self-host gives you flavor though (your own domain, absolute choice in what you can use, and of course 'meta content' (this is how i host this blog, vs github pages, vs mediumas for the quality of the content, it is usually a mix of personal experience (e.g. https://jvns.ca/blog/, https://folklore.org/0-index.html, https://www.filfre.net/ ) and number of hours to write.it...