Speaking from my experience (albeit a little biased):
In terms of the other options you discussed, most vendors are moving to the same model.
You can generally still buy locally managed switches and routers without subscription licensing, however there is typically no cloud telemetry, no cloud monitoring/management capabilities. Vendors will then typically tack on a subscription license for centralized management and control, access to firmware for upgrades, advanced telemetry etc.
Meraki based its business model on cloud management, cloud monitoring, single dashboard, ease of use etc. The devices were never designed to be locally managed and therefore subscription licensing is all that's available. The best thing about this is that because this is the only way to use the devices, Meraki is committed to adding features and building out the dashboard in better and better ways.
I personally wouldn't place Ubiquiti/Unifi in the same basket. I managed a Unifi network before moving to Meraki and despite it being 'enough' for basic connectivity, we had all sorts of issues across different firmware versions and controller versions. There were so many undocumented bugs which you would often find from searching forums/reddit rather than any assistance from support. I still believe they are fantastic for home/small office but awful if you're managing more than 5 or so devices (or more than 1 location).
TLDR: Yes, the prices can be expensive but if it's the best fit for your business, I would still front the cost. If it's not, check out the cheaper options (and ensure to fully understand what they do and don't offer).
I've gotten too many grey hairs from people making poor business decisions based solely around cost and not what meets the business need.
