For your stated budget-- $100-$200-- I'd stick with going to a place like Costco, Walgreens, etc. They will make your prints with 'reasonable defaults', meaning that the colors will be predictably saturated, but they won't give you prints with border problems, with the colors wildly off (green skin tones, etc, unless you took a picture of The Hulk), and won't charge you if they mess up.
My home printing experience is limited to an Epson r800, and I moved to a Canon Pro 9500 Mark II, as per this question here. Both of these printers require calibration, and the only calibration solution that I've found has been one that combined both monitor and printer calibration (as per this question here). Prior to that, I would end up with strange color artifacts, such as bad skin tones and incomplete gradients ('stairstepping', where you can see individual tones).
One benefit of home printing is that you can mess with paper options past the standard 'matte', 'glossy', and 'luster.' But when weighed against the cost of ink (one set of inks for the Canon is ~$130, or most of your budget), it's just far more cost effective to use one of these labs.
Another benefit of home printing, though, is privacy. If you're printing photos you don't want other people to see at all, then home printing is the way to go. I just think that, to do it right, requires a lot of preparation and groundwork that is beyond your budget.