I’ve always used NameCheap. Can’t speak to their ethics, but customer support has been excellent the few times I’ve needed it.

Before I grew enough spare capacity at home to self host our family’s server, I was using MCPro hosting. It was fine and at the time, cheap. I understand they’ve been bought by Apex now though. No experience with them.

Not OP but if I had to guess, probably Turnkey File Server.

When I was first playing with NC I was using a RPi3 with an external SSD for a drive. Performance was pretty good, but as soon as I tried the same setup in a VM, the performance tanked. The only way I found to avoid the performance penalty was a manual install like it was bare metal, which I didn’t really want to do. My experience with such setups is that they tend to be brittle.

My understanding was that the performance penalty was caused by the chain of VMs. Proxmox --> Ubuntu VM --> Docker. I don’t know enough about it to say for sure.

My NextCloud is running on an old desktop that’s been repurposed into a server. The server is running Proxmox, and NC is running in docker directly on Proxmox using the nextcloud-aio image.

Found that had better performance than running it in a VM and was less headaches than the other install options.

I keep thinking about moving it to dedicated hardware, say some sort of mini pc, but it hasn’t been a high priority for me.

I started running into the same problem about 2 years ago. Found a company called Send in Blue ( which has since been bought and is now called Brevo). They’re a commercial mail sender but have a free tier. How long that will continue to be available, I don’t know, but for now it solves my email sending issues.

So this is my third go at replying. First attempt was damn near collage level. Second attempt found me rewriting the Internet for Dummies book that originally taught me about how the internet works when I was 10. Seriously, if you can find a copy of that particular edition, give it a read. It’s the third edition from 1995. You may need help from !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com to find it though.

Honestly, the Fediverse has the same problem that the internet itself has. That is that it is far easier to just use than it is to explain what it is but the fediverse and the internet itself work almost exactly the same way, at least at the user level.

I’m going to completely ignore everything under the hood for the sake of simplicity. Additionally I’m going to over simplify to the point of inaccuracy, because it gets really complicated really quickly once you scratch the surface.

Imagine a spider web. Each point where the web interconnects is a server. Each server on that web can communicate with every other server on that web (don’t ask how, that’s part of the bit we are ignoring).

Now each fediverse service is kinda on its own web. Lemmy is on one web, Mastodon is on another, Pixelfed another, websites, email, Matrix, NextCloud, XMPP, IRC, Gopher, Usenet, and a million more are each on their own little webs.

It doesn’t really matter which Lemmy server you pick to join the conversation on Lemmy but your account is only with that server. But because that server is a part of the Lemmy web you can talk to anyone that is also on that web.

That’s the best Eli5 explanation I can give. It’s not particularly accurate because anything, any system, involving more than about 3 people will contain more exceptions than rules. And the fediverse has a lot more than 3 people in it.

My advice for new users on the fediverse is, once you have decided what service (Lemmy, Mastodon, Pixelfed, email, or whatever) either join a server that is most in line with your interests, or look up the largest servers of that service and pick one from the lower end of the top 20.

God, this video makes me feel old. The fact that folks can be confused about how a federated service works boggles my mind. I mean, I get it. Walled gardens have been the default for 20 years now. But still.