Ask HN: Windows Hosting for Multiple Side Projects

I have a few side projects which I am tinkering with and am ready to launch MVPs for. Everything is written in dotnet core MVC. Ideally I would like to have my own server and run each site behind IIS as a reverse proxy (do this at work, familiar with it). I also like being able to spin-up/decommission sites quickly and easily, and a dedicated VM would allow me to do that. I also want to run SqlExpress locally on the same box for the sites to talk to, which you don't get with e.g. Azure App Service, nor do I want to have to administer each one separately.

Running a non-minuscule Windows VM in Azure seems to cost around $90 per month which seems pricey to me, when that over the course of a year would pay for a server with similar spec twice over. But, I don't want to touch a physical machine here.

Is hosting multiple sites on a dedicated VM the wrong approach here? Anyone else running multiple sites on windows have a better hosting solution?