True, cheaper and easier, but you can't fiddle with things.

I did a test recently with a picture I took of a niece and her husband at her wedding. The pictures from photo services were pretty good but the color wasn't 100 percent. (Aside from flesh tones, I knew what colors the dresses were.) I was able to get a better picture out of my mid-range Epson after a bit of experimenting with settings. It's not something you'd want to do for every picture, it gets expensive fast, but once you get the print settings right and calibrate your monitor (not necessarily real color calibration, though that's nice, but at least get an idea of what good flesh tones and so on look like on yours) you don't have to repeat it each time to get better results than the standardized photo printing services will give you.