I’m using a thinclient (Fujitsu S920), slapped an Intel Pro/1000 NIC in there and installed opnsense. Hardware cost for both used was around €80. Wifi is handled by a TP-Link access point.

It’s a big boy router/firewall, and it’s been quite a learning experience but very fun.

Yeah, I’m not so sure either.
I mostly just played around with it because some application I was testing relied on s3 storage and Minio was the best selfhosted project I could find that was s3 compatible. Worked pretty well, from what I can remember.

I can’t help with the whole connection between the VPS and your home server bit, but Minio is probably what you’re looking for when it comes to selfhosted object storage.

I’ve been very happy with mxroute for quite a few years now. They have a summer deal going on for $40 a year for unlimited domains and accounts, you’re only limited by storage (100GB) and outgoing emails per hour.
t would be helpful to know what you consider basic features you want the host to support, but catchall works.