I am a Minergate user (https://minergate.com/a/1cb3993ff6b8eff7393d2e1f), so I can tell you some altcoins are easier than others. Ethereum (ETH) is quite hard to mine on my desktop, and I tried adding my smartphone with the Minergate app to the hash rate, but it was too complex. Bytecoin (BCN) is far easier at 50 altcoins/day. I'm still learning, as I dabble around mining other altcoins such as Aeon (AEON), Fantomcoin (FCN), and Monero (XMR).

You have to watch a desktop or laptop computer like a boiling water kettle when mining. Use Windows Task Manager on Windows 10. You cannot go 100% mining with Minergate - your computer will crash, burn out, have unexplained reboots as the memory is used up. Keep the CPU load around 75% or less, usually by telling Minergate how many CPUs to use. At 33% or less, you can mine 24/7, but of course you're not going to get a lot of altcoins that way, just a few pennies a day.

I haven't done cloud mining, just the desktop mining, but Minergate has reliable withdrawals to desktop wallets. Their web Dashboard is wildly inaccurate for hash rate and multiple-computer hash rate reporting, so you do have to make some judgement calls as to when to withdraw.

But it beats having to find an online exchange to buy altcoins or change Bitcoin (BTC) into an altcoin.