I was originally going to host my instance on my own hardware but decided to use a $6/mo droplet on DigitalOcean. Seems to work well enough for me and my LCS bot. Picked up a domain off Google Domains for $20/year or so. It’s been a fun project and I’ve learned a lot along the way.
Audio/video contractors are absolutely a thing. It involves a lot of TV mounting, but there’s usually a lot more behind the scenes.
Source: I am one