This should be a pinned post as it really captures the essence of my experience so far.
(programming.dev)
Source by joedeandev
For exposing your server to the internet, a $10/year 512MB RAM VPS would be more than enough. You can also get VPSes with way more storage for a reasonable price, especially during Black Friday. The VPS I'm hosting Lemmy and Mastodon on has 99GB disk space and is only $33/year, but that was part of a limited sale.