Welcome to the GOS forums John316. I went straight to self hosting so can't really give an opinion about ente, and I have a homeserver running Immich for just over a year now and had minimal problems. The "problem" being immich app and/or server upgrades that can break things, but Immich usually posts these on their release notes and when self-hosting having a good backup strategy is a must. This is the price of self hosting.
And now that the preamble is over, the wall of text of an oversimplified process I personally went through for self hosting Immich.
If you have a spare PC lying around (laptop or desktop) that works and connects to your router (home LAN) via ethernet, you can use that as a server to start off with.
The "ideal" OS is usually Linux or Debian based for the low hardware requirements. I personally went with Open Media Vault because I'm more of a GUI person, Ubuntu Server's default partitioning logic is insane by default (it allocates a rather insane amount of space for boot and EFI), it's simple enough to set up a virtual machine using an SSD as boot and a higher capacity HDD as storage/data that doesn't need to be on SSD, and (if needed) can run mesh VPN's within it so you can connect to the server when outside the home LAN.
Once you have an OS set up, setup a virtual machine within it to run Immich from, or use Docker Compose (non-snap version) to setup Immich directly inside the OS.
If you have a home router running either pfsense or OPNsense, assign a static IP to the server that Immich is directly installed so you can install the mesh VPN on the router to access Immich outside of the home LAN.
Install the app on your phone and enter the static IP assigned via home router (or mesh VPN). If you're doing via home router then make sure the "http://" portion is entered manually.
Setup the initial Login, and then once logged in confirm via web browser that Immich can be accessed.
Setup folder(s) to sync to Immich.
Confirm the pictures are synced to Immich via web browser.
Next, turn off wifi on your phone and confirm you can still access Immich via webbrowser via VPN over cellular.
The above is the simplified rabbit hole I personally went through for Immich, and doesn't include a backup solution.
And currently I have the following setup:
OPNsense router with DNSBL (network ad/tracker blocking) and Zerotier/Tailscale (for accessing home LAN on cellular (I have both setup for redundancy and I'm behind a CGNAT))
A Ugreen DXP4800plus that's running Frigate (for motion and object recognition CCTV), Immich (for pictures backup), Home Assistant (for controlling thermostat and CCTV notifications), SAMBA (for filesharing and remote external drive), Mailcow (for contacts and calendar backup/syncing across devices via Sogo), and weekly disk image backups of the virtual machines that's kept for 6 months (due to storage)
An old Lenovo G500 that used to be my starting server and can still run things (turned on and synced/updated/connected to the Ugreen once a week) in case my Ugreen goes down for whatever reason.
This is my personal setup and the hard core selfhost enthusiasts will probably already be on their way with pitchforks and torches (or are rolling in laughter or are ready to poke holes in my setup) but I'm proud of it since it works, it's something I setup (from scratch), it's satisfying to know I actually own my data, and I have a backup solution that works (for me).