How often do you service your fork?

I don't track my rides. Strava is dumb. I ride at most 3 times a week for about an hour or so, but I also use my bike to walk the dogs sometimes. I do lowers once every 3-4 months. After 2 lower services, I drop the fork off for a full rebuild. 

Do lower services more often. Fresh fluid, foam rings, and dust wipers will go a long way. It's easy and you can get it done in garage in about an hour. 

Thus my comment. With Fox it's basically 300+ € of tooling for almost every generation of each product (exagerating), the procedures, as far as I've seen it, are complicated (burning off red loctite, seal installation bullets, etc.).

With Rock Shox, to fully service a fork, you need 2,5 mm, 5 mm allen keys, a hammer, circlip pliers, a big screw driver or a wrench (to pop out the wiper seals), a pick is useful and a vice with aluminium jaws. For a Super Deluxe, a strap wrench does come in handy to take off the aircan, you need the special (flat) wrench to take off the piggyback on previous gen shocks (it stays on on the current one), shaft clamps, which for RS have been the exact same part since... 20+ years ago? And you need the adapter to inflate the piggyback. A Vivid is more complicated, but as far as RS suspension goes, the tooling is simpler and much cheaper than bearing replacement tooling (confirmed, I am equipped with both).

Don't know what it's like with EXT, but I think Intend is even simpler. But you would need to align with them, I think they prefer to have the suspension sent in to be serviced.

As for bearing replacement, honestly, the best bet is to have a 3D printer and a threaded rod and some nuts if you want to be cheap. Even with a fancy bearing press set you'll still find yourself missing some specific parts, will have to jerry rig together things to make it work (pressing in bearings into a DT hub shell with the axle sticking out on both ends for example), sometimes the only way to get a bearing out is to knock it out with a screwdriver (chainstay pivot on my Bird), etc. Even with an AliExpress bearing puller set and a Unior bearing press I'll still be 3D printing deep adaptors to press in the bearings into a DT Swiss hub shell. And the upgrade I'd most like to handle bearings at this point? A small lathe. To be able to make any and every possible bearing press adaptor.

Personally I'd put suspension servicing above bearing servicing on the home mechanic priority list.

big service once a year by a professionell suspension shop.

I miss the days where I just rebuilt bikes for fun. 

Every 7 to 12 weeks. I have an Avalanche damper so it’s basically changing oil and lubing the seals. Super easy.

I have five bikes with suspension forks so i'd say it depends. I have some sense of the hours spent since last service, but for the lesser used bikes I do an overhaul every other winter. The parkbike has gotten three lower leg services this season and right now I'm doing a full service. 

I use strava (free version) to log my rides from a personal goals POV, not "look at me, look how far I rode". And if it's a pirate trail. I don't log it. 

As for mtb components (not just fork and shock), I use the "pro bike garage" app which links to strava to log hours and distance. Everything from regreasing frame/hub bearings to chain stretch can be monitored on it.

I used to have Ohlins front and back on my TM moto. The thing I learnt very quickly was how the suspension would go from awesome to poo in 5 hours riding. Lesson is full service twice as often as you normally would. 

If you’re a bit tech-savvy, you can use the Strava API and connect it to Notion to track your riding hours and miles for each component. This makes it much easier to monitor service times. 

This is a great discussion! A few things I'll add:

1. I'm pretty decent about servicing the lowers and replacing seals on my forks, and that's kept me out of any real trouble or premature bushing or stanchion wear for two decades of riding. It's not rocket science. A seal/wiper installation tool is a relatively cheap one-time purchase, but you can do it for free, too- I recently helped a friend set new seals by cutting out the inner ring from his old seals to make a crude setter tool for the new seals. So you can do the whole job for only the cost of the service kit and oil, if you're a caveman in a hurry. But since I quit racing a decade ago (and stopped getting suspension service for free in the Fox tent), don't think I've ever serviced and rebuilt a fork damper and I've only serviced maybe one shock damper. Yikes. Hasn't bit me yet.

2. I think I'm pretty perceptive on the bike (I hope so, if I'm testing products for Vital), but I don't know that I've ever noticed a difference before or after a service to my lowers or after a damper rebuild. The performance difference seems really marginal to me, it's more a function of longevity and preventative maintainence. But, all the time, I hear people saying "it feels so much better!" after doing a lowers service. Am I taking crazy pills?

3. Heat. Cycles of all sorts wear down suspension components, so all hours of movement count, whether they're flat, uphill, or down, but not all hours are created equal. Pounding out DH laps on violent terrain creates much higher shaft speeds and a lot more heat inside your fork and shock than riding on gentle terrain does. As a result, DH bikes (and single crown bikes that go downhill a lot) seem to eat suspension components alive compared to their daily driver trail bike friends. Adjust your service intervals accordingly.

4. Contaminants. Rain is bad, mud is bad, grit is bad. Clean your seals and dust wipers between services. Heck, clean them between laps if you can. Riding in pristine conditions will always be easier on every part of your bike than riding through hell.

5. Don't underestimate the impact of UV rays, heat, and elevation on your rubber seals. Almost every time I've seen a fork puking oil was at a bike park on a sunny day in the summer, most of them above 5000 feet.

6. Lastly, no rider is harder on equipment than neglect, not even Richie Rude. If you haven't seen @AngryBikemechanic on Instagram, his page is an endless doom scroll of neglect and entropy. It's incredible. 10/10 recommend.

Oh, the fork is gushing oil

that means that I still have oil left, G2G

I used to be pretty diligent about servicing based on the hours (divided my typical ride duration by its miles to get an hours:mile factor), and using the miles on equipment in Strava.  Then I ended up with more bikes, and was faffing with different stroke lengths, etc. and just gave up.  I try to do a lowers service on each of my 3 bikes in late spring (after the rain and mud are done) and early fall (after the worst of the summer dust).  I will sometimes have the local suspension guy do a full damper service around Christmas time (I can do it myself but it takes a bit of time).  I went through a streak of swapping shocks pretty quickly so haven't done those in a while, although one of them is probably due.  Again, I might do it myself or maybe I'll pay someone - time is the deciding factor there.

I know freshly serviced fork feels really plush, but it also feels different, which takes me a ride or two to adjust to.  And as awful is as it to hear, I'd rather have consistency than fresh change.

The ol' Land Rover owner method !

Regarding seal installation tools, a 3D printer is great for those. Just a few cents worth of plastic and you have the tool ready in an hour

trailforks helps. it's realy surprising, how quick you'll get to those 50/200 hrs within busy couple of weeks of riding.