totally pays for itself, and I’m sure you won’t be disappointed. It’s been really impressive.
Best possible options for anyone looking for the do-it-all option along with the best customer service ive experienced in this space so far. Id rate it a 6 if I could but its limited to 5/5...
(responding to a Reddit thread re the cost of ElfHosted vs mainstream streaming / self-hosting):
I didn't know that the goal of this project was to compete with large companies running/renting entire DCs. I was under the impression that the goal of this project was to manage the updating of almost selfhosted applications on a shared platform with other users. Basically, be my sysadmin for me.
That being said, paying for services is the 'easy button'. There is a real world cost incurred for the time saved. Time is money. Time is the most valuable currency that exists. Once time is spent, it's forever lost, one cannot retrieve it again (yet). In my mind, there are 3 options for use of time with respect to: mainstream, selfhosting, elfhosted.
mainstream - my time is valuable and I don't want curated content and I don't care what content that I have the ability to consume. I only like what's popular.
elfhosted - my time is valuable, I want my own curated content without being forced to browse past the same damn entry 500 times just to find out that I can't watch the movie I want because it's not available in my current location or was removed last week from mainstream providers.
selfhost - I care about costs and I have nothing but time to waste or I want to learn about the backend of the systems involved. I'll pay for my own VPS/homelab, electricity, manage the OS, manage app updates, figure out how to make the apps talk nice to each other, create my own beautiful frontend.
I know how much my time is worth, does that reddit poster know how much their time is worth? Without knowing what you are worth, you can't make effective capital expenditures with respect to the time it will take to recoup the capital.
I know I don't need elfhosted at all for my use case. I choose to stay with elfhosted because it's my 'easy button'. It's an efficient capital expense for the amount of time it saves me managing my own hardware, apps and saves me electricity costs. I'm also in a situation where I don't have upload bandwidth from my home to serve HD content to myself remotely. If I lived back in a city, I would still be here. My time is worth $$/hr.
"Just wanted to check in here and let @Darth-Penguini and anyone/everyone else know...WOW. I have been struggling with storage for years, maintenance of Docker containers, upkeep, all of it. Elfhosted is so freeing. It's an amazing service that I hope to be a member of for a long, long time!"
"I just have to say, I am an incredibly satisfied customer. I had been collecting my own content for nearly 20 years. Starting off with just a simple external HD before eventually graduating to a seedbox with 100TB of cloud storage attached and fully automated processes with Sonarr and Radarr . However, the time came when the glory days of unlimited Google Drive storage ended. I thought my days of having my full collection at my fingertips via :plex: were behind me, until I found Real-Debrid and ElfHosted.
Now I essentially have the exact same access to content as I had before, but even better. Superior support and community involvement. Content is available almost immediately after being identified. A plethora of tools at my fingertips that give me more control and automation than ever before. Wonderfully well done and impressive! I am looking forward to being a customer for a very long time! Massive kudos to @funkypenguin 🤟
"I would recommend ElfHosted to anyone. It has been great so far and made life a lot easier than running my own setups. If you’re in the fence give them a try and help support this great community."
"thanks for the help and must say this is the best host I every had for my server 🙂 10/10 🙂 All other places I have try have I got a lot buff etc. Your host can even give me full power on a 4K Remux on 200GB big movie file . That's damn awesome 😄"
@tjelite (Discord)
"What an amazing support system these guys have Chris and Layzee i think it was! Both are very patient with me even though I am a newbie at all this. Very thorough and explained everything step by step with me
I couldn’t ask for anything better than the service I have received by these guys! Happy happy client❤️"
"I had my own plex-arrs setup on hetzner for years. Yesterday I deleted everything as elfhosted has gone above and beyond it. And it has a fantastic, active community as well! Very friendly, helpful and like-minded folks always willing to help and improve the system. Top notch!"
"@BSM went above and beyond to make sure I had all the one on one support needed with my sub. Thank you for your patience! Elfhosted continues to be Elftastic !!"
"really enjoying the service from elfhosted. The setup is really easy from the guides on the website. And the help on the discord channel is really quick."
Includes "opportunity cost" of deferring billable consulting work for ElfHosted development! ↩
A consequence of our recent pricing model changes ↩
Some of these must actually be paid yearly in advance, but are represented here monthly for consistency. Confirm my sponsorships here. Includes one-time sponsorships as a result of revenue-sharing, including Riven and Comet. ↩
50% reduction in ingress is likely due to improvements in Zurg repairs of RealDebrid content ↩
Partly due to the of refunds given after the #fluxpocalypse ↩
We consolidated some apps/tools into single pods, and we shed older subscriptions ↩