Help me decide between this approach — what would you do? [v4]

Long-time lurker, first-time poster. For context, I am working with a pretty modest budget so high-end suggestions probably will not land. This came up at a meetup recently and the room was split, so curious what the broader community thinks.

The trade-offs here are not obvious to me and I keep flip-flopping. Mostly thinking out loud — feel free to push back hard.

The trade-offs here are not obvious to me and I keep flip-flopping. I tried three different approaches and none of them felt quite right. Maybe an unpopular opinion but here we go.