Hi Alex

I suggest starting out with a virtual private server. Get in with a company that is having specials, you can find them all day long. You could do worse than starting out with lowendbox.com. You should be able to roll your own server (with root access) and some way to console in if you, say, misconfigure the firewall or otherwise break your network.

I wouldn't pay more than $8 a month. That would support maybe 3-10 simultaneous users. Then you can register a domain at godaddy if you want and point that to your public IP, voila, a new web site that will never be found by anyone except you and 8000 Chinese hackers a day. :)

The problem with running your own server. They're loud, they have power issues, they break, they take up space, they're ugly, and worse, they're connected to your home network. If you pay $100 for a pc, that is ~10 months of cloud time, and in 10 months your cloud server gets upgraded for you. Just my opinion! Have fun