Fully self-hosting anything is a big step for anyone without sysadmin experience, though managed hosting is a good intermediate option for those willing to pay for it.
I've already tried deploying Pleroma on Fly.io using a Dockerfile and successfully did it with someone's guide. I was hoping to get away with the Fly.io's free tier but it's still a lot of work to maintain for something that should be simple. With Pleroma and it's derivatives there is not even an option to reimport "backups".
Of course, it would be nice if somebody made a full-featured fediverse server that was self-contained with no dependencies, did backups through a web UI, and was generally as easy as possible for someone without expertise to self-host. Pleroma isn't designed for that. Neither is Mastodon.
This gets the closest to having control over your online identity but, honestly, the ROI for self-hosting your own Mastodon server just isn't worth it. The requirements are too demanding for just a one-person (or a few more) instance.
Even with Pleroma/Akkoma/[other platform], you still have to jump through some hoops of complexity for someone new to the fediverse, let alone a Twitter refugee (even on the more tech-literate side).