I know you said you'd rather not self host, but it can be very easy if you stick to the mainstream stuff and don't modify it much, and you don't mind the cost.

I know you said you'd rather not self host, but it can be very easy if you stick to the mainstream stuff and don't modify it much, and you don't mind the cost. DigitalOcean has a "1 click" setup for WordPress (and probably other blogging software). It's not actually 1 click, but it is super easy. The most tedious part was buying and configuring a domain, which has to be done away from DigitalOcean.