I put winter tyres (alpin PA4) together with after market rims last year for the first time as I live in the Surrey hills , which though is down souff, but we dont get enough gritting and I live in a hilly area and I only had the one car. for other folks, I would say winter tyres are a bit overkill. I drive 7 days a week in the winter and pick and drop family members on 70 mile trips a couple of times a week so winter tyres were a real blessing for around half of the period i had them on especially when the standing water freezes overnight. every now and again though, temps really shot up to say 14 or 15 degrees and winter tyres struggle in those temps. To be honest , anything over 9 degrees and they really begin to feel like piscis out of water. also they have longer braking distances than summer tyres generally except in snow and ice . Overall in my merc, it was worth it but I was really after michelin cross climate + tyres but they didnt do them for my car tyre size range otherwise I would have preferred those . with the winters, when temps were below around 3 degrees then the alpin PA4 winter tyres really showed their quality and worth with AWD levels of grip lol . We had settled snow and black ice plenty and then I really saw the value of those tyres overall. but lateral grip was always a bit limited as the tyre compound is very soft
this year I'll wait till maybe end of nov to stick the winters on my merc and will keep the summer tyres (mp4s) on my daily (bmw m3) . the mp4s tyres are so good on that car that I'm confident that other than snow and ice, I wont miss not having winter boots on that car (I'm sure I'll regret that statement when I'm stranded somewhere or "parked" in a Bush .) and if it snows I'll just daily the merc.
my view is if you have great summer tyres , you can probably do without winter tyres . not all tyres are equal either so it is important to consider a decent quality set of tyres. for down souff, summer biased all season eg cross climate + are a better choice than dedicated winters
lastly , watch out for cheap aftermarket rims, my front right is warped on the inner portion after just a few months but at gbp 130 for a rim, it is as cheap to replace it rather than get it repaired.