Well, in the face of all this opposition, I'll cast one enthusiastic vote for well-designed ash pans. They are fantastic. But, you need to have one that is indeed designed well, and then you need to use it correctly, to reap the benefits.
In my old VC, the ash pan was great. (It was one of the few well-designed things about the stove, but that's another story.) It held a week's worth of ashes and allowed spill-free, dust-free, mess-free removal of the ashes.
My new Jotul Oslo also has a great ash pan. It also holds a week's worth of ashes and provides mess-free ash removal. Once per day at most (not once per load), I rake the ashes just a tiny bit if needed. This lets a portion of the fine, fully-burned ash to fall into the pan, and leaves the floor of the firebox with a nice layer of coals and insulating ash. They key is to resist raking too much. You want the firebox floor to have a layer of ashes. Running the stove this way allows me to just toss a whole load of wood onto the coals and ash, and away it goes in a couple of minutes.
These ash pans work well because they are large, easy to remove and replace, and easy to carry. They work well because the grate in the firebox floor is designed properly, with the right amount of slots of the right size, so that the ash doesn't drop through too easily, but drops when you rake it just a bit. This is very different from the ash pans in the pedestal of stoves where you need to rake the ashes around and through a little trap door. Those pans may reduce the shoveling, but they don't also virtually self-empty the ashes from the firebox into the pan like the pan and grate in the Oslo. The Oslo is as close to an automatic ash management system as I think you could get, as often it's multiple days between any raking at all, and a week between emptying, even when burning 24/7.
You can empty the ash pan whenever you want. You don't have to wait for the stove to burn down like you do if you shovel the ashes. You can do it entirely at your convenience, not the stove's convenience.
I can't see how raking the ashes all around to separate them from the coals, and then shoveling the ashes into a bucket or other receptacle, can possibly be as easy or as mess- and dust-free. Personally, I wouldn't consider a stove without one.