Not my experience hosting immich for close to two years now. There was only one "breaking change" a long time ago where you would have to manually change a docker image in the compose file, but since then things have been smooth for me.

Immich may not be the pinnacle of all software development, but with the alternative being Google photos:

- Uploading too many photos won't clog my email and vice versa

- I'm not afraid of getting locked out of my photo account for unclear reasons and being unable to reach anyone to regain access

- If I upload family photos from the beach, then my account won't get automatically flagged/disabled for whatever

- Backups are trivially easy compared to Google takeout

- The devs are reachable and responsive. Encounter a problem? You'll at least reach a human being instead of getting stranded with a useless non-support forum

I would instead say that my (and my family's) photos are too important to me to pass their hosting on to a company known for its arbitrary decisions and then being an impenetrable labyrinth if there is an issue.

So you do pay some price, but it is an illusion to think that the price of Google photos (be that in cash, your data or your effort) is much lower.

Things that did break during this time: - my hacky remote filesystem - network connectivity of a too cheap server but these were on me and my stinginess.