Yeah... What I don't understand is why nginx doesn't have built-in LetsEncrypt cert fetching yet.

Separation of concerns (serving http/s content and registering/renewing tls certificates) is a feature. Combining them is an appeasement for devs who think they don't need ops.

caddy wants $1200 a year minimum, for 2 instances. For $1200 I'll give you a setup script for HAProxy/Certbot that will work on infinite servers, and will keep working next year without you paying me.

This is like the weird "SaaS all the things" model taken to the extreme.

Caddy performs worse, has crazy defaults (seriously, won't start when LetsEncrypt is down!?) and wants to charge you FOREVER to use their build service, even if you only use it once and never update.

So, tell me again who their target market is?

After this I would bet they have it before very long.

You assume that they care about Caddy and that the 9 lines of how to get LE for nginx is something they think it's hard to do for anyone that can't follow these instructions: https://gist.github.com/cecilemuller/a26737699a7e70a7093d4dc... or use: https://github.com/certbot/certbot