I use that on my 10th generation iPad and used it on the iPhone X that I had up until about two months ago when it got replaced with a 15 which does support the "charge to 80%" option. It works great.
The only minor annoyance I ran into was that the phones where the OS supports the 80% limit it will occasionally go to 100%, which they say is necessary to keep the battery level indicator calibrated. With the smart plug method you'll have to handle occasionally disabling the shortcut (or charging with the charger plugged straight into the outlet).
Just make sure to pick a smart plug that can be turned off from Shortcuts.
I think you are thinking of the "optimized charging" option, which tries to guess how long you will be leaving the phone on the charger and then pauses when it reaches 80% until it gets near the time it thinks you are going to take the phone off the charger and then charges up to 100%.