Unhijacking for a moment
I use a spare laptop running Ubuntu as my server.
At first I thought 'free' hosting was great, but ...
It does give frequent issues, e.g. free SSL certs expire after 3months and need resetting
When it does go down (not often), but it will typically be a day Im away on holiday!
its not actually free, as the energy use adds up. e.g. 40watts * 24hrs = 1kwhr per day, around £4 or $5 per week!
But I do have the advantage of direct access to it at home, and I can SSH in also.
To add: Its only really NodeBB that keeps me running my own server now, as do see the benefits of getting a host
But the cheaper shared hosting ones can't run Node and NodeBB
My only experiments with the few that can, didnt go well a few years ago. I would be interested in that situation now-
what realistically is the lowest monthly hosting that can run NodeBB.
I did have this conversation previously with @phenomlab, and I recall we were looking at around $40 a month upwards for a dedicated host