Remnode does really cheap instances, but you’re not running Lemmy on their basement tier.

Sounds like you need mog your bike pedals instead, if your cortisol level isn’t too high.

You might want to try out Tailscale. It’s a mesh network overlay that you can either share easily within your tailnet or out to the greater internet with funnel (sorta like cloudflare tunnels, but somewhat better at respecting privacy). It’s also possible to self host the controller, so you don’t have to depend on a third party.

They’d never make it default when it costs them a thousanth of a penny per message.

If you like certbot, you should check out Caddy. Fully auto tls so long as the server resolves to a set domain name. Caddy-docker-proxy is pure magic with docker containers.