Partnering Up: Hosting Service Providers (Patreon)

Hear ye, hear ye! I have some news that I'm very excited to share with you all related to some new partnerships.

My vision for Foundry Virtual Tabletop is to create a self-hosted application where you are in full control of your hosting environment and your own data. This is a great vision for lots of users, but a weakness with that design choice is that it requires some technical configuration which is unappealing to some aspiring dungeon masters.

Hosting your dedicated Foundry VTT server in a cloud enviroment is a fantastic and empowering experience - but not everyone wants to mess with EC2 instances, security groups, SSL certificates, and reverse proxies -in fact, probably only a few of you want to!

It has always made sense to offer a managed solution for hosting Foundry VTT which can provide this level of power at the click of a button where all the hassle of infrastructure and network configuration is taken care of for you. 

I'm thrilled to share two official Hosting Service Provider partnerships with The Forge and with Foundry Server to provide this experience to game masters who want the best of both worlds! 

Some common features of both services that you should be aware of:

• For the duration of Beta, you must be an active Patreon supporter in order to utilize either service.
• After Foundry VTT release, you can purchase your own software license key from the official Foundry website and use it with either hosting provider. You bring the software license, they bring the hosting service.
• Both services are also still in "Beta" - but they are developing quickly and are ready now for hands-on testing. If a managed hosting solution sounds perfect for you - I encourage you to help one or both with testing and iterating on their approach.

Read on to learn a bit about each service:

The Forge

Tired of running your own server and fighting with routers and config files? Use The Forge to painlessly run your own adventures and fight goblins instead!

The Forge is a fully integrated, turn-key hosting service for Foundry VTT created by KaKaRoTo. Get your own Foundry Table up and running with a single click, and benefit from the integrated user experience allowing you to save time and effort, whether for initial set-up or for managing your games regularly. Make your server public or private and share unlimited invitation links for your players to access your game for free. Each game benefits from its own unique subdomain, allowing you to launch into a world directly at any time or confine players to a specific world.

Through the Forge, all assets are delivered via a high speed distributed network of servers, allowing your international players to load your game assets with maximum bandwidth and minimal latency. The only thing that should be slow and painful is their deaths at the hand of a lich! The Forge’s auto-snapshot feature can save your game data after every session and synchronize it with an external server of your choice and allows you to go back in time to inspect what your game looked like on any given date. With unlimited bandwidth usage, high storage quotas, and the ability to import your existing data or export your games for backup purposes, The Forge is the solution for all your game hosting needs.

Developed and operated by KaKaRoTo, you can expect the same level of polish, dedication and quality that you've seen from his numerous free FVTT modules or the convenience and seamless integration that you experience with his Beyond20 browser extension.

Foundry Server

Foundry Server provides a reliable, cost effective, and responsive hosting service for the Foundry VTT gaming environment. Our servers are located on a major US backbone and are configured for reliability and scalability. You have full control over your game server and game data at all times. Hosting is free for all Foundry VTT Patreon members during the Beta testing phase and the first 25 people who sign up during the beta testing phase will get 3 months of free hosting after full release, as a way to say thank you. As demand warrants, we will scale our platform around the world to ensure the best performance for your games. So come on over and check us out at https://www.foundryserver.com! 

Frequently Asked Questions:

Why not do this yourself?

It's a big project to provide infrastructure support for a managed hosting environment, and as a sole developer it would be too large a project for me to tackle while managing other aspects of the Foundry VTT project. It makes a lot of sense to partner up on this with individuals who have the technical expertise and motivation to augment the base Foundry platform with their own specialized hosting services.

Where can I learn more?

You can find some more information about these and other official partnerships on the Foundry VTT website at the following address: https://foundryvtt.com/article/partnerships/ 

Will there be other service providers in the future?

Possibly! I'm very excited for these two partnerships at the moment, but I am always open for establishing new opportunities to grow the Foundry community in exciting ways. Feel free to reach out if you have something you would like to discuss.

What does this mean? Is Foundry VTT now a subscription service?

No! Foundry VTT itself will continue to be a one-time purchase for a software license. Once you have that license you can still choose to self-host. Nothing changes on that front. This gives you an additional option, however, which did not exist before to use your license with a hosting service provider who will handle the management of a dedicated server for you using your license key.