matrix.org is going freemium, will soon implement limits around media sizes and/or volumes

I'm 100% for this, media storage costs a fortune

popular channels on matrix.org often get bombed with horrible images, I welcome limits

That sounds reasonable assuming it's instance-specific and is a function of hosting cost.

Any instance should be able to set a price to help pay the bills.

I've spun a few matrix servers, most with authentication services which allow the setup of upstream providers (IE: login with GitHub/Microsoft etc) id say the best place to get started is with the Element docker demo .

It's not perfect, there's actually a few issues I ran into with the init scripts; but it helped me understand the key components to a server setup, and more importantly, it generates the majority of secrets/API keys etc in the right places, so you don't have to.

The smallest server I've run was on a single core vCPU, 2gb ram, 50gb HDD vps, that server was able to federate and served a group of around 5 of us for about 3 months without any issues (at which point I expanded) we would use it for texting as well as a voice channel replacement for discord.

If someone reads this and wants a cheat sheet for matrix components; here's a quick start on what each container is used for:

Essential:
Synapse - the matrix homeserver.
Postgres - the database server.

Great to have:
Mas - authentication service used to provide upstream identification
Redis - authentication service cache.
Livekit - modern alternative to the inbuilt jitsi video calls
Livekit-jwt - token provider for livekit.

Tools:
Element-web: a hosted web client capable of using element call (livekit) or jitsi call (built into synapse).. Most people will likely default to either mobile or desktop apps however, so definitely only host this if your VPS is beefy.

Finally; if you're really just wanting a closed off instance for you and a few friends. You can ultimately just spin up a synapse server, with nothing else. Your server will use an insecure sqlite dB (anyone with access to the VPS can theoretically access the database); but it comes with jitsi call built in, and will handle a small group of people with no issues.

There is https://github.com/element-hq/ess-helm nowadays for a very easy setup. It needs a couple of minutes and you get MAS, Element Call, Synapse and Element Web.