Yea, ente and immich are the two I played around with the most today. Settled on giving ente a try with this friend group. The browser link functionality for both was similar, but, I figure there is a greater chance of these friends making a free ente account, in which case the app has significantly more album collaboration features. The same is true with immich, but much less likely these friends will create their own immich instances. Alternative would be having them create accounts on my VPS, but, ente seemed more beginner friendly in that regard.