I think everyone has been caught out by a company who changed their business model, either because of either a desire or need, or in some cases just shut down. I have stored my photos in iPhoto (too limited and eventually ended by Apple), Aperture (ended by Apple) and now Lightroom Classic. While I could import all photos into Lightroom, the photo manipulations weren’t. What I suggest is trying to convince the company to introduce a paid version at a cheaper price for non-commercial users. It may be helpful to see how many people are in a similar situation. If this fails then asking for a utility to extract your data may succeed.