€25 is double with our exchange rate and our org would be pushed to afford even $10 per month. We’re not a massive charity, just a small community organisation. I was looking into AWS because it would cost little to nothing with the non-profit credits.

I’ve had a self hosted Matrix server at home so I’m familiar with it but the format is too much towards the chat end of the communication spectrum than the forum end and we need something that’s either a forum or similar in format.

Federation is an absolute no-no as we would have no control over any other servers the data federated to. And as far as I can work out, Matrix still has metadata issues. I realise going from Facebook to Matrix is still a massive leap in privacy but if people ask why it’s better than Facebook, if it can’t be a high level of security, it makes it harder to convince them (even though staying on FB would be worse - people have just become so normalised to FB’s privacy invasion, they just don’t think about or want to think about it). And despite having used Matrix for a while, I’ve become wary of where Element is taking things.

We could go the XMPP route but, again, we need something on the forum end of the spectrum, not something like group chat, Facebook (which makes finding previous information difficult), or Discord (same problem).

Aside: don’t buy into the myth that older cars need more maintenance or cost more to maintain. Its an excellent sales pitch to convince people to keep upgrading but it’s not always reality. Modern cars can easily cost more to repair and maintain than older cars because more technology = more that can break. Car manufacturers have, over time, crammed more and more proprietary parts into cars which they can then charge exorbitant amounts for and force you to use their mechanics rather than your local.

I have both an 25+ year old Toyota that’s still going strong and still only needs basic maintenance (parts are also easily available and cheap). I also have an ‘older’ Nissan Leaf EV that is very little maintenance and has nothing in it that reports back to Nissan. It’s got a nice balance of technology and most things we can maintain or repair ourselves if we want. Parts for this are also easily accessible and cheap.

I also highly recommend people learn more vehicle maintenance themselves (easier of older cars with less tech) so you can either do things yourself and/or you’ve got more knowledge yo protect yourself from mechanics and car dealers who try to scam you by repairing/replacing things that don’t need it.