For myself most of my photo display is online and thus my printing needs are minimal. I ran the numbers for my needs and decided that even with a cheap inkjet printer sending my photos out of house would be cheaper and the product would be better. From the reviews I read the output from those cheap printers would be substandard to any decent photo development shop. So I'd say unless you need a large amount of control over your output or can't wait a few days (or hours in some cases) to get your prints, farming the job out makes more economic sense and you will likely get a better result.
I tried a few online services and found
Adorama to be quite good. You can download their calibration files for their different papers so you can have a large amount of control over your output and they will run them as is with no adjustment.