I have tried everything pretty much from piece in the hoop to actual quilting in the hoop. There are limitations with everything and you need to use the method that best suits at the time. I find I get little satisfaction (which is why we all do this in the first place) with piecing in the hoop compared to when I make the blocks myself - despite their usual wonkiness. Don't ask me how I do it, but I continually am "off" just a smidgeon every time!
I do like to use the endless hoop for quilting narrow borders and it is quick and easy. It's restricted to the width of the hoop though so you need to choose designs that can easily be added to by free motion stitching if you wish to make it a wider border than the hoop width - ie on an 8" border, the design is always closer to the edge and looks silly sitting "out there".
This is what I found:
The cost is prohibitive factor. You need to really be in love with the design as you have to use it an awful lot to justify the price and get real value for money. Water soluble stabiliser is also costly compared to regular tear away. Piecing in the hoop is fabulous but again, you need to piece an awful lot of that block/item to be cost effective.
Availability: well, you can download a picture of anything from the internet, stitch it on the paper without thread, turn it over and pounce. Voila! Same for piecing - you can find free block/quilt patterns everywhere.
Time wise the actual quilting stage is much quicker to do it yourself. You need alignment markings on both methods. Pouncing time vs hooping ie squaring it up to the hoop then pinning the quilt to the stabilizer (wss). Only the stitching time is quicker with hooping.
I made the decision to use the emb machine for the little jobs and am putting my time into learning to free motion quilt properly on my regular machine. It can be done by anyone on any machine provided you've got a darning foot and you're not trying to do a king size with a 350e lol and the satisfaction that I get is way up there. The stitches aren't perfectly sized, nor always totally symetrical but noone seems to even notice when they get a quilted item from me. There are sooo many Youtube vids out now, you are being taught by experts for free and I really like that!
You really should try the emb machine for yourself but not with a costly design. Embroidery Library have single designs that are relatively inexpensive for you to try and obviously the designs will come out perfectly if you pin to wss instead of trying to hoop, it's important to get as much value for money as you can and there are many, many quilters/stitchers now who would never have dreamed that they could do what they now can because of it. That is a good thing.