Interesting, I didn't realize either option were so expensive now! As an alternative, maybe something like Dreamhost's $10/yr plan and one-click wordpress installer?
DigitalOcean also has one-click installers/images available for ghost and wordpress, but would still be at least $5/mo.
Both of these options start to go back towards the burden of having to maintain them though.
I don't know if it exists, but maybe there's room for something like a desktop version of Ghost that allows you to write posts/etc locally and then publish to a static github-pages (or s3/etc) site.
DigitalOcean also has one-click installers/images available for ghost and wordpress, but would still be at least $5/mo.
Both of these options start to go back towards the burden of having to maintain them though.
I don't know if it exists, but maybe there's room for something like a desktop version of Ghost that allows you to write posts/etc locally and then publish to a static github-pages (or s3/etc) site.