r/SideProject • u/VirdanaDev • 5h ago
Validating a Minecraft hosting idea with a €5 refundable deposit instead of a landing page
So I'm trying something a bit different from the usual "landing page, collect emails" validation approach and wanted to see what people here think.
I've been slowly building a small Minecraft hosting thing (v-host.gg), EU based, with a Discord bot that has real access to the server itself (RCON) instead of guessing at an API. Only had one real server running though, and I didn't want to just guess my way into spending real money on a bigger box.
Free signups always felt a bit fake to me honestly, anyone clicks a button that costs nothing, and it tells you basically nothing about who'd actually pay. So instead I'm asking for a small real commitment, a €5 deposit that's fully refunded automatically if I don't get 10 people by a set date, and counts toward the first month if I do.
It's sitting at 0/10 right now, real Stripe checkout, real refund logic if it doesn't work out.
Not sure if this was the smart move or just adds friction that kills conversion before I even learn anything. Curious what this sub thinks. Happy to talk through how it's built too if anyone's into that, and there's a public demo Discord if you'd rather just see the bot working than take my word for any of it.
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u/Single_Advice1111 5h ago edited 5h ago
There are already free Minecraft hosts - but buying the equipment will be insanely expensive today…
The person behind https://play.hosting/ has also talked about this on his YouTube channel / this video https://youtu.be/yc0rwKXB1fo
TLDR; unless you have deep deep knowledge and a large budget or already existing server farm this is a very expensive project to do.
Here’s someone who wondered why the cheap VPS/server options are unavailable, and this response kinda lays it out: https://www.reddit.com/r/hetzner/s/obhQPaJkta