@KuJoe

Don’t forget there’s WordPress out here now. With the right set of plugins, it becomes a self-hosted ActivityPub client as well.
And of course, there’s so many ways to self-host WordPress. This one is about $7/month on a VPS, but there’s cheaper out there for sure.

It’s not the easiest method to doing things as it requires one other plug in to work and takes getting used to… but it does work!
All the same features apply with this setup as a Mastodon instance:

• blog profile pages
• author profile pages
• custom links
• functional inbox/outbox
• follow (accept follows)
• share posts
• receive comments/reactions
• signature verification

Threaded comments are being worked on, and a separate plugin, Friends is needed to “follow” and read followed accounts, but it works, is being actively iterated and as I’m using it every day as a very connected “digital garden” of sorts.

KuJoe 💞 (@KuJoe@mindly.social) (Mindly.Social)

Currently the cheapest I’ve been able to host a private Mastodon instance for in a public cloud is just under $10/month before the domain, but I know I can do it for cheaper if I just put some thought into it. For self-hosting at home, it looks like it’ll be about a $70 investment all said and done (excluding the cost of electricity which would be just shy of $5/year for me).