[detaro]

On the other hand, $5 is relatively cheap compared to other paid hosting platforms, so clearly people are willing to pay for additional comfort over Github Pages. I seriously don't get how people don't seem to understand that (and I say that as someone who self-hosts a lot of stuff, and thus personally isn't interested paying for a blog, but know plenty people who do).

[Zanni]

$5/mo seems high to me, but that's irrelevant. I'd happily pay it, if this could be a replacement for Facebook. But it can't, because $5/mo would be insanely high to most of my friends, many of whom decide what their plans are for the evening by how much gas is in their tank, i.e. can they afford to drive to town? And if my friends aren't there, it's not really a social network. I love this idea, but it needs a free tier to scale, and it needs a "pro" tier that's around $10-$20/year.

EDIT: Okay, apparently there is a free tier, but it isn't really viable. No way to post (without an existing, external blog) and no profile page.

[prepend]

It’s all relative. I pay $30/year for a shared hosting service. It runs a ton of different sites and software (anything supported by cpanel basically).

So doubling that price for just blogging is out for me. But it’s cool if you, and others like it and are willing to pay. I wish OP best of luck.