Espresso is a big learning curve, especially if you want to get good at milk steaming, but the end result is fantastic once you get the hang of it.
I bought the 2019 model of the Gaggia Classic Pro earlier this year and really love it. I have a lot of prior experience as I was a manager and barista in a specialty coffee shop for a while, so that definitely expedited the process of learning how to get great results out of the machine. You may not have that experience to go off of, but there are a ton of great resources online for learning.
What grinder do you have? There’s a good chance you’re grinder may not grind fine enough or consistently enough for espresso. The one thing a lot of beginners underestimate when getting started is how important it is to have a good electric burr grinder that’s made to handle grinding for espresso. Those can cost a lot of money and generally run $300+ for entry level espresso grinding. All that said, for just getting started, I think it’s totally fine to have your local coffee shop grind your coffee for espresso while you start learning the process.
I’m not sure how the Evo comes set up, but the older model was not set up for espresso enthusiasts but rather consumers who aren’t looking to get too deep into it. As a result there were a couple upgrades that I found necessary out of the box; namely the tamper was just a piece of plastic, the portafilter came set up as a pressurized portafilter so I had to remove that piece of it, and the machine was set to 15 bar pressure so I had to switch out the OPV spring to get 9 bars. The Evo machine comes set at 9 bars out of the box so you won’t have to worry about that. I’m not sure about the tamper/portafilter situation though.
Espresso is a blast one you get the feel for it! Let me know if you have any other questions, I’m happy to help!