Part of the issue is I'm not sure if I'm going to stick with this project, so I'd rather not pay for it quite yet (especially as money is much tighter now that our third roommate moved out). WordPress I knew had a free plan without needing to host anything. I was hoping I'd like it/stick with the project and eventually pay and host it either through them or via a self-hosted instance. It was simply to get the project off the ground and started, but I wasn't willing to do that all yet.