But, what is your population right now? Sure the cheap hosting seems to work good for smaller populations, but you have to keep in mind that as it increases, it may not seem as great, and you will eventually have to upgrade to something better.
Anyways, donations aren't always just used to pay for hosting. There's other costs to run a server, such as advertising, or paying that one awesome scripter/spriter/mapper for stuff to add to the server, or even buying anti-hacking/cheating programs (Which can be kinda expensive in some cases, from what I've seen). There's extra costs in there. Sure, some of them might not be needed, but they're often used to improve the server in some ways.
There's also (rare) times that players want to donate to actually chip in on server costs, if they like the server. Which usually results in a server owner opening up donation shops as a way to thank the players offering to help. Although some servers do tend to abuse this, usually offering ridiculously OP items and such, to tempt a player into donating more. It's a sad, sad truth, that server owners do in fact just care about money, and they disguise their greed as "donations to help the server". When really all they do is stick to cheap hosts and such, so they can keep however much money as they can after server costs, rather than using that money to make the server better. :<
Anyways, done ranting now. xD
