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?

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I'd say the suggested practice is going with smaller instances (i.e. anything that isn't lemmy.ml or even worse lemmy.world). But sure, if you want to spin up a custom instance that would be even better. You'd have the advantage of being able to customize your experience a lot more (changing themes, editing the code to fix stuff you don't like, managing your own emojis...)
I'd say around 10€ a month. My instance pays around that (maybe a little more, can't remember) and we have over 100 users. It's really not that expensive.
You become a mega janny. You have to draft server wide rules, appoint mods and make sure they don't screw up by letting banned content through. Depending on your country's laws and where your instance is hosted, you might risk hosting illegal stuff for which you as an admin would be liable.

Others have already replied to 4. and 5. so I'm not going to make this wall of text any longer.