Time to start sailing the high seas!

They won’t use it until they are forced to 100%. iMessage has become a reason people get iphones. Peer pressure at its finest.

You should also put your efforts towards getting apple on RCS. Then you wouldn’t need to have multiple apps.

Do you have any old hardware that doesn’t have a job? That is a great place to start. Take some time try out different solutions (proxmox, unraid, casa OS). Then as you nail down your needs you can better pick hardware.

I saw the grass was greener on the other side. I can’t say it is or isn’t. Just different problems.

What I have done is follow my interest and curiosity. It has served me well in the technology industry

A few years old prebuilt for the office can work well, I have an HP 290 and HP S01 that work great as servers.