I’m trying to decide between creating my own Discord bot or using existing public ones. Originally I wanted to build one myself because I thought it would be free and I could customize the avatar and username. But then I learned that hosting costs money, which changes everything. Now I’m not sure what to do. What would you recommend - should I go ahead and make my own bot with hosting costs, or should I just stick with public bots? If you think public bots are better, can you suggest some good ones? I want to keep the number of bots low, ideally just one if possible. It would be great if I can customize it somehow. I don’t mind paying a little each month but free options would be nice too.
I faced a similar situation last year, and I opted to begin with free hosting services like Replit and the free tier from Heroku for initial testing. The hosting costs aren’t as daunting as they may seem — I currently spend around $5 a month for basic VPS hosting, which is sufficient for my small server’s needs. Creating your own bot allows for tailored features without the excess of general-purpose bots. However, if coding and troubleshooting aren’t your strengths, consider using popular bots like MEE6 or Carl-bot. I’ve found Carl-bot surprisingly customizable even without programming skills. My advice would be to first experiment with a simple bot using free hosting; if it becomes too complicated, stick with well-established bots.
Honestly, unless existing bots can’t do what you need, just use what’s already out there. I wasted weeks building my own moderation bot only to find out Dyno already did everything I wanted and more. Nobody thinks about maintenance upfront - you’ll be stuck handling updates, bug fixes, and downtime yourself. If you want customization on a budget, check out YAGPDB or Ticket Tool. Both let you personalize things through their dashboards. Most servers work fine with just Carl-bot or MEE6 handling everything. Don’t bother unless you actually enjoy coding.
depends on your server size. small servers? just use carl-bot or mee6 like everyone else said. bigger community though - custom bots are worth it. i host mine on railway for $3/month and it’s way more reliable than those public ones that crash all the time. hosting’s cheap if you don’t need anything crazy