The "our way is the right way" mentality that is common in the Elm community is really the larger issue here, and it has been a bit of a turn off for me. There is a lot about Elm to really like, but it is a rather closed off development culture without a lot of appreciation for hearing ideas and experiences from others.
If Elm could open up and allow developers to experiment with other architectures, like pretty much every other language, and not be so restrictive in forcing everyone into the exact same pattern, I think it would be very successful, because the language itself is nice. If someone wants to use Elm as it currently is, that should be one simple option available to everyone. But you should be able to easily discard that if you want to, and do other things, including making a choice on the trade-offs for JavaScript interaction. Languages that don't give developers much choice in how they are used are usually not going to be very successful.
If Elm could open up and allow developers to experiment with other architectures, like pretty much every other language, and not be so restrictive in forcing everyone into the exact same pattern, I think it would be very successful, because the language itself is nice. If someone wants to use Elm as it currently is, that should be one simple option available to everyone. But you should be able to easily discard that if you want to, and do other things, including making a choice on the trade-offs for JavaScript interaction. Languages that don't give developers much choice in how they are used are usually not going to be very successful.