I bought a Synology not for the hardware, but the software. I went down the FreeNAS/TrueNAS rabbithole before. But it's a pain and the Synology software lets me get things setup easier.
Are you suggesting that that’s a fool’s errand and I shouldn’t do that?
Got a Synology had it up and running in an hour and I was pretty much done. Every 6 months I take a look at it or add a user if I need to. But it pretty much takes care of itself and I don't worry about it. It emails me every sunday with its status and I call it good. I can keep doing the actual productive parts of my job.