If you’re not familiar with Tailscale it’s a very user-friendly “overlay network” that lets you securely connect all your devices no matter where they are over the internet.
No need to forward ports on your router to access your home network anymore. And no need to set up VPNs manually either. Just install Tailscale on all your devices and log in with Gmail or other providers.
Tailscale has official apps for Windows, Mac Android and iOS.
Thanks to a project called Trayscale we now have a GUI app for managing Tailscale on GNU/Linux as well.
FWIW OpenVPN can use DNS names so you can use DDNS.
Point taken on the rest though. Everything you mentioned IS possible but the point that it’s beyond most hobbyists is valid. I’m really wary of relying on a centrally managed pay service that is ‘free’ (for now).