If the plastics changed to sort of slimey and then sticky that's never a good thing. But if that was the only issue then it's fine. But brake cleaner isn't cheap either.

Some here, like myself, use mineral spirits (AKA "Low Odour Paint Thinner") or Varsol cleaning solvent in conjunction with one of the three brush chain cleaning gizmos. If you save the solvent and let it settle in an old pickle jar it can be re-used at least a dozen times for the rough cleaning followed by a shot of the new solvent for the final cleaning. It'll go "tea" coloured but that's just the old chain oil. The dirt and grunge settles to a black goop at the bottom of the jar. Now and then when the goop gets too thick I'll decant the clear top solvent into another jar and clean out the grunge so I can keep on using the first jar. Doing it this way my gallon of solvent lasts for around a year of chain cleaning. And I also use it for other uses around the shop so if you're only cleaning one or two bikes a gallon should be easily good for a couple of years. At around $5 to $7 a gallon that's cheap cleaning.

Some use Simple Green or a strong citrus degreaser. I never found that Simple Green did much of anything but make a mess. But I recently tried some citrus degreaser at full strength and was amazed at how well it worked. Squeaky (literally ) clean with just two washes in the cleaning gizmo. The bad thing about this stuff is you need to rinse the chain with water to fully remove either the SG or the citrus stuff. Both are mildly acidic and will cause rust and pitting if not rinsed off even if you dry and oil right away. For me the one time only use and this need to rinse and dry before oiling keeps me going with the solvent stuff. The chain that I actually used it on wasn't even a bicycle. I used it on one of my motorcycles that uses a regular, instead of Oring chain. I was in a hurry so I scrubbed it with the degreaser, flushed with the garden hose, washed one more time with degreaser and flushed with a hard spray from the hose, wiped it down with some paper towel and then zipped some oil on it. I have to admit that this was a LOT faster than my usual solvent and toothbrush job and for that use I may well stick with it. Or if I'm washing the bike anyway I may opt for this method on occasion since I can blast it clean with the hose. The gallon of generic house brand citrus degreaser was something like $13 from my local big chain hardware store.