I'm suprised to see so many people saying that frozen/thawed is cheaper than live feeders! I wish my city had your prices!
When I first got my little normal girl, she did fine on F/T. However, my two butters I order from XYZ Reptiles have only ever been fed live, and so when I offered f/t, they weren't having it. Eventually I had to pick up a couple of live hoppers.
That being said, my husband and I are now beginning our own colony of mice (and will progress to rats when the time comes), and both of our female mice are pregnant. The initial investment wasn't bad at all, and now we'll be in total control of production and animal quality.
We've also moved our f/t girl to live and she loves it.
For us, live feeding is going to be cheaper by far than buying a pack of f/t feeders from our petstore, or even ordering online, since you usually have to order by the 50 or 100 pack from what I've seen.
Interesting...