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Nice one, it's less the time it'll take to re-treat cladding than the fact it'll be inaccessible up against fence panels, but that probably means it'll weather less too and thus last forever.
Oh, the other thing is I wouldn't have to look at the metal sides, only my neighbours would!
Polygon-
You’ll have to weigh up the costs and decide for yourself I guess. Obviously anything metal needs to have the right treatment to ensure it lasts outdoors, pressure treated wood is usually guaranteed for 15 years.
The other option for applying wood preserver is a sprayer, so as long as you could get the spray nozzle behind the shed you could probbaly give it a good blast that way.
Metal will be cold - which may or may not be an issue - unless you’re going to insulate it but it’s always going to be colder than wood with like for like insulation.
ThePeginator
Pressure treated timber is virtually maintanence free and will probbaly look A LOT nicer than metal. The only maintanence you could do if you wanted is a coat of wood preserver every few years and honestly it takes seconds, you just slap it on with a big brush.
You want some kind of feather edge cladding, or potentially log lap but I think feather edge will be most cost effective - you can often get it in decent quantities from timber reclaim yards if you don’t mind that route. My dad in law just built his own shed, built the walls out of 3x2 studwork, filled with insulation and then boarded with ply inside and out, he then added some kind of tyvek membrane to totally weatherproof it before adding buttons vertically for the cladding to screw to. It’s ruddy massive but it’ll probably still be there when the house falls down! Obviously building it yourself you can get something considerably sturdier for similar money to the ‘kit’ sheds. I’m planning to build mine the same way next year. I think he spend about £1200-1500 on materials but it’s a big old shed, home to two motorbikes plus storage, plus a big storm porch out the front, it’s the same height as their bungalow.