It’s a shame that the price of wood pellet have gone up tremendously in the last couple of years as well.
I had a pellet stove for several years, when I lived in the far north. It was great! They take only a small fraction of the effort of burning cord wood (which I did for decades).
They can easily be retrofitted; because they don’t require a standard chimney (they install like a gas-burning heater — just a 6” hole in the wall behind the stove will do in most cases).
They’re also safer, because only a few ounces of pellets are in the fire pit at any time. If you shop around, you’ll find fire insurance costs a lot less for pellet stoves than for cord-wood burners.
If wood pellets are expensive or in short supply where you live; there are all sorts of alternative pellet fuels. Corn, switchgrass, peanut shells, etc. can be burned in pellet stoves (you have to get the right stove). Wood pellets are plentiful where I live, because of the pine beetle infestation. Still, price will always be based on what the market will bear.