Payload's default image upload strategy

[MauriceMarkslag]

Hello everyone,

My colleague and I have been trying to round off a project which includes Payload's CMS. Today we have been attempting to deploy our application in Digital Ocean, running into several quirks.
One of the things I can't wrap my head around is why Payload's default strategy is to create a folder with images/assets within the repository. That should mean that when dockerizing the application, the assets are also dockerized, and with each deployment or re-build any updates to the images/assets directory will be deleted.

Is the only option for us to use a third-party cloud storage provider? I find that very unfortunate, as the docs state that the thumbnails won't work anymore. That makes the end result of the CMS less attractive.

Has anyone run into this issue, and what has been your ideal solution?