Yep it's quite true. If you are just going to host one or two things, you could get away with a Raspberry Pi, but I have about 40+ containers running, and I realise I'm on my 3rd or 4th iteration of hardware. I don't have anything fancy as my small form-factor server cannot even mount...
I self host using a laptop that has a broken screen and uses 10watts of power.
The only cost was replacing the main drive that died after a few years and it was $80.
Pretty sure it is saving me money, since the laptop would have been e-waste otherwise.