it really is much harder to self host than it used to.

90s: ask your ISP for a public IP, register your domain, start Apache and off you go

Nowadays: getting a public IP is iffy. All good domain names are taken. Emails from your self-hosted mail server go straight to spam/junk. Fiddling with TLS certificates is close to mandatory. The moment you start your server, you're bombarded by a flood of gratuitous requests, trying out every known vulnerability under the sun. etc. etc.