As someone else said, the main reason is to support the devs.
Secondary benefit is the features are seamless and not something I have to maintain. I only have so much time in my day, so I have to choose which things I want to DIY and which I want to pay someone else to manage, but that’s a side benefit to supporting the devs.
I hear you! I was on the same boat - I had telemetry locked down as much as possible, but I eventually got tired of the arms race and decided to give Kagi a spin.
Took a while to commit but a big selling point was being able to bring my very non-technical wife along for the ride.
Hosting for two:
I just upgraded my home storage setup, so offsite backup is now running at my parents house, saving me ~$250/yr (but probably costing them ~$50/yr in added utility costs)
Respectfully, this software could solve all my problems in life, and I would still struggle to ask my friends to “federate with my continuwuity server so we can chat”