When I check the fees, it shows as no maintenance fees as the rewards are added to my account.
You need to include variance in your calculation - like most pool comparisons around here - variance get's ignored and makes the comparison completely meaningless.
So e.g. if there was a day when slush didn't find a block for 24hrs, your payout would be $0 and if you compare that to $2 then a pool paying $2 is quite literally paying infinitely more payout
... infinity is a big number ... but yeah oddly enough that doesn't mean much.