it is not that easy… you do need to understand the basics of the underlying systems (server/network/storage), and then be able to keep them up to date and running. and then there are the costs associated with it… i think with a stripped down lemmy you could get it runnin for maybe 10$/month.

If you don’t care about the technical stuff, have money to spend, and just want an instance you have complete over: services like this will take care of the difficult parts for you. All you need to do is point a domain at one of their servers. There are probably others as well; the point is, there are people you can pay to do all the hard parts for you, at the cost of some control and customisability.

Doing Lemmy hosting yourself, if you don’t already have a server already, involves the following:

1. Get a server somewhere. VPS, raspberry pi, something that can run software and can have a domain pointed at them. Oracle Cloud has a generous free tier, VPS providers start at about $4 per month, an old laptop or raspberry pi costs purchase price + electricity cost.
2. A domain. Should cost you about $10 per year. If you want to use a local server but don’t have an IP address to point a domain at. you can use a Cloudflare tunnel instead.
3. Configure the server. You’ll probably want to use Linux, but you can get it working on Windows. If you get a VPS, you had to pick an OS already; you probably also noticed that Linux is free and Windows costs extra.
4. Follow the steps over here, here, here, or here depending on your chosen platform. The Ansible setup seems to be what the Lemmy devs test most, based on the upgrade notes, but I use the Docker setup myself.
5. Continue the instructions here and just go page by page.

If you know your way around Linux, setup should take 30 minutes, give or take some time for purchases and registration to come through. If you’ve never used Linux, I expect setup time to be one or two days, depending on how quick you pick up on it, filled with frustrated Googling about how to edit a text file through the command line and how to exit vim.

You’ll probably also want to set up a calendar reminder to check on your server every once in a while, just in case. Probably best to check for new/upcoming Lemmy releases every other week or so, and you’ll probably want to keep an eye on the disk space being eaten up by Lemmy over time as well. If you’re using a server OS, make sure to enable automatic updates to save yourself the effort of having to keep an eye out for security vulnerabilities; something like Debian’s unattended-upgrades should be sufficient for 99% of all software, especially if you schedule a weekly reboot.

If you have some Linux administration knowledge (i.e. you’re a programmer), the brief steps are as follows:

1. Run Lemmy + postgres through Ansible, Docker, or some other method on a host of your choice.
2. Configure A + AAAA records for your server.
3. Enable Let’s Encrypt through a reverse proxy
4. Configure Lemmy to your liking