Webhosting - Why Pay?

So looking on the web, everyday, at so many different sites… why pay for hosting? If you want a simple blog to jot down your thoughts, you can choose from Wordpress, Blogger, Tumblr. If you want to host pictures, you have Flickr, Photobucket. If you want social site, you have Facebook, MySpace. If you want to upload/host videos, you have YouTube. Art? DeviantArt. And not to mention all of these have tons of space to host your text, pictures and video. And if you needed more, you can always pay small fees. I like all of these sites because they are community driven. You can always have comments and people share thoughts.
So why do I pay for hosting? Technology is getting much cheaper… many places offering hosting and webspace for nothing.
I host Wordpress on my own because I like to control the extras… the html, the sidebar widgets, the comments. But can’t I do this with all the other sites out there? Should I continue my $3.99 a month plan? I can transfer my domain names and purchase them elswhere for $3-5 a year. So end up just paying that instead of ~$60 a year… what do you do, or would you do?