What are you using as a Google photos alternative? Currently I’m using Nextcloud but I’m thinking of switching to a more dedicated solution.
I mainly need to upload photos from my device automatically, have an UI to see and classify them, albuns and sharing.
It’s about expectation setting. You can’t say “paid donators will get X” then say “actually you won’t, give us more money for X”.
Also, there’s usually no reason as a user to pay monthly for a feature in a self-hosted application.
The Dev has no monthly costs for that feature. Let me buy the application/feature, and if you need money for a new feature, create a feature that is worth buying again. No need to bully the user into a monthly subscription…