With forewarning about a huge influx of users, you know Lemmy.ml will go down. Even if people go to https://join-lemmy.org/instances and disperse among the great instances there, the servers will go down.
Ruqqus had this issue too. Every time there was a mass exodus from Reddit, Ruqqus would go down, and hardly reap the rewards.
Even if it’s not sustainable, just for one month, I’d like to see Lemmy.ml drastically boost their server power. If we can raise money as a community, what kind of server could we get for 100$? 500$? 1,000$?
If the instance in question has email support, I don’t see why the instance couldn’t notify them directly - but I think providing alternative instances first (with the option to get notified if this instance opens up) would be more reasonable
The idea would be to retain the ability to collect email addresses, beyond the point that the main app can’t keep up. So you’d want something lightweight just for capturing the emails.