If you gave the service away for free and allowed people to be anonymous, there would be no private data that needed managing. In the 90s, a major proportion of websites on the internet had forums like that, which people set up on a weekend (think phpBB). What the hosting provider charges is small change.
If you do charge, you suddenly have sensitive data to manage, either eating into your profit or creating a liability for you and taking away from people's privacy if you don't do it right. So much so, that it might even generate a loss at 50 bucks per year.
If you gave the service away for free and allowed people to be anonymous, there would be no private data that needed managing. In the 90s, a major proportion of websites on the internet had forums like that, which people set up on a weekend (think phpBB). What the hosting provider charges is small change.
If you do charge, you suddenly have sensitive data to manage, either eating into your profit or creating a liability for you and taking away from people's privacy if you don't do it right. So much so, that it might even generate a loss at 50 bucks per year.