The main thing you need to know about Matrix is that you need a "homeserver". The makers of Element will provide you a central one. You can make your own, or run in a VPS or something, but all your messages are stored on there and there is (last I heard) no way to move them from one homeserver to another. So, there might be strong reasons to run in a VM so you can move it around as needed. (But I am not sure about how easy it is to move it from one IP environment to another.)
If you run the flagship server, which is coded in Python, you need a lot of RAM. Gigabytes. So the $4/mo level VPS, or a cheaper Pi, might not be enough.
There has been talk about making the Element app itself work as a homeserver. I don't know how far along that is, or how well it can really work.
> If you run the flagship server, which is coded in Python, you need a lot of RAM. Gigabytes. So the $4/mo level VPS, or a cheaper Pi, might not be enough.
If you don't join lots of big federated rooms (50-100 servers, 1000s of members), 1GB is enough for Synapse+Postgres
If you run the flagship server, which is coded in Python, you need a lot of RAM. Gigabytes. So the $4/mo level VPS, or a cheaper Pi, might not be enough.
There has been talk about making the Element app itself work as a homeserver. I don't know how far along that is, or how well it can really work.