MySQL 5.6 upgrade to MariaDB 10.3- Potential Issues?

I've been getting the nagging last few weeks by WHM/Cpanel to upgrade from MySQL 5.6 to 5.7. WHM Recommends upgrading to MariaDB 10.3. Just to be safe I stuck with MySQL. Both upgrades give a critical warning that the new versions will default to strict mode meaning it will break any INSERT or UPDATE statements that no field values. I found this to be true but simply adding SQL_MODE= to the my.cnf file and rebooting MySQL quickly fixes the issue. Wondering how significant the benefit would be of upgrading from MySQL 5.7 to MariaDB 10.3 and more importantly, what have been the experiences of people that have gone with MariaDB 10.3? Is there any other issue other than have to disable strict mode and generating new mysqldumps? Or is it pretty smooth/bulletproof and issues are extremely rare? Will it screw up my MySQL DB replication I have setup? Trying to get a feel for what I'd be in for if I went to MariaDB 10.3 and if the benefits are significant enough to even consider doing it.