Yes, you implied that you know better when you critiqued the author's choice to reach for iCloud and suggested your self-hosted 'alternatives' instead as better. Except the one you prefer is not an alternative. It's not even playing the same game.

Some people are willing to spend their finite life building personal infrastructure and the rest pay others to do it. You conflate the two at your peril. The best decision I've ever made was to stop running all of my own stuff -- you get literal days back in your life. Days.