One thing that’ll need serious consideration:

I feel like it’s inevitable that Lemmy will get an advertisement module that admins can enable. Alternative monetisation methods can also work, such as subscriptions. But users will have to realise that servers aren’t free.

If you’re an admin for a small community and are willing to carry the burden: great. If you’re hosting a community that can support itself by donations: also great. But sooner or later we’ll need some ways to make servers sustainable.

(Not a fan of advertisements and would prefer to be a paying user, but as Lemmy takes off we shouldn’t look down on admins trying to mitigate their expenses).

How are fediverse admins currently funding their instances?

Self funding or donations

Ok, what kind of web hosting tier do you need in order to have the functionality needed to host an instance? I was fiddling with infinityfree and found that there are all sorts of minor functionality you need beyond just a catchy name in a domain that won't have a bad reputation to host an instance. I mean, besides electricity costs, labour and some old hardware you have lying around to use as a server, how much is that hosting expected to cost?