I like what I see provided out of the box by FusionAuth, but I'm rather weary of the hard dependency on Elasticsearch.

I'm curious why the need for Elastic. You already have a database which can be used to search all the user objects. What does Elastic bring to the party other then an extra ops burden?

This is not necessarily a criticism, just trying to understand what went into that architectural decision.

Elastic provides a much more scalable and fast search for freeform user attributes. Using the databases search works in some cases but when you have freeform data (for example favoriteColor), it breaks down quickly.

While Elastic can be a bit cumbersome, we have made bundles that make it simpler to deploy and manage. We have also worked hard to secure it.

Running FusionAuth in Docker or Kubernetes is a huge benefit to those running on premise.