Of course the higher the potential investment the more leery I'm apt to be.
That's the beauty of an IP Cam setup. You can start cheap and increase your capabilities as you get comfortable, instead of having to invest in a whole system all at once. That's what I did. Started off with a single Foscam camera with no monitoring software. The camera by itself can email you screen shots when it detects motion. You might find that's sufficient and can stop there.
I mainly got the Blue Iris software because I'm a bit of a geek and it was cheap with the purchase of a camera from Foscam, like $35 or so. So when I bought a few more cameras I gave it try and found it to be pretty good. Once I got used to having clips recorded and stored in a cloud folder and having a nice app to monitor and control it all from my phone, it was hard to go back.
Btw I looked at the Blue Iris reviews on Amazon. Most of the bad ones fell into several broad categories:
1. Complaints about the cameras, not the software. Ignore those.
2. Complaints that the software has to be activated, or trouble activating. I didn't experience this but it sure would be annoying if I did.
3. Complaints that customer service is lacking. Yes, that is a weakness. Support, such as it is, is a user-run forum. That's the way it goes with cheap software, no sub-$500 software is going to give free phone support, etc.
4. Complaints that it's too complicated. If you don't like doing software setup, pay attention to these. Though I don't know of any solution that is turn-key to setup. No matter what software you use you're going to have to configure the cameras, open ports on your router, set security etc. Foscam does offer an option to set up your cameras for you over the phone for an extra fee, I don't remember how much but it's under $100. Maybe they offer the same for Blue Iris, I don't know.
The main reason I recommend IP cameras (and they don't have to be Foscam though they seem to be the cheapest to buy) is because it can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be. Start small and simple, gradually add capabilities, and stop when you're happy with it, you don't have to buy a whole expensive package.