I have a decade old HP server box put aside for game hosting and network storage, 4 thread Intel Xeon CPU, 16G Ram, cost us about $150, it's been more than up to the job for four players with the Serverside Simulation and Compess (ZDO Data) mods. Server is CPU light but network traffic heavy, so the main bottleneck is your internet provider.

Remote hosting is extremely location specific, ideally you want word of mouth from other gamers in the same city.