I wouch for the VPN route… VPN servers are built to be exposed, are hardened/engineered to resist the harshness of the net and are somewhat safe even with default settings.

Should you publish on the wild a few web apps, you would have to harden, monitor and manage a bunch of environments and/or frameworks with a load of quirks each.

A VPN is easier to maintain and safer for your data with a lower effort.

The article is on a ‘pay or ok’ site.