You have to have the breaker anyway, no matter how you set the circuit up.
Same on the power cords.
When I rewired the heaters in my current location, it cost me less than $50 ALL UP to set up a pair of 20 amp 220 circuits with 3 outlets EACH (though 20/20 hindsight I'm thinking I should have put 4 or 5 on each - I might end up changing that eventually.)
I have NEVER seen a PDU that was $25 or less unless it was broken.
I was assuming you use 1 set of breaker/wire for each outlet as opposed to multiple outlets on 1 breaker.