> Where can I send them when all they want and need is a matrix address ? Where can they pay a small fee to keep their matrix address longterm without going through the hassle of maintaining/renting a server?
Have you seen communick? It's exactly that: a service that provides managed accounts for federated services such as Matrix/Mastodon/XMPP for a small fee. No server setup required.
Yes I did on mobile and thought it was some hosted solutions. When I got back to it to check it out again on the desktop the page is missing CSS (firefox) and from the text I thought it really was some server hosting.
I was wrong. I checked again and on Chrome you have the full site and if I am not mistaken, for $5 for three months you get a mastodon, a matrix (and a xmpp) identity which is pretty cool (or it's cumulative, I don't know. But $20/y for messaging should be okay, though it's still far away from whatsapp $1 subscription).
This page needs some love but it's exactly what I had in mind :).
Definitely needs a lot of love. Thanks for letting me know about Firefox not showing CSS. Seems like I have a SSL certificate issue.
Regarding pricing: It's $5 dollar/3 months for all three services and it gives you 10 accounts. So it's actually $2/user/year. Mind you, this is a "soft launch" pricing (as you could see, plenty of work to be done there) and my idea is to grandfather in the first 100 signups. Once I iron out the most critical bugs, I am working with the idea of charging $1/month ($10/year) for single users and $6/month ($60/year) for the 10-user package.
It hasn't been my first priority because there is already a good number of companies offering that for Mastodon, Matrix and XMPP - but I'd certainly want to get to this point as well.
Have you seen communick? It's exactly that: a service that provides managed accounts for federated services such as Matrix/Mastodon/XMPP for a small fee. No server setup required.