I'm surprised how little people run their own blog, especially since it's free, minus domain name cost. I run my own blog (shameless plug: https://www.powu3.com/) for free (thanks Netlify!) and it was relatively easy to setup, and this is coming from someone with a hardware background rather than software. I guess the biggest downside is that it's harder to get visibility and clicks from search engines. I know a lot of people use github pages which is fully free and a great alternative.