I want to learn a new server-side language.

I already know Java. I'm fascinated by Scala, have read about it a lot, and want to get practical experience.

But I also have some concerns of practical nature - I want to do the backend for many small, non-profit apps, and pay the lowest price for hosting possible. I also want that other people can easily contribute to these apps, if applicable.

This leads me in PHP's direction. But I don't like PHP and would like to use these small projects to learn Scala instead.

You see the problem, I don't want to pay more money each month, from my own pocket, for hosting. But I want to use these projects to learn Scala. Is there a practical solution for this?