“The fact that the new Starter plan costs more but doesn’t remove ads is a point of contention customers mentioned”

I’d say: if you want web hosting, then buy web hosting. If you want a “service” in which someone else controls all – all – the parameters, then be prepared for the consequences.

To be fair, I expect that this distinction probably isn’t well known, and vendors of managed services, like wordpress.com, especially at the cheaper end, don’t naturally tend to fall over themselves to explain such things.