Running an LN node isn't much the problem I think. It's that LNURL just sucks period. For most, running a webserver with a domain and having all that shit seems ridiculous tbh. BOLT12 can't come fast enough. Gets rid of most of the headaches for receiving privacy and needing an online webserver to receive via reusable invoice codes.  

 This is also the reason. 

 I am a perpetual traveler and I cannot bring a raspberry pi with me all the time and connect it to every hotel and airbnb.

I also do not trust the security I would be able to achieve on a VPS.

I use lightning for bitrefill, not only for zapping, so I cannot just keep 50k sats on a VPS and the problem is solved.

But I am very eager to read some solutions that other nostriches implemented. 

 Zapping is play money... I'd rather keep node isolated from that  

 It's a lot of work to set it up. It will become easier, in due time, but we're not there yet. 

 Managing a node and channels is too much work and costs too many sats. I'll stick to custodial lightning, probably forever if the tradeoff is that my daily spending could get rugged but in exchange I don't have liquidity restraints or have to manage a node. I'm okay with having a couple hundred dollars worth rugged. I keep my savings in cold storage (no hardware, just steel plates) and another small chunk in 2FA liquid. If my custodial lightning wallet needs some more sats for a transaction, I just use boltz exchange to top up from sats in my liquid 2FA wallet. I'm only ever at risk of getting $200 rugged. The benefits far outweigh the risks. Honestly, I could just keep enough to zap (like $20) and just top up my lightning with boltz when I actually want to use the sats to make a lightning purchase. Takes less than a few minutes and costs less than 1k sats.  

 I should mention, I've run LND and CLN before. I've managed a node with up to 5 channels and 5 mil liquidity. I know how lightning works.