Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

While Hubitat doesn't have as much support for devices as some other hubs and platforms do, that is changing very fast. What it does have is the most important basics and it's got those down very well. The team is working hard to add additional supported devices and cloud platforms quickly, and that is appreciated. Some context: I have or currently still use/test multiple HA platforms, Including Insteon (with both the ISY 994i and the first party Insteon Hubs in multiple versions), Wink, Smartthings, Lutron, and even OpenHAB running on a Raspberry Pi. Compared to my experiences with all of these (including ongoing testing), I strongly currently prefer the Hubitat approach. Positive Aspects: -Local Processing except for cloud services and cloud dependent devices (which of course they can't get around) -Excellent Lutron Radio support via telnet. This is the best Lutron support I've found outside of Lutron, and it integrates with all other devices. Really excellent, and is one of the top features of this hub. -Excellent management of devices, rules, automation, etc., that does NOT rely on a cloud service. Management is straightforward and easy-ish to understand (each platform has it's idiosyncrasies, but I think most people can get their heads around the approach here). -Excellent third-party developer support (similar in this area to SmartThings, not surprisingly). -Powerful control - If you want to do something, there is usually a way. This is not a platform that guides you to a cliff if you have the ability to write custom code (see above bullet point). -Presence Integrated. There is a relatively powerful presence/state feature set. -Dashboard functionality built in. While rather rudimentary currently, there is dashboard functionality built in to the platform (see negatives list below). -You are in control of applying updates and when...nothing happens automatically if you don't want it to. Negative Aspects: -No "App" yet. All management is done via a web browser and is only available locally (see next bullet point). There is currently no mobile app to assist in management, although I've used the mobile browser many times to manage the platform. I understand this is on the roadmap like many other things. -Local access only. This is a result of the local nature of this hub, so there are positive aspects of this from a security and availability standpoint, but the downside is that if you are not on the local network, you can't manage the system. Alerts can be sent to you anytime, but management must be done locally. This means that if you want the ability to manage the system remotely, you must set up a VPN from the device you would like to manage from back to the local network that the hub is located on. -Relatively limited device support currently. Compared to many other more mature hubs, there are still some popular devices not technically supported, but all of the basics are there. For example, while it currently supports Amazon Echo, it does not support Google Home yet (again, a roadmap item), and while it supports IFTTT, it doesn't yet support Stringify, and so on. I will say that since I've been experimenting with and using Hubitat starting in early spring of 2018, the team has added a LOT of new support and have enhanced other device support. They have a very strong base of support now, and it's growing quickly with updates which happen pretty often. I'm confident in the growing support...and it already has most of my basics (and a few that I have to integrate through IFTTT). The big thing on this, as I've mentioned, is that I want the basics to be controlled directly with the hub (not introducing errors and delays through cloud control), and with excellent Zwave and ZigBee support, along with Lutron and Phillips Hue native, there are very few basics in lighting that aren't there (Insteon would be nice, but NOBODY integrates with them, really). Add to that pretty excellent support for other types like locks, etc., and this is more of a positive for me...but wanted to call out that they are still in the process of adding support for some devices...and that could be important for some. -Dashboard functionality is currently fairly weak compared to some third party services for SmartThings, but on the other hand it is built in and improving. Some of the platforms that I've used really don't even have dashboard functionality, so this is overall a great feature to have (i.e. use a tablet or phone or any browser enabled device to provide a simple interface for device or automation control), but it could use some work in the feature and design areas. -Early Startup. This may be my most worrisome negative. Hubitat is a brand new startup in a very volatile industry, so it's hard to make a huge bet that they will still be around in 5, let alone 10 years, to continue running the automation in your home. On the other hand, I didn't think Wink would still be solvent through 2017, let alone 2018, and there they still are, so hopefully we are seeing some stabilization. I think it's clear, though, that in general I love this hub so far. It is certainly my current winner out of everything that I've used or tested, and is what I'm currently using in my own home (I still have most of the others set up for testing and comparative purposes ongoing, but I've moved all of my "production" devices to the Hubitat for now. I'm very optimistic for the future of this platform and hope that they are charging enough to stay solvent and continue to invest. One of the reasons, though, that I've migrated from Insteon to mostly Zwave and some ZigBee, when possible, for lighting, and have moved to a more open and diverse home automation landscape is to hedge my bets with one company. I've been doing this long enough to know that consolidation and failures happen quite a bit, and I don't want to stay too proprietary so that I'm left holding the bag if someone gets bought or goes out of business. With mostly Zwave and ZigBee devices I can move on to another controller platform if needed. Comparisons. In this section of the review, I'll compare how I personally feel about my experiences with the other hubs/platforms I've used to help give the reader an idea of what I value, where the Hubitat lands in the spectrum of my experience, and what I like and dislike, so that hopefully my review can be applied easier to what YOU may want out of a home automation platform. Insteon: I've got a lot of experience here, and really love the reliability of the platform (although I've had a few more device failures than I would like), and I really, really love the multi-button wall switches that are part of this ecosystem (still waiting for decent, affordable alternatives in the Zwave+ space). On the other hand, I've moved away from this because of the proprietary support of devices (the 1st party hub can basically only control Insteon devices), so if you want to integrate with something that's not Insteon, you're out of luck. With the first party hub there is decent accessibility, but limited advanced control. This hub also has had some reliability issues for me, and has a very strange support model around resetting or deleting all devices, etc., which requires a support case and waiting for responses from the company. I also have some decent experience with the Devices 994i controller, and while this can add things like Zwave and gives more advanced control, but the management interface (local java based) is downright archaic and confusing to many, but also slow and buggy. There are 3rd party apps to help control as well, but I would call a solution built on this a little bit of a "hodge-podge", although certainly powerful. Wink: This is a great, simple hub. It's the only other general purpose hub that had any type of decent Lutron support (although still limited in a lot of ways), and gives you the advantages of being open to many radio protocols (ZigBee, Zwave, Lutron, WiFi, etc.), it is just a bit limited for my taste. There is no 3rd party development going on that I know of, so you get what the company provides. Samsung SmartThings: This gives the ecosystem and 3rd party support that you don't get with Wink, but it also adds some serious complexity compared to Wink, also, which can be okay. The biggest problem, compared to Hubitat, with SmartThings is availability. This hub is completely reliant on their "cloud" services, and their uptime statistics have not been stellar. I've personally been hit many times with outages (which will affect control of my device...literally lights won't turn on when they should, commands aren't responded to, etc.). This got so bad, and so notorious, that I think it's one of Hubitat's best marketing points right now. The ecosystem is big with SmartThings which creates a nice, vital place for 3rd party drivers, ideas, etc., but dealing with the services (support pages, actual cloud services for the hub, etc.) can be a bit frustrating and confusing. OpenHAB: This one was exciting to me for the amount of control and power that it could offer, but ultimately, for my taste, it was just too much care and feeding for Home Automation. Almost everything I did was a chore, and required looking at documentation, etc., and this is from a computer scientist who has 25 years' experience in many platforms and development languages (including starting with Linux in the 90s), so it's not that I CAN'T do it, it's that I don't want my home automation system to be an ongoing science project…I want it to just work, and I, personally, didn't get that out of OpenHAB. I think there is a ton of potential for this software (and others), but ultimately it does not currently fit my needs from a simplicity of management standpoint. Okay, so I hope this helps someone trying to navigate these turbulent waters. Best of luck.