Is it just up-front cost? I understand that for larger instances because they'd have to setup heftier systems, but even micro-instances seem to rent cloud compute when they could probably get by with port-forwarding to an old laptop.

Edit: I understand that self-hosting is a skill that takes years to learn, and I'm aware that the vast majority of people on Earth choose to spend their time and energy investing into completely different topics. However, Lemmy tends to attract the techy type, so I suppose I just assumed the ratio of self-hosters-to-not would be higher. I'm not saying it's trivial, just that I presume more Lemmings know how to do it than, say, Redditors (taking total users into account ofc)

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[–] deadsuperhero@fedizen.net 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

@sam@r1b.it I think a lot of it boils down to knowledge. You'd be surprised by the amount of people who need their hands held the first time they buy a domain name, who have never so much as paid for a subscription to a managed service before.

It's easy to take for granted the technical abilities that are necessary to self-host an instance. None of it is exactly difficult, but it's time-consuming and requires a lot of specific knowledge.

[–] sam@r1b.it 1 points 4 days ago

I appreciate you being as kind as you are in response to a half thought-out thought posted sporadically onto the internet. You're giving me too much care, lol