I'm more experienced on the Windows Stack, but one problem I have is this is going to be a "for fun" project that's likely not going to turn a profit in any way

I'm more experienced on the Windows Stack, but one problem I have is this is going to be a "for fun" project that's likely not going to turn a profit in any way. I would gladly throw it on an Azure instance, but I'm afraid of paying a few hundred bucks or more a month for something when I could just do it for free. If I could find a way to monetize it without pushing away fans it may be an option. SignalR is one of the options I forgot to mention, I don't have any experience with that but it may serve my purpose well so I'll be looking into that. Thanks for the suggestion!