I have no problem with Express edition. Over the years I've developed scripts and batch files for running DBCCs backups against it via the Win OS scheduler and that's worked just fine, my Perl job would collect them all for easy review. Most of the time they had lightweight things running against it, like a Cisco VoIP switch that used Express as its management system.

The size limit has not been much of a problem, I can only think of two systems in the past that I've worked on that were bigger than 10 gig: the CRM/ERP system and a log monitor that consolidated all of the logs of every Windows server that we had. My current project I'll be surprised if it hits a single gig within 5 years. I'd be more concerned about the memory limit.