Starting your own server on the Fediverse is easier and cheaper than you think.
You don't need technical knowledge, as you can use a managed hosting company. You pay them a monthly fee and they do all the techy stuff, including hosting, installation, upgrades, maintenance etc completely behind the scenes.
The price of a small Mastodon server with a managed hosting company starts from 6 euros a month. You can also make PixelFed, PeerTube, FunkWhale, BookWyrm or WriteFreely servers through managed hosting.
I've done a website aimed at non-technical people which is all about using managed hosting companies to create your own Fediverse servers and personal clouds. The site is at:
The Fediverse section is at:
You can also follow the site's account at @homegrown
@feditips A little bit of knowledge is necessary. You need to know that your Local and Federated timeline will be very empty. ;-)
True, I am slightly simplifying. But the tech knowledge needed is similar to an ordinary end user.
You don't need to be a system administrator to use managed hosting. There are no command lines or FTP or anything like that.