Some of the EDA suites are "free" (in that you don't have to pay money to use them), but have a limitation that you only can obtain gerber files from that company, or you send the design to them and only they make the PCB's. This may be an acceptable business model to some, but it also is a huge gamble to place all that faith in a single external company. I will never fall into that particular trap myself.
But paying on day 1 at $400/mo isn’t happening ...
Which is perfectly understandable. altium prices are hard to swallow for small companies, or if PCB design is a small part of your business.
I wonder what sort of designs you want to make, how complicated they are and how many you expect to make. How much and what sort of experience do you already have with PCB design?
It does cost time to learn to use a program, but learning the basics really does not cost very much time. And the extra time spent in getting to know the nicks and crannies of a program, is also productive time, as you will be making finished designs while doing so. Learning proper PCB design (from how to create a readable schematic to EMC regulations and how to design them into the PCB) is a very big chunk of the learning process, and it is knowledge you take with you when you switch to another program. There are some disadvantages of starting with an FOSS program or a "low cost" commercial program, but buying into an expensive program without knowing whether you can recoup those costs is also far from ideal. From your own words, this last option is not going to happen, so you'll have to make a choice from the rest of the pie.
In your opening post you ask for an "affordable altium version", and Hawaka answered "there probably is no such thing". After that it just drifted a bit though alternatives, but nobody has a direct answer. I wonder why you want altium so much? Maybe you should ask yourself that same question, and have a closer look at alternatives if you can't afford altium.