I would stay away! systemd provides so many well-designed APIs that are helpful for server management.

Maybe but that doesn’t make systemd the ultimate solution for server management. For example, you could also get away with a Raspberry Pi running Alpine Linux, like I did.

Also most projects that promote not using systemd are weird ideologues at this point.

I’m kinda mixed on this but I see your point. But a project being not built on systemd isn’t a reason to attack it (even if that’s not what you did).