What is an equivalently capable alternative that puts the user more in control?

The reason Ring is popular isn't just marketing or network effect, it's that it works. Before Ring and clones, security camera / DVR combos were really hard to make effective, I tried. Maybe you'd have a totally reliable system with good video, but it'd fail to notify you when you need it to, or notify way too often. Battery power was infeasible because cameras couldn't sleep. Phone notifications were DIY. A long compounding list of things could go wrong and make you miss an important event or fail to record it entirely. I'm hoping those have caught up by now, but haven't found any.

Unifi is as good or better and doesn't require a subscription

I trust them, I'll check it out

Reolink also seems to work pretty well with local storage, notifications and no subscription or cloud uploads.