[vevoe]

It's not about control it's about ease of use. You can get a cheap shared hosting account and upload your php site in minutes without configuring a thing. Not everyone wants or needs to manage a server.

Think about a small business with no tech experience that just needs a basic marketing site. They download some cheap Wordpress theme, make it say what they want and upload it. Easy! Digital Ocean would be a disaster for them.

[apatters]

This is 100% true, and furthermore, the process you just described is still too complicated for millions of businesses. They just make a Facebook page (or maybe a Shopify/Wix site) instead.