Domain sellers lure you in with cheap domain for first year, but when the bill for second year comes, it's probably better to switch domains. As for hosting, your recommendation "All plans require a credit card.", and probably is a bit too much for simple blog. How about Netlify or Cloudflare Pages (comes with analytics as a bonus)?
I think the Fly.io free tier is more generous than Netlify(has 3GB persistent volume). Cloudflare if I need a database someday I will need to adapt to their exclusive options(K/V, Durable Workers) instead of picking whatever I want.