Ok WOW there's a lot of great info here already in 30 minutes, thank you! A much more web-savvy friend is going to help me figure this out, but further suggestions are welcome!
Discussion
@sundogplanets Depending on how good your internet connection is and whether you expect serious traffic, you could host from home on an old PC or small computer board like a raspberry.
This would be the cheapest option with the most control, but also more complicated than having it hosted. You also need a fairly steady internet connection. Someone also has to know how to set it up and monitor it for problems. The first part is hard, the second can be made easy but fixing issues is hard.