I've come to the conclusion that the best way to avoid lock in with vendors like this is to use a photo organizer on your computer, and use that organizer to upload your media to $BIG_CLOUD so that you have a copy of all your media on your network.
If you go this route, then you'll need to organize your media in whatever photo manager you use, and then again on $BIG_CLOUD. Yes, your photo manager will sync some things like titles, comments, and tags as you upload new media, however not all things are synced, such as the event(s) that you want your media to show up in. Also if you make a change in your local library to media that's already been published to $BIG_CLOUD, then those changes will not be reflected there.
Personally I use Shotwell under Linux: https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Shotwell and I wrote a program that generates a static HTML site based on my library: https://github.com/masneyb/shotwell-site-generator. When I make a change to my media library in shotwell, then the static site is regenerated to reflect the most recent version of my site. This also makes it super easy to backup my photos to $BIG_CLOUD (like Amazon S3) for redundancy, while retaining full control of my media.
I have my generated site on a password protected website that my family has access to. When I need to share photos with friends, I'll upload them to a photo hosting service like Google Photos or Flickr.
If you go this route, then you'll need to organize your media in whatever photo manager you use, and then again on $BIG_CLOUD. Yes, your photo manager will sync some things like titles, comments, and tags as you upload new media, however not all things are synced, such as the event(s) that you want your media to show up in. Also if you make a change in your local library to media that's already been published to $BIG_CLOUD, then those changes will not be reflected there.
Personally I use Shotwell under Linux: https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Shotwell and I wrote a program that generates a static HTML site based on my library: https://github.com/masneyb/shotwell-site-generator. When I make a change to my media library in shotwell, then the static site is regenerated to reflect the most recent version of my site. This also makes it super easy to backup my photos to $BIG_CLOUD (like Amazon S3) for redundancy, while retaining full control of my media.
I have my generated site on a password protected website that my family has access to. When I need to share photos with friends, I'll upload them to a photo hosting service like Google Photos or Flickr.