Yes I agree. They're really expensive but I found a local seller on ebay who sold then for cheap. "Common foot prints" are SOIC and TSSOP. 14 pins is also usually the most I'll ever use. Just put a SOIC-14 footprint on top and a TSSOP-14 on the bottom. Then connect the pads to 0.1inch headers. This should take you less than 5 minutes. Also most PCB manufacturers offer panelling free of charge, so you don't need to do it in the design stage