Evaluation boards do have a place if one is tackling an unfamiliar circuit design, or for which one doesn't have enough experience.
The time, effort, expense to develop the circuit, and customer aggravation caused by circuits which don't fully meet expectations, are worth every cent that an EV board costs.
I once was struggling with a Bluetooth receiver. I went to the applications engineer, and he told me to copy EXACTLY the layout of the EV board.
I did, and it worked flawlessly from then on.