Check out Matomo

…or maybe rapidapi.com

You could use it as part of your infrastructure. E.g. DNS server, database server, redis server, file server. But running the whole stack will be too much unless you upgrade the RAM. 1 GB minimum, preferably 2.

Wow, that is pretty nice. Thanks!

If you have trouble where the email you send gets binned as spam by recipients, set up a SMTP server using aws SES and send through there instead.

I was a bit nervous about this too but I just set up a kbin instance on ARM (nginx, php, postgres, redis, and more) and didn’t notice any difference. Totally straightforward. And the VPS costs half as much as the x86 equivalent from the same host.

Oh, yes, the chattiness of the ActivityPub protocol could very well become a problem and some sort of network topology will need to be designed. Without a fediverse-wide governance structure, that could be difficult!

Welcome!

I set up an instance recently. I found that as soon as a couple of other people joined the instance and started subscribing to groups there was more than enough content coming in.

There are only so many communities to join and once one person joins something the entire server benefits. So it feels much less lonely than a small mastodon instance. No real need for a relay.

Proton Mail has been around for a long time and has a good reputation.

If you want to try self-hosting email (lol), mailcow is supposed to be very easy to set up.