My kitchen table is from Ikea, it's solid wood. My Poang chair from Ikea came with a 10 year guarantee and I expect it to last longer than that. This idea that everything that comes out of Ikea is barely going to make it home is nonsense.
Of course if you buy a side table for £6 then you can't expect it to last long. That isn't representative of the whole though.
IKEA is like McDonald's of furniture, there's a place for it, but like the McDonald's fancy burger options if you're going for that you'll have significantly better options for a bit more money
Only if you value your time at 0. If you value your time at more than that, the time it takes to get a contractor and back and forth with him to agree on a design etc makes it more expensive, since with Ikea you pretty much opt into a generic solution of one-size-fits-all.
I agree it's not for everyone; though I wouldn't say it's the McDonalds of furniture – this would IMO be Poco (https://www.poco.de/); also I'm saying that as someone who doesn't eat McDonalds :-D