[hawski]

If you don't use SaaS blog platform and host it on a VPS it counts as self-hosting?

In this case shared hosting will be even cheaper and maintenance free. System, server, Let's encrypt cert, database and language updates will be taken care of. Many of those PHP CMS-es or blogging systems have a one click updates in place. Some shared hosting providers can also take care of this for you. You can get something with ssh access and rsync so you can be lazy and edit HTML with Word and just sync it or an SSG if that strikes your fancy.