The design of the Drew's pumps is identical to medical dosing pumps that have been proven over the years to provide dependable transfer of liquids that don't lend to direct contact with pump components. Although I'm not familiar with aqualifters, I love the simple, dependable design of the Drew's and prefer to time dosing pumps, fuge lighting, two tiers of T5 lighting and two Mh independently. Because of this, I don't need a dosing pump with built in timer and, in fact, purposely chose not to go that route. I require 7 lighting circuits to be timed which soon will be handled by a Neptune Apex controller.
I consider the Drew's pumps to be inexpensive in comparison to other financial components of the hobby. IMHO, running two Drew's pumps to handle bulk mixed Twopart is the simplest and most economic and dependable way to handle the changing CA and ALK requirements of an established reef tank. If you don't wish to use a controller, you can simply plug them into inexpensive digital timers. Mine run about 55 minutes a day delivering 1.5 ml per minute in a 107 gallon system. I dump my ALK in the early morning and my CA in the late afternoon. Be sure to have the discharge in a place with lots of water movement or you'll get little piles of ALK precipitate in your sump rather than being distributed. It's easy to figure if you need to add or subtract running time of the pumps.
That's my story and I'm stickin' to it.