A cheap VPS can run a Pterodactyl login page and still struggle with the game behind it. For a community server, the real purchase is CPU capacity, memory headroom, a sensible location and a reliable way to recover your world.

LightNode is my first overall recommendation for a self-managed Pterodactyl setup, especially when players need a nearby region and you want to test infrastructure before settling on a configuration. Hostinger is worth considering for its Panel deployment template; Hetzner suits budget-focused buyers; Vultr offers several compute tiers; and DigitalOcean has straightforward published configurations.