The fediverse ought not to be expensive. This is my server. It costs $10/month plus $5 for a CDN/AWS compatible object storage and backups.
It runs WordPress (~2000 visitors/month, so not very busy), Soapbox/Rebased (only user on it), Peertube (same, for watching), Pixelfed (also only one user), is my mail server, DNS server, Python and R on Jupyter for work code stuff, and assorted tosh no one really needs.
Oh, and it runs a headless wayland server for some connected displays.
I am not a nerd. Far from it. I suck at computers, yet I still managed to set it up, secure it (Apparmor, ipfw, etc. are not THAT hard to install and manage), and do my work.
It’s barely taxed, even when some dumb shit I did went “viral” for a month…
There’s no reason to be on a massive fediverse instance. If your current instance has more than 50-100 users, find three friends, pay $5 a month, and set up your own. Not only will you have full control over everything, you’ll do the decentralized nature of the fediverse a service by not clustering into silos again.