10. March 2026

Running Matrix Without Breaking the Bank

I thought I was stuck paying $30 or more a month to host my Matrix server. Turns out I was wrong — I cut my costs by two‑thirds without losing performance. In fact, I ended up with more resources than before.

🧠 Insight

I started my journey hosting Matrix on Vultr. My virtual private server (VPS) had 2 vCPUs, 4 GB RAM, and 100 GB of NVMe storage — perfectly reasonable specs for a small homeserver. After the first month, my bill came in just shy of $30. That's not outrageous for cloud compute, storage, and networking, but it is a lot to me, especially when you multiply it across a full year.

That's when I began searching for alternative options.

🧪 I Chose OVHcloud

I selected an OVHcloud dedicated CPU VPS — 6 vCores, 12 GB RAM, and 100 GB SSD — for about $9 per month. Yes, OVHcloud is that cheap. No, they don't offer the same level of polish or convenience as higher‑priced providers. The real question for me was simpler: can they meet my needs?

🔐 Hardening the Server

Before touching anything, I took a snapshot in the OVHcloud control panel. (You only get one at a time, so I used it as a rollback point.) Since this VPS doesn't include a cloud firewall, I hardened the server myself:

  • Enabled UFW and temporarily allowed SSH
  • Configured SSH for certificate‑only authentication
  • Added Fail2Ban
  • Set up a WireGuard tunnel
  • Restricted SSH so it only works through the WireGuard interface
  • Removed SSH access from the public interface entirely

This gave me a clean, private entry point without relying on upstream firewall features.

🛠️ Installing the Services

Once the base system was locked down, I installed:

  • PostgreSQL
  • Matrix‑Synapse (from the Element repo)
  • coturn
  • mautrix‑discord, cloned from GitHub and compiled from source (Golang)

After confirming everything worked, I replaced the initial snapshot with a fresh one. OVHcloud also provides daily automated backups. They run on the provider's schedule and overwrite the previous day's backup — not ideal, but better than nothing.

💾 My Backup Plan

To fill the gaps, I plan to add Backblaze B2 storage for:

  • Daily config‑file backups
  • Daily PostgreSQL dumps
  • Daily media‑directory backups

I'm still deciding whether to add full off‑site VM backups. If I do, I'll likely use Kopia to push them to B2 as well.

🎯 Takeaway

So far, this OVHcloud VPS has been surprisingly effective. It lacks some of the built‑in cloud features I'm used to, but at one‑third the price — with more CPU and RAM — it's hard to argue with the value.

🤝 What Would You Do?

I went into this expecting throttling across the board — CPU, disk, network, everything. So far, I haven't seen any of it. I've only run light performance tests, so the long‑term verdict is still out, but the early signs look promising. I'll post an update in a few months.

Would you ever try OVHcloud for something like Matrix? What would make you choose it — or avoid it?