I despise that HE soap. It has no suds. When we go to my inlaws’ beach place, I don’t use their front loader...I just wait till I get home to do laundry. Even my MIL says it doesn’t get things clean.
Suds is not what gets your clothes clean. It’s a byproduct of the actual detergent action.
On a more general note, I have never had any problems with the HE front-loader machines I have owned. No smell problems, no gasket issues. Leaving the door open a crack is all it takes, and the one I bought for myself after my divorce had a steam-clean mode that would do wonders for keeping the interior fresh. It really reduced my water usage, and did a great job cleaning my clothes. The trick, I found, was to actually use all the different cycles it had, so whites were washed in Hot, with bleach, and jeans on the jeans/heavy cycle, and bedding on the bedding cycle etc. If you wash everything on the same setting, you’re not getting the full benefit.
My front loader, a Samsung, gets my laundry clean. I leave the door open after using and then the machine does not have that moldy odor.