Your satisfaction with DIY will depend on your priorities, how much patience and willingness to learn you bring, and the amount of time, effort, and resources you are willing to spend. Can you make good juice coming out of the gate? Yes, if you start slowly and pay attention. Will everything you make knock your socks off? Probably not. Is it worth the trouble? You will have to try it to find out.
Definitely agree. It's somewhat like cooking -- anyone can throw some Hamburger Helper together and make something edible. To take that same Hamburger Helper and create something really unique and delicious, that takes more effort, time, and money, and LOTS of patience to be able to do it again and again until you get it just right, *and then* be able to do it over and over again, the very same way. ejuice is no different. There's a learning curve that consists in large part in knowing what flavors from which flavor vendors taste best to you, and how best to combine them, but that just takes a bit of time, and willingness to experiment and play; the flavors themselves are not terribly expensive, nor are the other ingredients. Mainly patience, time, and a lot of bottles are the necessary requirements -- and willingness to "kill your babies" when they turn out awful.
Andria