I do, password-protected of course. It is the only "native" way I found to get server files access to my iPhone without downloading a third party app (via Files).
Samba is a complicated piece of software built around protocols from the 90s. It’s designed around the old idea of physical network security where it’s isolated on a LAN and has a long long history of serious critical security vulnerabilities (eg here’s an RCE from this month https://cybersecuritynews.com/critical-samba-rce-vulnerabili...).
My solution: Share nothing and use rsync.
I’d say Dropbox et all is closer to a good design but their backend is insanely crazy optimized to make it work and proprietary. There’s an added challenge that everything these days is behind a NAT so you usually end up needing to have a central rendezvous server where nodes can find each other.
Since you’re looking at rsync where you want something closer to Dropbox, I’d say look at syncthing. It’s designed in a way to make personal file sharing secure.