Bread is a simple food, and made easily with minimal equipment. A bread machine is overkill for the occasional baker. They are touted as labour saving devices, but you still have to measure up ingredients, this is the most sensitive part of the process, get this wrong and even the best kneading technique will not deliver desired results. They are expensive, and often take a LOT of countertop space to boot! The machines are basically inferior stand mixers with heating elements and a bakers tin built in, sometimes with finish timers and release systems to add yeast/nuts/seeds/fruit etc at the ideal time. The more expensive models will have some variety in recipes, the cheaper ones will not.
You will be limited to making one shape of loaf if you use it end to end, rather than just as mixer. If you want to vary your loaves, shape, texture, variety, go off script etc, you're much better off doing it by hand or using a stand mixer. Who wants to limit themselves to the same old loaf, day in day out? Ok, some people do.
In theory stand mixers can be much less expensive than a good equivalent bread machine, but you can go crazy expensive with them too, think KitchenAid Artisan £500 models, any basic machine with a dough hook will do, so long as it kneads well, (just remember, capacity is important, it limits the size or number of loaves that can be kneaded). You could easily prep multiple loaves in a decent stand mixer simultaneously, not so in a bread machine, so there is that too.
Some bread machines will allow you just to knead the dough, and skip the baking cycle. Err, just get a stand mixer?
However, I do like the idea of the models with timers, you load the ingredients, set the time you want to loaf to be ready, and voila, fresh tinned bread timed to perfection. In theory. I haven't tried one though so can't comment on how useful this really is. I imagine half the battle is prepping the machine anyway. I just load our mixer when I get home for work or get up, and 3.5 hours later I will have a loaf of bread ready to serve, with about 3-4 minutes labour (of love).
Realistically, the time it takes to shape a loaf, put it in a tin, banneton, roll into a baguette etc is negligable, so if you want a labour saving device, I recommend the stand mixer and finish by hand, or simply buy from your local bakery.
Economically speaking, 15 hours is a substantial labour saving and justifies the cost of a cheapo machine, maybe not a fancy KitchenAid, but even they can make sense if they are BIFL purchases.