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.