I don't know what you mean by "tedious". The session is specifically designed for storing user data which persists longer than a single request, so before you start looking for alternatives you need to figure out why you're doing that. So far all I see is that you might have to do an inconvenient amount of programming -- but correct me if I misunderstand. And it seems to me you would have to do the same programming to manage the data outside of a session, only it might be more inconvenient because now you're not using a feature which is specifically designed for storing long-lived user data.
But as I said, probably I don't understand your requirements. I'm just suggesting that
you should make sure that you understand them yourself before you start looking for alternatives.