I chose the second option and I am really happy for it. I already had a server for my Nextcloud instance and adding one more Nginx reverse proxy to it was essentially free.

I didn't even use a framework and chose to just use libraries and implement the features only if I need them. Probably it took more than just using a framework but it's pretty minimal and I know all the parts of my toolchain. And I learned much more than I could learn if I used a framework.