Maybe I'm ignorant but $200 a year is not that much money. Considering a software engineer is usually paid 70k a year and you have four engineers you are looking at this being .071428571 % of total cost. So ummmmm maybe minimize your costs elsewhere :p
$200 certificate for a personal website? That's not necessary. What we need is to stop charging a SSL/TLS certificate so much to get the recommended level of cipher used.
$200 a year should be easily affordable under the US welfare system. Many people on welfare (oftentimes it's fraudulent, but government-encouraged, "disability" these days) make more than minimum wage.
I am making a US-based comparison since you used the word "federal."
