If you’re worried about unauthorized access to the physical machine, you could always just do disk-level encryption instead or store the app’s data in something like a Veracrypt virtual disk. They’d still be able to access the data if they go through your OS/user, but wouldn’t pick anything up by accessing the drive directly.

Nothing short of E2EE can truly stop someone from accessing your data if they have physical access to the server, but disk encryption would require a targeted attack to break, and no host is wasting their time targeting your meme server. I seriously doubt they’d access it even if you had no encryption at all, since if they get caught doing that they’d get in a heap of legal trouble and lose a ton of business.

What software isn’t?

They ought to have a manger/team lead interested in managing. An ad-hoc approach can only get you so far.

Though, you seem to be asking more about Devops than management. If you’re making a startup, just cobble an MVP together using as little custom-built tools as possible and redo it if/when you get enough investment to be able to take the time and pay for the necessary resources to do it right and maintain it. You’re going to want to redo your first version anway, better to not waste time and effort on complex solutions even if they’re more appealing. Saas is your friend.

$80??? 🫠

I’m not in the retrogaming scene, is that normal for a GBC?