Ethereum Node Setup Help

Teachers please advise.

I am going through Ivan’s course on solidity. We are starting our Dapp business, but hit a road block with an API timestamp provider. Even in the 3rd party API white label, the 3rd party company integrates their website into the certificate, that means our customers will end up at the 3rd party API timestamp website instead of ours.

How do we setup inexpensively setup an ethereum node to timestamp these documents? We want it to be automated, so I prefer not to have it on our local machine. However, we are expecting a high number of file uploads.

I am seeing that you can run an ethereum node on a cloud service, but I prefer not to get an expensive monthly bill. However, let’s say that it’s cheap to run an ethereum node on a cloud service, now I am reading that to run an ethereum 2.0 node it now cost 32 eth.

Is there a cheap way to create a timestamp service on the etherum blockchain without it being local to the clients machine and not run a local node on our laptops.

Thank you!