Yep it's quite true. If you are just going to host one or two things, you could get away with a Raspberry Pi, but I have about 40+ containers running, and I realise I'm on my 3rd or 4th iteration of hardware. I don't have anything fancy as my small form-factor server cannot even mount...
I don’t think beginners are going to be in that situation and most people probably won’t ever be in your situation, mostly people doing it as a hobby are going to end up with 100+ TB of data.
EDIT: when I say “most people wouldn’t be in that situation” I was thinking of the typical person who is on the fence about this and would be swayed by the “it will save you money” argument. Its quite likely that most people currently self hosting (I’d imagine mostly hobbyists) could be in a similar situation to you if they aren’t already
I don’t think beginners are going to be in that situation and most people probably won’t ever be in your situation, mostly people doing it as a hobby are going to end up with 100+ TB of data.
EDIT: when I say “most people wouldn’t be in that situation” I was thinking of the typical person who is on the fence about this and would be swayed by the “it will save you money” argument. Its quite likely that most people currently self hosting (I’d imagine mostly hobbyists) could be in a similar situation to you if they aren’t already
Beginners can recycle an old mini/micro PC. You can buy refurbished ones from computer recyclers for like $15.
At both ends of the spectrum you can save money. The people who don’t (like me) are not doing it for the goal of saving money.