My main blog has been up and running for almost two years now. It typically gets 500-800 pageviews per week, and I have never run any advertising on it. I just moved it from a Wordpress(.org) platform hosted by a hosting service to a Wordpress.com platform, and so far I couldn’t be happier. I may not be able to customize, but honestly the off-the-rack theme that I chose looks 100x better than any of the endless themes I picked and tweaked back when I was self-hosting. I am saving lots of money from not having to pay for hosting, and best of all I don’t have to put up with hosting service shenanigans.

I think there is such a thing as too many options sometimes, and that was certainly the case when it came to hosting my blog elsewhere. I was spending more time tweaking themes and uploading plugins than I was writing content. For me, some of the limitations you listed are actually beneficial to me and to the actual content on the blog.