I've used Ingress for some personal projects, and have also felt the pull towards service mesh. I've tried to set up Istio and Linkerd a couple times each, and bailed every time. These products need to be deeply integrated into the cluster (e.g. Istio installs its own ingress controller), so I've had to tear down and re-build my cluster in order to properly set up the mesh. I wish they were more approachable. Or I wish I were smarter!