For me all I really need in a photos app is reliable backup from my phone to my nas. My wife on the other hand, she takes lots of photos that she likes to organize into albums and share with family, so she’s really the deciding factor, i don’t think she really need the facial recognition, it may be useful but really it’s just being able to make albums, sort by month or year, share content, that kind of stuff.

If you own a domain name you can use DNS challenge for obtaining the ssl cert, no need to open ports to get a cert issued. Nginx proxy manager has this feature built in and has support for many DNS name registrars.