I run my own Mastodon instance. My wife uses it too. It is open to my family, but none have moved this way yet - more of a “not using mastodon” than “not your mastodon”. Easy to link to other instances. I use a docker based instance of mastodon with the db and nginx running on an Azure VM running Ubuntu. Easy to patch, and update. I spent days getting it running right (learning, tearing down, rinse, repeat) but now it is a few minutes a month maintaining. Let me know if you have any questions.

It was hard enough getting everyone on the same text messaging service. I think migrating to a federated service will break the family 🤣

I'm still considering it to replace my small discord server. But that's a group of tech-y friends who like to try out new things.

I'm seriously considering this. I created lemmydeals.com and getting the site up and running only took me an hour.

I'm thinking more about a single user instance of mastodon too because it looks like lemmy to mastodon interaction is just as clunky as lemmy to lemmy.