Your DNA by itself IS informative to you; there are plenty of public SNP databases you can use for making useful comparisons. The basic "what ethnicity are you?

Your DNA by itself IS informative to you; there are plenty of public SNP databases you can use for making useful comparisons. The basic "what ethnicity are you?" result that is the bread-and-butter of these companies can be ascertained by comparison with the 1000 Genomes database, which has detailed information on haplogroups. You can probably also get raw SNP calls from a genotyping service. Human SNP genotyping costs about $300 a sample at-cost and can maybe be had for less. Few of these resources are commercialized for the general public, but they are certainly accessible if you just want the raw data. In other words, the add-on from 23andMe is mostly convenience - they spare you the effort of having to locate these services and engage with them, and they spare you the effort of having to do your own informatic analysis.