There's more than just the cost of the RAM to factor in here.

You would of course need an entire server capable of hosting Hubski, but even that isn't the expensive part.

When you pay for a host, you're doing more than just renting hardware (though of course that's part of it). For Hubski to get the same quality of service on their own hardware as they do from a source they would need:

- The hardware itself

-Space to store the hardware

- High speed internet, which probably means you want that space to be in a datacenter

- Someone to be around all the time to guarantee the electricity stays on & the hardware is fixed if anything goes wrong

I don't think you could do all of that yourself for Hubski's funding goal of 2.4k / year.

Even then, it would be hard to beat the reliability & flexibility of using a hosted server. If Hubski wanted to upgrade their server, they'd have to do it for each piece of the puzzle. You have to get to a massive scale before you even hit the break even point of maintaining your own hardware - even then some companies (Netflix) still opt to use hosted providers.