@tshirtman@blacklight If you look at #Mastodon instances that accept donations and show their costs, it is quite easy to see that their hosting costs do increase significantly the longer they exist and the bigger they are. I recently saw one instance project their 2024 costs at €27000. That's a whole lot of money for hosting a website.
Having ran instances with a few dozen members, I've always been able to just use a €5/mo VPS somewhere, and never run into issues, simply by using better software, in my case #Pleroma. If I were to set up a new instance today I'd most likely look into #Akkoma first, too.