Dreamhost is pretty close to self-hosting. I can SSH in. I can download all of the files in my Wordpress installation, copy them elsewhere, dump my MySQL db, co

Dreamhost is pretty close to self-hosting. I can SSH in. I can download all of the files in my Wordpress installation, copy them elsewhere, dump my MySQL db, copy that elsewhere and have it running on another machine. The only way it differs from a VM is that I don't have root. Dreamhost actually does, iirc, allow me to get the same experience with a VM. Really, I'd argue that anyone offering Wordpress in such a way that you can easily download all of your data and put it somewhere else is fine on the self hosting axis. And lots of people do pay for hosting, but there are millions more who won't pay even $1/month.