It's not that expensive (Prices at https://masto.host/pricing or https://fedihost.co/pricing and many others)

Tbh we are not techie on out instance, and none of us have the time to learn. Managed hosting saves time and tbh, time is harder for at least me to find?

Plus tbh I kind of hate tech stuffs.

@FediTips

Except that costs money. And while VMs come cheap Mastodon is storage heavy. That costs a lot remotely while a 240GB SSD is probably in the drawer or not a lot at even retail prices today.

If you have set up your own RaspberryPis then its the logical next step. Otherwise I'd still go with mastodon.* or other public service. You don't have to think and especially be spared the regular update cycle.

Even if you're not techie at all, you can create a server through managed hosting very easily, as they do all the technical stuff for you.

It's difficult to give an answer as it can vary so much, some servers have been around for almost 10 years. I have a list of good servers sorted by age at https://fedi.garden/servers-sorted-by-founding-year

Any site or service on the internet will shut down at some point. The only way to get around this is to be able to move your account elsewhere, or to create your own services.

I've used @Ruth_Mottram @social.growyourown.services transfer guide; its easy to understand, and easy to follow... and doesn't take long - highly recommended

I moved an account tonight to a home instance I set up yesterday. It's already federating nicely.

If you are a bit techie its not difficult to set up your own instance at home for free. If you are lacking a spare static IPv4 you could use IPv6 and proxy it through Cloudflare free to serve to IPv4 only users.

#mastoadmin #cloudflare