I think you made a good saving of the initial investment and still managed to to publish your content which is mission accomplished. In fact you're likely to be consumed from IG.
I also tend to go to the path of least resistance and do things in batches and the simplest way possible but concentrate on the most important aspect of it, the content. In the end this is the winner solution for me, if I were to take the long road I would most likely stumble upon details that are not important. If they are important there's a possibility to fix one aspect or another.
True, I was stumbling on details constantly. Page load times, optimizing for screen sizes (this was a no-scroll, pure swipe-based mag), and it was very discouraging.
And you're also right about IG, people actually saw it and it would come up if people searched the tags. As a passion project, that's 70% of what I wanted. That remaining 30% probably wouldn't have been worth the effort.
I also tend to go to the path of least resistance and do things in batches and the simplest way possible but concentrate on the most important aspect of it, the content. In the end this is the winner solution for me, if I were to take the long road I would most likely stumble upon details that are not important. If they are important there's a possibility to fix one aspect or another.