One of the main benefits you get by paying for a hosted instance is that you can share notes publicly. For example, you can write an article in a full-featured WYSIWIG markdown editor, paste images, attach files, etc. You can then share the notes and they will appear at the links provided.
You can also add the #shareRoot attribute to a shared folder; this means visiting https://example.trilium.cc/share/ will display that note (or the child notes). In fact, this website itself is shared notes! It's Trilium all the way down.
If you'd like, I can even apply custom URL rules to your subdomain, so you can access the Trilium app at a different subdomain, and access the shared notes at your main subdomain. This makes it particularly easy to run a blog; simply write your articles with the Markdown editor at https://example-editor.trilium.cc, and share the notes; they will be available at https://example.trilium.cc and you have essentially created a blog! $2.50 a month for a hosted blog and a personal note-taking application, not bad.
PS: If you're interested, you can purchase a domain for pretty cheap and point the DNS records at this server, and I can configure the webserver to serve your shared notes at that domain. Then your blog can be served at whatever domain you choose, rather than a subdomain of https://trilium.cc.