Interesting perspective. For me it was clear from the beginning that I'm trading convenience for free certs.

Criticism of the "official" client was also very loud from the start.

I do agree that LetsEncrypt has been a constant source of maintenance problems over the years. For example now, I have to switch to another alternative acme client, since the old one doesn't seem to be in active development anymore...

However, certificates used to be expensive, even unaffordable for some projects.