I joined the fediverse like 2 weeks ago. I'm trying to find the answers to all my doubts reading discussions around, watching videos etc, but there are still some questions I'm looking an answer for. Here they are:

Is having a own hosted server a suggested practice? I could see some benefits, like not having to worry about which instance to join or having the full control of your own account. Furthermore, it's maybe more "professional"? Like @myname@mycustomdomain is maybe better than @[email protected] ? I don't know, I'm asking.
What are the server costs to keep an instance alive? I know it depends on the amount of users and -I think- the bandwidth used, but what's a common range of the costs per year, just to have a rough idea? (Like 50/100€ per year?)
What managing an instance involves? I'm not talking about a self hosted instance now, I'm referring to a medium/big instance with many users and communities. I'm asking this question to better comprehend what are the difficulties the owner/owners of an instance may face and so what could make them shut down the instance in the long term.
What happens exactly to an account when the instance in which it is registered shuts down? Is the account lost? It can still be migrated to a different instance?
What exactly change in my user experience if I decide to migrate to a different instance? I potentially see less contents? It just changes the posts I see in the "local" page?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I can't answer them all but I'll try the ones I can as a solo/small instance

I don't know about suggested, but I'm someone who likes to tinker and look behind the scenes a little so that's why I made my own instance, plus being in control of everything. Also having my name @va11halla.bar is pretty cool
The account is gone, no migration. Part of why I made my own instance is because my old was deleted. Due to federation you can still find content you posted at least, assuming it was federated beforehand
You'll have to federate everything yourself if its your own instance. The all tab takes into account the subscriptions of everyone on the instance, so you'll see a lot less if you have a lot less users on your instance. The local tab takes in to account communities on that instance only.