Why are you off the grid? What is the point?
We wanted to live in Vermont, and fell in love with a piece of land without a house on it. We were completely new to building (we had only built a chicken coop prior to our house), and had a limited budget. We knew we didn’t want to take a mortgage to build, so we went with the most basic cabin we could reasonably build in a short time. We figured we would add features and utilities as money would allow. 5 years in, and we still are fine with not having running water, a constant supply of electricity.
This is a less stressful life for us: being in control, having awesome projects, doing whatever we want with what we have.