Between Help Center and the Get Satisfaction API, is there any reason to pay?

I've been seeing Get Satisfaction (and other similar support systems) on more and more sites. I've just signed up for a free account for the company I work for and put the Widget on our pages. When I saw the prices, I wasn't too happy. We try to avoid monthly fees anyway (we'd much rather pay once for something) but as some others have pointed out, the monthly fees are a lot for a small business.

As I started looking at the API and Help Center, I began to wonder: Is there really any reason to pay? It looks like using the Help Center we could host a Get Satisfaction-style area on our own site branded as us. It also looks like we could use the API to have our own branded widget. It seems to me that, although this would be more work on our end, it would eliminate the advantages of even the $899/month service (full branding, domain would be ours, unique customers only limited by our own bandwidth, integration with whatever else we've got going).

But before I jump headlong into this assuming it'll all work as I think, I'd like some confirmation. Are the paid versions essentially an 'easy button' compared to using the various APIs available, or are there things that honestly just cannot be done unless you pay that whopper of a monthly fee? I'd hate to get down the road and find us leaning on GS as a crutch that we thought we could do more with, and end up feeling obligated to pay...