A lot of open source products offer a “free community edition” with a limited subset of features. It’s such a relief that all of Discourse’s possible features are available to self-hosters.
If I had an organization with a budget, a Discourse managed hosting plan would be the way to go. But all I have are some skills and a lot of persistence. My shoestring project couldn’t afford an adequate managed plan, and it wouldn’t be viable with a limited feature set.
Thank you to CDCK and to the supportive Meta community!