I love Alby and I think their browser extension in the single most awesome and useful Lightning thing ever created. Having said that, I do think having to pay to be non-custodial (whether via Alby cloud service or your own node), is a total non-starter for 95% of users, and is of course a large reason why lightning has struggled in general.
Additionally, the thing that lightning is best at currently is SMALL payments, which honestly most people don't need non-custodial when it is for small amounts.
Non-custodial is for my cold wallet. I don't mind having some sums in custodial things, so long as they are very convenient and cheap to use.
I'd have happily paid a 500-1000 sats every month to use alby custodially, and I hope they considered that, but guessing it's not possible from a legal standpoint in many jurisdictions.
@Alby
You can run Alby Hub for free in different setups, nobody is forced to get the Alby Cloud subscription. We made all of these other free options. Also thanks for the feedback about being willing to pay a small fee for other options, but that is simply out of the roadmap for the time being, you are welcome to write the proposal in our feedback forum at 
