As a longtime and frequent user of k8s, I stay away from helm charts. I tried them out when they first got popular but I found they introduced more friction than they solved on the whole.

Not every addon/tool for the k8s ecosystem is worth it. I also don't bother with the ever-growing list of service meshes... not enough value to me for the overhead.

K8s is definitely the simpler alternative for me but there is still a lot of essential complexity in k8s due to the nature of the problems it's trying to solve. Mostly I like building on top of a solid foundation of standardized k8s API objects (pods, services, volumes, etc).

Tldr; Bring in only the add-ons and tools you really need so you don't add more complexity than necessary. Don't get swept up in the hype and marketing from other devs and cloud vendors.