Installing my own Mastodon server. On Google Cloud GCP it's looking like it'll be at least US $25 a month. Looking for a way to make local accounts invite-only.
@lazzarello if you're just looking for a virtual private server that runs all the time you might do better with something like they discuss here: https://lowendtalk.com/
I found TNA Hosting through there, and now have a $5/month VPS that's just fine for many use cases. I find Google/AWS cloud VPS's better for short term, or quick scaling.
@finity thanks for the tip. I got a server running yesterday. It looks like I can bring it down to a $15/month plan. Still 3x more than a $5 VPS but GCP has so many monitoring/logging features.
I wonder how $5 VPS services make any margin on electricity?
@lazzarello nice! Yeah I've been wondering how they can afford to do any support, but they seem to be able to. And the instance isn't totally anemic either...