Yep, this has been an area of frustration for me as well, as I see the potential of Hive, and I am trying to bring more people here, but the signup difficulty and the overall complexity and learning curve most definitely does not make that easy.

I was able to get my girlfriend/partner, Hive account@kai-sunrise, here, via Hive account@ecency, however the amount of time required to learn the ropes and grow the account is not something she has time and attention for yet.

Of the free options, Ecency works well still.