ok. my reality have been truly checked! i havnt been thinking much about that type of thing, but yea we have definitely put ourselves in a terrible position.
everything that has happened since the 90s... using email for communication, everyone switching to using the cloud for nearly everything, i havnt stepped foot in a bank in 15+ years, so many things rely on computers and the internet now... what happens when most of that stops working!?
theres a lot of scrambling right now with countries trying to get their military back up to speed. let's hope this is something that gets just as much attention.
where do you even start though lol?
it just depends on how much resources the app needs. some need more CPU cores, RAM, or storage than others.
the main selling point with PikaPods is having them manage app installs and the server for you, so youre paying a bit more for that convenience but there are other options that would work out cheaper if you dont mind doing a bit more of the work yourself.
the Zimaboard for example, is a small and cheap SBC similar to something like a Raspberry Pi that has ports to attach an SSD or HDD drive. it comes preinstalled with CasaOS which is a simplified Linux OS that makes it easy to set up drives and it has a similar 1-click install app store to PikaPods.
theres other options like renting servers online from the likes of Hetzner or Netcup and then installing CasaOS yourself, or there are other things that manage app installs like YunoHost or Cloudron. theres almost too many options in a way!
i started out years ago with Synology NAS, which was very expensive up front but also very easy to set up and they have a good selection of web apps that they make themselves with mobile apps that are decent enough. i used that for years and then just gradually learned more about self-hosting over the years, so thats not a bad route to take either if youre interested.
just a FYI, Synology is based in Taiwan, and the Zimaboard company is based in Hong Kong/China. i havnt done much research into EU alternatives yet