I ran into some dependency issues(needed to install ansible-collection-community-docker on my fedora workstation), but after that it ran fine and installed everything first run. I made some adjustments to the inventory config afterwards, but aside from that it just worked.
I think this is one of the more sensible answers here. If your workstation is windows, then utilize WSL for ansible and deploy onto a ubuntu or debian host (I’m assuming it works fine on debian, I used ubuntu). You might run into some issues with ansible dependencies as the readme doesn’t seem to cover everything from what i remember, but once ansible works and has the correct configs, deployment is super easy.
My process is similar, but i don’t use the !ommunity@instance format. I just copy the url and search for it.
Search: “https://lemmy.world/c/selfhosted”
it will initially return Nothing found but after another second, it shows up and i can click it and then subscribe to get new posts and comments.
In this case I think he doesn’t understand cloud hosting at all, so he doesn’t see the cost making sense. If you don’t value something, the pricetag seems ridiculous and you won’t even consider paying it. He will probably realize the mistake eventually.