The thing is, it doesn't matter if it is that much better than Squarespace or WordPress, that's just way too much money for a personal blog, even before the conversion to AUD I'd have to face.

These were my thoughts exactly. Maybe it just hasn't made business sense for them to host cheaper plans, since it's available to self-host. But you're right, even against competitors (Squarespace) it's quite a bit more expensive. Not sure what justifies such a gap.

At one point it looks like they'd even jacked it up to $79/month minimum, and the $29/month basic plan was added since then [1]. I guess that didn't sell well.

I have no experience with squarespace (just hear about them in podcasts), but I know they have pretty nice templates, they host blogs, stores (digital and physical), podcasts, and probably more, priced at $12 or $18/month.

From a cursory glance through Ghost's site I'm not seeing what value they bring to the table that makes it worth more. Reeeeaaaallly good blog, I guess?

[1] https://forum.ghost.org/t/300-increase-in-ghost-pro-packages...

I am fortunate enough to be on the $10 plan, but given how little traffic my site gets cutting it in half with the smallest DO box would still be nice.

You could move from Ghost Pro to another Ghost provider without being completely manual. A quick google turned up FastComet at $2.95/month. Page claims 1-click Ghost installation, easy Ghost upgrade service, and daily/weekly Ghost backups.

https://www.fastcomet.com/ghost-hosting

Yay open source!

You could even go with vultr or ovh and cut it even lower.