Figment vs Dataplugs: Mac Hosting Compared

Quick verdict

If you need managed CI on Apple silicon, Figment's Managed Build Mac at $249/month (one M-series Mac, CI setup, backups, monitoring, 30 minutes of monthly support) is the most direct swap for a Dataplugs Mac Mini you are paying someone internally to maintain. If you only need the Mac and will run your own pipeline, Figment's M-series Mac from $95/month is the entry price; the exact chip, RAM and disk are confirmed in the quote. Dataplugs publishes one Mac Mini plan at USD $394.33/month (Intel i7, 32 GB, 512 GB, Hong Kong) on its macOS hosting page. The rest of this page shows how the published plans line up and how to move cleanly between them.

What Dataplugs publishes

Dataplugs' macOS Dedicated Server Hosting page lists a single Mac Mini configuration: Intel Core i7 6-core at 3.2 GHz, Intel UHD Graphics 630, 32 GB DDR4-2666, 512 GB PCIe SSD in hardware RAID 1, 100 Mbps unmetered bandwidth, 2 IPv4 addresses. The headline price is USD $394.33/month. No setup fee is listed on the page. Billing can be monthly, quarterly, semi-annual or yearly; the page does not publish the quarterly or annual totals, so a 12-month prepayment discount is not verified from the public page and should be confirmed with sales before you compare terms. The page states a 99.9% network uptime guarantee and provisioning within one hour of payment. Datacenters listed are MEGA-i, Equinix HK1, and Digital Realty HKG10 in Hong Kong. Mac Pro configurations are custom quote only.

Plan and price comparison

The table lists entry prices only. The hardware classes and service types are different — this is not a same-spec comparison.

Entry-price annualization (headline monthly × 12; Dataplugs' own quarterly/annual totals are not published, so this is strictly the headline rate):

The Dataplugs row is a fully specified physical Intel machine. The $95 Figment M-series row is an entry price for an unspecified M-series configuration; confirm the exact chip, RAM and disk when requesting a quote. If you need matching 32 GB RAM and 512 GB disk on Apple silicon, state that in the request — the quoted price will differ from $95.

Hardware, toolchain, and location fit

Intel toolchains. Dataplugs' Mac Mini is Intel. Per Apple's Xcode system requirements, Xcode 26 lists macOS Sequoia 15.6 or later and Xcode 27 lists macOS Tahoe 26.6 or later. Treat Xcode 27 as Apple silicon only, and check the exact Xcode/macOS row on Apple's page for whichever minor version you plan to install — the pairings differ between 26.x and 27.x releases. visionOS development requires Apple silicon.

Figment virtual Intel macOS ($29). This is a virtual Intel macOS environment on Linux/KVM. It has no GPU acceleration and no audio device. It can run compatible Intel Mac toolchains — including supported Xcode-26-or-earlier versions — and it is a real Mac userland you log into through the browser console. For headless command-line builds, simulator-free unit tests and automation that does not need Apple GPU features, it is the cheapest way to have a working macOS shell.

Figment physical i3 and M-series. The $49 Intel i3 Mac and the from-$95 M-series Mac are physical plans that currently collect requests until supply is confirmed. If you need Apple silicon for ARM-native builds, visionOS, GPU-accelerated simulators, or any workload that cannot run on Intel, the M-series line is the right class. Do not assume a specific chip, RAM, disk or image until the quote lists it.

Location. Dataplugs is Hong Kong. Figment does not publish datacenter locations on the pricing page; ask for the region in the quote. Latency to your developers, your VCS and your CI control plane is a real operational factor — measure it from the network that will actually drive the Mac:

# Run from the network that will actually drive the Mac (CI runner, office egress, VPN).
# This measures geography, not provider performance.
ping -c 20 "${DATAPLUGS_HOST:?Set your assigned Dataplugs hostname}"
mtr --report --report-cycles 20 "${DATAPLUGS_HOST:?Set your assigned Dataplugs hostname}"

A worked cost worksheet for one Dataplugs Mac Mini

Use this before you move. Fill in your own numbers; the math shown uses the published headline rates only.

1. Current spend. Dataplugs Mac Mini: $394.33/month → $4,731.96/year at the headline monthly. If your account is on a quarterly or annual billing cycle, substitute the invoice total; do not guess a discount that is not on the public page.
2. Replacement spend. Pick one Figment target:
   • Self-managed Apple silicon → $95/month entry → $1,140/year at headline, then add the hours your team spends on CI upkeep.
   • Managed CI → $249/month → $2,988/year, with CI setup, backups, monitoring and 30 min/month support included.
3. One-time transition cost. Estimate engineer-hours for the checklist below × loaded hourly rate. Example: 8 hours × $110 = $880.
4. Breakeven. Monthly saving = $394.33 − target monthly. For Managed Build Mac: $394.33 − $249 = $145.33/month. Breakeven on an $880 transition cost = $880 ÷ $145.33 = 6.06 months. For the $95 self-managed M-series: $394.33 − $95 = $299.33/month → $880 ÷ $299.33 = 2.94 months, before counting the CI work you are now doing yourself.
5. Reliability and spec deltas. Record what you lose or gain against Dataplugs' published 99.9% network uptime, 32 GB RAM and 512 GB RAID-1 disk, and reflect those in the quote (RAM, disk, backups).

Dataplugs-to-Figment migration checklist

Work in order. Do not cancel Dataplugs until step 9 passes.

1. Inventory. List every CI agent, launchd/daemon, build target, scheduled job and cron on the Dataplugs Mac. Record which ones hold state (caches, derived data) and which are stateless.
2. Repositories. Confirm every branch is pushed to your VCS. Plan a fresh clone on the Figment Mac rather than an rsync of the working tree.
3. Signing identities. From Keychain Access, export each signing identity as an encrypted .p12 with its private key, choose a strong passphrase, and store the file and passphrase in your secret manager. Do not write identities or passphrases to a plaintext file.
4. Provisioning profiles. Download the current .mobileprovision files from the Apple Developer profiles page. Profiles are files from Apple's portal; they are not exported from Keychain.
5. Secrets. Write down the names of required environment variables and where they are consumed. Restore the values into your CI platform's secret store (for example GitHub Actions encrypted secrets, GitLab masked variables, or your own vault). Never env > secrets.txt.
6. Request a Figment configuration. Open /mac-hosting and submit a configuration request with the exact chip class, RAM, disk, Xcode version and region you need.
7. Provision. On the new Mac, install Xcode from Apple using an Apple ID your team controls, install your CI agent, and restore secrets from your manager.
8. Allowlists. If your artifact store, TestFlight upload path, internal registry or CI control plane uses an IP allowlist, add the new Mac's egress IP to your own allowlists. There is no generic App Store Connect IP allowlist to update.
9. Parallel build. Run the same tagged commit on both Macs. Compare build logs, artifact sizes and test results. A build that fails is not a passing benchmark — only compare successful runs.
10. Cut over. Point your pipeline at the Figment runner, watch one real release, then cancel Dataplugs through its customer portal and revoke any credentials that lived only on the old Mac.

Choose your Figment plan

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