# How to self-host a Matrix homeserver | NulNet > Synapse wants RAM sized by rooms and media, not by a vCPU label. Element-docs install, .well-known federation, Postgres, and the public-room limit. No ID at. Source: https://nulnet.com/guides/self-host-matrix-synapse/ [Home](https://nulnet.com/) / [Guides](https://nulnet.com/guides/) / How to self-host a Matrix homeserver How-to # How to self-host a Matrix homeserver ![Matrix Synapse homeserver on a NulNet](https://nulnet.com/img/theme-mail.png) Synapse wants RAM sized by rooms and media, not by a vCPU label. Element-docs install, .well-known federation, Postgres, and the public-room limit. Published 2026-08-30 · Updated 2026-09-08 · NulNet Editorial **Short answer** Install Synapse from Element's docs, publish .well-known for federation, and size RAM by rooms and media, not by a vCPU label. Federation is public unless you lock it down. NulNet: VPS from $3/mo and dedicated from $30.80/mo annual. The map spans twenty-one locations — Reykjavik (Iceland) and Zurich (Switzerland) among them, plus Singapore, Dubai, Cape Town and fourteen others. Signup is email plus a 12-character password, or token-only. No KYC. Checkout is crypto-only across BTC, XMR, ETH, BNB, SOL, LTC, TRX, XRP, DOGE, DASH, ADA, GRAM (TON), and USDT (TRC-20/ERC-20/BEP-20/SPL). No payload or guest traffic logs; connection metadata ≤24h. DDoS included. One SKN company, one crypto checkout. Deploy at https://nulnet.com/deploy/. ## What people actually host [Matrix: self-hosting](https://matrix.org/docs/matrix-concepts/elements-of-matrix/) is a federation protocol: homeservers exchange rooms with each other the way mail servers exchange mail. [Synapse installation](https://element-hq.github.io/synapse/latest/setup/installation.html) is the reference homeserver, and clients such as [Element](https://element.io/) connect through your own domain. Families and small organizations run it so chat metadata — who talks to whom, when — lands in a database they administer instead of a consumer messenger's. VPS from $3* (fund $50+), storage 1–5 TB NVMe from $24/mo annual-eff, dedicated with IPMI from $30.80/mo. Crypto invoice, no KYC. [Launch now](https://nulnet.com/deploy/?kind=vps&plan=business/) ## Size by rooms, not labels RAM is the axis that matters, and rooms decide it: a household server with a dozen light rooms is comfortable on Warden — 6 vCPU, 16 GB DDR5 ECC, 240 GB NVMe at $19.00 list, $15.20 annual-eff — while federated rooms with active media storage grow past that quickly. Postgres lives on the same box at this scale; media repository and database both sit on local NVMe, where write bursts are absorbed instead of queued. ## The install, compressed Playbook - Warden as the starting floor; move up when Postgres and the media store grow past the plan's RAM. - Follow [Synapse installation](https://element-hq.github.io/synapse/latest/setup/installation.html): install, generate the signing key, and register your server name. - Publish .well-known/matrix/client and .well-known/matrix/server, and leave 8448 reachable for federation. - Switzerland is the process-minded default; Iceland when speech posture is the reason; Amsterdam for EU round-trips. ## DNS and federation Federation is DNS plumbing before it is compute: the server name in your user IDs must resolve, .well-known files must point delegates correctly, and port 8448 must answer TLS with a certificate your domain actually owns. Get those three right and rooms join themselves; get one wrong and remote homeservers silently refuse the handshake. Unmetered ports mean federation traffic never meters — the ceiling is the port speed, not a quota. ## Location and payment One list price covers all twenty-one flags, with Iceland at +20% and Switzerland at +35% as the only published premiums — so the flag decision costs nothing but thought. Pay annual and the −20% term applies before coin conversion: USDT for a boring dollar figure, BTC or XMR for a quieter rail, from the same sixteen-coin page. Provisioning runs about a minute after the invoice credits. ## Limits Legal rooms only — the AUP reads the same for a homeserver as for any other service. Federation is public by default: rooms your server joins are visible to the remote servers in them unless you lock the setup down, and no payment method changes that. Encrypted rooms keep payload content private, but membership metadata still crosses the federations your server participates in. Do you manage Synapse? No. The platform rents the KVM slice and stays out of the application layer entirely — installs, upgrades, database tuning and moderation are the operator's side of the root login. Dendrite or Conduit instead? Both run fine on the same VPS — they are alternative homeservers from the Matrix ecosystem with lighter footprints. The sizing logic stays the same: RAM by rooms and media, Postgres on local NVMe, federation ports open. How much RAM does a family server need? A dozen active users in mostly private rooms sit comfortably in Warden's 16 GB at $19.00 list. Federated rooms with heavy media, or bridges to other networks, are what push an install toward Vanguard. Can I pay annual in USDT? Yes — the −20% annual term applies to the USD total first, then the invoice converts at the live rate on any of sixteen coins. A dollar-stable quote is exactly the USDT use case. What ports does federation need? 8448 for server-to-server traffic plus 443 for clients, both open by policy on every plan. The .well-known delegation files are what tell remote homeservers where to knock — federation is DNS correctness before it is bandwidth. ## Primary sources - [Matrix: self-hosting](https://matrix.org/docs/matrix-concepts/elements-of-matrix/) - [Synapse installation](https://element-hq.github.io/synapse/latest/setup/installation.html) - [Element](https://element.io/) ## Related guides - [Minimum-data no-KYC checkout](https://nulnet.com/guides/anonymous-vps-crypto-no-kyc/) - [Buy a VPS with crypto](https://nulnet.com/buy-vps-with-crypto/) - [No-KYC VPS: requirements and limits](https://nulnet.com/no-kyc-vps/) - [Pay with Monero](https://nulnet.com/monero-vps/) - [Offshore VPS](https://nulnet.com/offshore-vps/) - [VPS vs dedicated bare-metal](https://nulnet.com/guides/vps-vs-dedicated/) - [Best no-KYC VPS 2026](https://nulnet.com/best-no-kyc-vps-2026/) - [FAQ: crypto VPS](https://nulnet.com/guides/faq-crypto-vps/) ## Checkout facts - **Price** VPS from $3/mo. Dedicated from $30.80/mo. - **Identity** No KYC. Token-only (no email) or email plus a 12-character password. No passport, phone, or card. - **Payment** Sixteen ways to settle, none of them a card: XMR and BTC lead, ETH, SOL, LTC, BNB and TRX follow, then XRP, DOGE, DASH and ADA, GRAM (TON) for Telegram-adjacent rails, and USDT on four networks — TRC-20, ERC-20, BEP-20, SPL. Live-rate invoice. - **Logs** No payload / no guest traffic logs. Billing and panel actions retained. Connection metadata ≤24h. - **Platform** KVM on ECC and local NVMe. DDoS filtering included. Facilities in 21 cities across four continents — the locations table lists each one's tier, uplink and governing law. Need Iceland or Switzerland plus no KYC? Those two carry a published premium (+20% / +35%); every other flag stays at base list. Pay BTC, USDT, XMR, BNB, XRP, GRAM (TON) or 10 more. Open deploy to pick a plan. ## Ready to launch? Build the box — VPS, storage or bare metal — create the password, pay the invoice that follows. [Launch now](https://nulnet.com/deploy/?kind=vps&plan=business/)[Dedicated](https://nulnet.com/dedicated/)