So, one thing I’d mention is the systems and admin work involved in running an instance.
This is on top of the community moderation, and involves networking with other instance admins, maintaining good relations, deciding who to defeferate from, dealing with unhappy users, etc.
Then there’s the setup and maintenance of the servers, security, hacks, DDoSing, backups, redundancy, monitoring, downtime, diagnosis, fixing performance issues, patching, coding, upgrades etc.
I wouldn’t be here doing this without @ada. We make a formidable team, and without any self effacement, we are both at the top of our respective roles with decades of experience.
Big communities also magnify the amount of work involved. We’re almost at the point where we are starting to consider getting additional people involved.
Moreover we’re both here for the long haul, with the willingness and ability to personally cover the shortfall in hosting costs.
I’m not trying to convince you to stay here. But in addition to free hardware, you’re going to need a small staff to do these things for you, so my advice is to work out if you have reliable AND trustworthy people (because these people will have access to confidential user data) who are committed to do this work long term with you. Where will you be in 3 years, 5, 10?