“I am another ex-Vera user who moved to SmartThings, but found this very limiting and more complicated to do what I wanted. On researching alternatives I came across Hubitat and have not looked back. The best feature for me is the dual Local and Cloud operation. Local gives fast response, with Cloud giving remote control.
I use Fibaro motion sensors to switch on security lights - they come on instantly with no delay and switch off after a minute. Plus of course I can control them from my smartphone dashboard.
My Z-Wave world is all back up and running and doing everything I want! Very happy customer!”
“A well featured smarthome hub. Benefits from an active developer community, and an API clearly engineered for ease of migration from SmartThings. The speed of on premise code execution Vs cloud execution is tangible. Hub meshing, a new feature, proved very useful for expanding my deployment to an outbuilding.
Not quite as rich, in terms of integrations as Home Assistant, but for core home devices I've yet to be snookered.
My only critique is that the support for Google Home is poor compared to SmartThings, the full range of devices not being supported - where art thou temperature sensor, instance. Yes there are community hacks, but I want native support from a product at this price. Hence, it loses half a star.
The other half star goes due to Z-Wave management options not being entirely perfect (a little opaque) but Hubitat are working on refining this all the time, as their release notes prove.
Glad to be off my burning platform onto this. A good middle ground between Home Assistant 'roll your own hardware' and consumer 'we fan withdraw features at any time' SmartThings.”
“I loved the idea of running my system local away from the cloud. I find that after migrating everything to the Hubitat I was having intermittent problems with lights not turning off, some not turning on. Never the same on every activation. Slowly transferring the affected lights back to SmartThings. I will continue trying to solve the issues. After all this is a hobby.”
“In 2016 I bought Vera. In 2018 she ran out of memory and hasn't worked since. In 2018 I bought SmartThings. In 2019 they upgraded the software but it wasn't available for my phone. In 2020 they pulled the Classic ST app leaving me no way to access my installation.
Then there was Hubitat. It does Z-wave and my newer ZigBee devices and the mobile app works on my phone. To be fair I have never had an app that wasn't available for my phone until they screwed up SmartThings.
Hubitat has me overjoyed with it's dashboards and their extensive configurations and even if the app didn't work, it can all be done in a browser. And I prefer the bigger screen on my PC. So I am happy, and just waiting for a few drivers to be written for my favourite devices.
The biggest lesson I have learnt is that the so-called standards of Z-wave and Zigbee don't actually guarantee compatibility. My expectations come from 40 years of owning a PC where you plug in any PC peripherals and they just work. ZigBee and Z-wave need to have this certainty.”
“I can see the advantages of this unit being able to work standalone but if you are migrating from a different platform I strongly recommend you review their website to validate that your current sensors etc are on the compatible list. They also have forums and facebook pages which are useful for determining if your current kit will work. I had some older Aeotec equipment which just would not work properly. Other people have had much better experiences.”
“Hubitat Elevation hits all the right spots for a Smart Home Controller. It's fast, stable, secure and can operate completely locally "off-grid" with no reliance on Cloud or third-party services.
Supporting Z-Wave and ZigBee out-of-the-box with a huge array of compatible devices ..... and if something doesn't work then the freedom to roll up your sleeves and write your own device drivers or smart apps.”
