I believe all depends on the purpose of the board and the storage required. VPSes or minimum spec that won't cost fortune usually offer
very limited storage space. If all you need is message boards and games, fine, but data hoarders most likely may require some proxy to their
local NAS infrastructure by some door or other customization, I assume.
I'm guessing I'm not the first to say this, but "minimum spec" seems basically _perfect_ for BBSs, since requirements are as minimal as you want them to be.
Though, yeah, I guess I do tend to want to have more files and message retention than probably people would have ever considered back in the 1980s.
But, that said, I imagine a lot of people want to play with the hardware themselves, in a way that's just not there with a VPS.
For me, VPS just makes more sense. Or at least did when my situation was unstable. But at this point, I have my BBS on a VPS, and it'd be more effort to change things again, and not really much of a point.
But if I were trying to run a BBS on 1980s hardware, obviously, no VPS option.
--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Storm BBS (21:2/108)