Have Your Cake
I've been pressing tubes into pans for friends. It's something you'll hear time and again from pros. Skip the sets, buy individual tubes, it will be cheaper and you'll learn more about color mixing that way. However, while the project is both easy and enjoyable, I'm not sure I would be here doing this if I didn't start out with a set.
It's conveniently the beginning of back to college season, so shops around me all ran out of empty palettes at the same time. I don't have mint tins or the likes handy, so I ordered some from a shop out of town. The colors? Easy. Do split primaries or primary + secondary, you'll cover a lot of range! Only I hadn't the faintest idea what split primaries was when I began.
And then after picking the colors, there's the exercise of patience pouring and drying each layer, adding up to around 100 hours. Sure, the bulk of it is merely waiting, but try telling people they'll have to wait 100 hours between now and when the paint is ready to use and the momentum is gone.
But that's only if you want a travel palette! You could easily skip the 100 hours just by using them straight from the tubes! Like me, the majority of people around me are working adults. Unlike me, they mostly have to contend with commute and frequent travels. Many of them had tried portable palettes before and liked them. Lotsa convenient colors. Less time thinking which one to mix. They don't set out to be "proper" painters, they just want to rejuvenate some (analog) creative energy back into their life.
I see people unfairly bashing portable kits like Koi and Cotman quite often. Sure, they are student-grade, they aren't lightfast, but they're also not as low quality as some people make it out to be. My favorite review is the one saying that the Koi pans are chalkier than their Daniel Smith tubes... I mean. Yes (why are you looking at the Koi if you already have Daniel Smith???). They're affordable (I won't say cheap because they are actually not that cheap in my part of the world), they're easily available, you can come home with one and start coloring or doodling without getting terribly frustrated because they're still proper paints, unlike many sets unsuspecting parents buy for their kids (and perhaps scaring their kids off art for years). Someone said that they ended up using their Koi more often even if the paints aren't the best quality compared to their collections, just because it's laid out in such a convenient package. That's the point of it, really.
Just splurge some more and get the better quality ones! The "splurge some more" means a lot in places where art is seen as luxury, minimum wage is in Mariana Trench, and local currency is so weak against dollars. As a corollary, if you have something nice you aren't using, make it more convenient for you to use. Make it visible. Make it reachable.
Anyway, I've been pressing tubes into pans. It's a surprisingly fun activity with meditative qualities: squeeze the paints out, stir them with toothpicks, then tap the pans to level the paints. Over and over and over again over the course of a week. If your area is hotter and drier, you might even get it done in three days. If you have plenty of tubes, maybe colors you tried but didn't gel with, maybe share some with friends. It's fun. You can take the stress out of picking colors for them, even include some convenience colors you know they'll like.
If someone wants to start (or restart) their creative practices and I don't have spare sets to gift, honestly I'll just tell them to buy one.