theres a great crew in the devs/other admins of mbin on matrix, and i am always happy to help if you ever decide to give it a go.
you can probably do it very cheaply. i went the most expensive route, and im payin ~$1.00/day. not using aws, you could maybe that down to $0.25
one thing to keep in mind, once your instance is up with a domain name (myinstance.mydomain.com) it cant really be changed.
im an old sysadmin, i hate social media... i just like looking at the numbers..keeping things running. my hate for the new reddit has overtaken my hate for social media.