Contemplating jumping to fosstodon.org when the v4 release is available there (I like some of the features e.g. ability to follow hashtags); or, spinning up a small personal instance; to reduce central load.

@andypiper FWIW, if you don't want to manage the server, it was _really really_ easy to set up an instance with @mastohost although that is also at (v3.5.3)

The mastodon software does not seem to be architected around front end installed plugins and templates so I don't know if long term managed hosting is the way to go, though.

@carlynorama thanks for the tip here, that's one other thing I had thought about. May explore later in the year.