Tealk

Of course, I can’t say anything about other forums.

So I can find the forum and subscribe to it if I want.

I can’t say anything about calling handles with !, but if I follow the handle on Mastodon, it works anyway.

As far as I can see, you can ask questions and follow categories if the admin sets this up. Here is an example: events@forum.fedimins.net

You can only post if you connect your Fediverse account to the forum.

I didn’t give it nearly as much thought before I started.

In terms of price, you can set a very low price for a single-user instance. Hetzner and Netcup, for example, offer very affordable VPS (these are providers I know of, but there are certainly others).

I don’t see open registration as a problem either. I’ve had it for years, and when I get waves of spam, which is very rare, I switch to moderated mode, otherwise it remains open.

I would host software according to your preferences. I should have kept Friendica running and turned off Mastodon, but that ship has sailed for me.

For a single-user instant, it might be interesting to connect to a relay; it is important that it is moderated. Fedimins offers such a service.

That sounds like Fedimins. We use Discourse with the AP plugin. https://fedimins.net/

For blogging, I can recommend Writefreely. Hubzilla and Friendica both have features similar to Facebook.

Sorry, I must not have been awake enough, I misread it. kbin is dead when I look at the repo, but piefed still looks very young as a project.

And pixelfed is your alternative? That’s not even close to the same usecase.

I use it for Fedimins and RPG-Foren. Works great.

The AP is not really good for chats, so I would rather use the Matrix protocol that Element, for example, offers as a client.

Mastodon, Writefreely, Flohmarkt, Mobilizon all self-hosted