Despite Google's intentions for its default image viewing and editing app for Android, the Photos app has, over the years, become one of the most popular
Immich is not really the same thing. Ente is E2E encrypted and that introduces a significant number of hurdles.
For some reason I also find Photoprism to be so much faster than Immich, for no reason I can explain. I use the function to keep photos outside of these services so it may just be a case of Photoprism caching more aggressively or something.
I looked at this. There is something to be said of hosting your photos separately from your documents, but to me it doesn't seem worth the money. Anyone has a good experience with Ente / seperate photo hosting? I also hear good things about Immich by the way.
Self-hosting is possible and without any fees (except your infrastructure) for both Ente and Immich. Personally run Immich for our family at home in our home network and everybody loves it. No cloud fees for Google/Apple photo storage anymore. Handles our current collection of 130K+ photos & videos spanning multiple decades well.
No experience with Ente, but their privacy focus / encryption support sounds awesome. Immich might have a bigger userbase / dev community through Futo / Louis Rossmann. AFAIK no encryption planned there.