Unless you have a compelling reason to avoid systemd, I think just adopting it would be easier in the long run because most common distributions are headed that

Unless you have a compelling reason to avoid systemd, I think just adopting it would be easier in the long run because most common distributions are headed that direction. I didn't experience any stability issues with Ubuntu when it transitioned to systemd from Upstart (14.04 LTS to 16.04 LTS). I've written simple Upstart services and what systemd offers with its units is comparable. There is a learning curve though.