Obviously we all want to avoid enshittified (aggressively monetized) software or at least get our money’s worth. I’m looking at self-hosting software right now and one I’m looking has a pricing page but only for cloud (no other paywalled features) and is open source. I tried looking up future plans and didn’t find much, so it doesn’t seem like it will enshittify. (not related) I had thought about switching to Omnivore for a long time but then they merged with ElevenLabs and the rest is history.
I would add to always check for portability. The service should provide a way to export/move your data without much hassle, and in a reasonable format that you can reuse your data elsewhere. If you are bound to an exclusive format or service, it has more chances to get enshityfied.