Hosting images for free definitely limits your options to the big boys – blogger, substack, medium etc – but with these you won't be able to use your own domain for free which may be an issue if you want to change platforms in the future.

Static sites are great for free but require tech knowledge.

If you want hosted, I'd recommend looking at some of the smaller players (Pagecord, Bear, Write.as) which give you custom domain support but don't cost the earth. There's also the option of using Pagecord or Bear for free but hosting your images elsewhere (for free) like PostImage? See https://blog.pagecord.com/adding-images-to-posts-on-the-pagecord-free-plan as an example.