Looks like you figured it out for yourself. Replying because I have had similar questions to yours, and similar thoughts around the costs of setting up and having a payroll service vs. the complexity of dealing with the payroll tax deposit system. I too had to decide between salary and dividend.
What I ended up from a thinking perspective was, that it was best to take the money out partly as dividend and partly as salary. This is the best tax outcome, and gives you the benefits of income splitting. Since I too had uneven income, I decided that I would pay the corp taxes on it, and keep the money as retained balance until it had collected enough to the point that I could pay myself a salary for a few months, and also some dividend to get the income splitting benefit. Once I know I have 6 months of salary collected, then I sign up for Gusto/other inexpensive payroll processing service, and give myself a salary for the 6 months or so. After that you can stop/suspend the service. I did consider the DIY route of payroll payments, but after much research decided that I didn't want to mess with that. Too risky, too complicated.
I also have a fiscal year that is offset from the calendar year, so it lets me plan out how much I should take as dividend and salary based on what my personal tax situation is looking like for the year.
So the gist of my suggestion is: don't take small payments, just leave the money in the corp and take it later on when you have enough for a few months' worth of salary. If you want to take some to optimize your personal taxes (e.g. you have a low year in terms of personal income, and would like to take some of that money from the corp that year) you can do it as a dividend, which will have the same impact on personal taxes as income, because it is considered ordinary dividends.
Hope this has helped. DM me if you want to discuss more.
