That would cost money in any situation, or in the very least, handing a credit card over to a third party to get a few hours with it. The former is why I haven’t done that yet either and have to wait until March.
@alfalfasprouts, I can say that sticking with Discourse this long (even not having installed it anywhere for dev purposes) is worth the wait. I suggest perusing the forum here and seeing what else Discourse can offer you. If it all is green across the board, then the investment to shell over a credit card to run up a VPS for a few hours to test is well worth it.