I am using Hubitat for critical systems (HVAC, motion). Use HA as integration point (Frigate mostly) and for nice interface - my wife hates Hubitat interface. Also run Scrypted and Homebridge (it publishes Danon AV to HomeKit).
Each system has its pluses and minuses but if the goal is to stay local (no cloud crap) - Hubitat and HA combo is a way to go.
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Similar story for me, using HE C7 for most things but Node Red for other things. I find rule machine much easier to use for complex if/then, 'wait for X', and 'repeat until Y' operations. Node Red brings in some extra capabilities (http PUT requests, SSH connections, and more) that make it a valuable tool in the toolbox.
For me the answer was both PLUS node-red.
- Hubitat's Z radios are better than using z2m and zwavejs (for me), but I don't prefer the rule engine interface/copy-paste ability, how LAN integrations affect hub performance, or the dashboards.
- HA integrates with LAN devices and cloud services much better (for me) and has better dashboard capability, but I don't like their automation engine/rule writing, and found it tedious to manage z2m and zwavejs on top of it.
- Node-RED has better (for me) logic flow and automation rule writing ability and keeps all of my logic and intellectual sweat equity preserved and independent of any single home automation platform (I can, and have, switched logic between multiple hubs/platforms with minimal effort). I can also put it on as fast/robust of hardware as I choose, which in my case is a VM in my VM cluster.
I expect everyone will have a different answer to this question though.
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This. Especially cloud and WiFi integrations on HA. With HADB, I look at HA as just another dongle, but for WiFi.
Rule Machine and the C-8 radios are great strengths for HE.
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Why? What Aqara/Xiaomi devices do you have that HA alone cannot handle?
This. "Choice is good" says the man himself. Y'all know my feelings on this subject quite well by now. I know people like to try to do it all with a single system, but that's just not for me. I don't like instability (who does?), but that's just not my experience with what I've built. If you're new, there will be growing pains, but the fruit of being able to decide what you want to add, instead of constantly needing to ask "Can I add it?" is very sweet. Don't get me wrong, there are still limits to what I can add to my setup, but I don't have many.
Bruce has built one heck of a good automation application, and yeah it's damn powerful given how easy it is to use. I don't really believe that HA automations cannot be made to do everything that I can do with Rule Machine, but the YAML needed to get there is something I'll never touch. Their basic automations are fine, and have become pretty easy to setup in the most recent version of HA, but to me they make little sense (except in very specific situations) when HE Rule Machine and Basic Rules cover what I need with very little effort.
I am intrigued by Homey's Flows since they look so much like Stingify, which I really liked (except for the cloud-based part), and they're also local. Problem there is, that hub is just ridiculously overpriced for what they can integrate with today. They need to give their head a shake or they are just not going to survive. If a competetor was to create a similar graphical automation engine on a reasonablly priced hub, they'd be unable to compete at that price. And no, all you NodeRED fans, it's not directly compareable.
Getting back to Hubitat, I have considerable faith in their backups. They work, really well. This is another reason I trust all my automations on my Hubitat hub. Easy or not, it's not a trivial task to set all those automations up over time, so you better have a backup of them you can be certain is reliable. Yes, there's a backup in HA, and I can backup to google drive for free, but I haven't needed it yet, and I've never tried it. Only backup I have restored is the entire microSD in my RPi. That of course works, but it's more difficult and slow to do. Hubitat is fast and easy to do, and I have been saved by it several times (some by my fault, some not).
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I am using both HE and HA.
For rules, I have Rule Machine, Node red and HA automations. Mostly because I like tinkering.
HA automation isn't that bad these days there are thousands of blueprints (rule templates ) you can get from the community if you want.
I don't have much issue with HA and update. Just like HE, you can always restore the backup.
As for dashboard, well... There's no need to compare. Z2M is a beast on HA.
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And don't forget Room Lighting! IMO Hubitat is the easiest place for non-programmers to build complex automations. No YAML with hundreds-thousands of entities for me!
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It just called Automations in the settings menu. There's a visual editor that is similar in function to RM, but has a code based editor that would be more akin to writing an app/driver in HE.
One very powerful thing about automations in HA is the ability to create/import Blueprints. Think of it as exporting an RM rule, but your device selections are all variables. When you create a new automation, you get the option to select a Blueprint that's been imported....most of which have a few dropdowns to select devices and what-not with all the logic being pre-built in the background. It's pretty neat.
Back to the OP...everything has it's pro/con list and part of that list is your capabilities and how much time you're willing to invest. HE is much simpler than HA to setup/use, but that does come at a cost. HA is much more powerful as a "do it all" platform, but that also comes at a cost.
Either platform could be an all-in-one solution, but that depends on a large number of factors. I ran everything on HE for years without issue. As my needs/desires grew more complex, I started having to find compromises between what I wanted to do and what the platform could handle. This eventually led to me moving to HA earlier this year. I started with a VMware instance on a Windows machine and now have it running as a standalone VM in Proxmox. I'm using a Sonoff zigbee dongle (P variant) with Z2M and the Zooz ZST10 z-wave stick with Z-Wave JS UI. Aside from a one-off issue in one z-wave js update, I haven't had any problems on that front. There have been some other one-off issues. For example, I have the integration setup to use FordPass. This broke pretty severely, by no fault of the code author, but because Ford made some changes to the UI and the integration is built on reverse engineering the API that the FordPass app uses.
I think the biggest hurdle to HA is that it's just A LOT to sift through at first. Devices vs entities; integrations vs add-ons; ZHA vs Z2M; z-wave JS vs z-wave JS UI; the list goes on and on and that's just the software side. Add in talking about one ZIgbee stick over the over, different z-wave sticks, what platform to run HA on in the first place and it's rather cumbersome at first. Then, there's ESPhome which is an animal of itself. The upshot is that HA opened a lot more possibilities that fit my use-cases. There's an integration for Proxmox, one for my 3D printers, I have Frigate running and am using it with a bunch of Amazon tablets to supplement my regular cameras, FordPass, ESPhome (which really opened a whole new can of worms), Z-Wave multicast (really a game changer), and more granular control over my Zigbee network.
HE is much more straight forward. The radios are just there and ready to go out the box. Add your devices and start building automations. The problems are that you're limited on options. Want the best experience, then you'll have to stick to using the official list of devices with the built in device drivers that often limit functionality. You can opt to leverage custom drivers for non-official devices, but these often become a red herring if you start having issues. You're pretty limited on integrating cloud based services (the FordPass integration mentioned above isn't even an option) and support for LAN devices is there, but often has to be limited to not overwhelm the hub (these are typically a pull design so the hub has to request current status from the device vice the devices pushing an update out).
All this to say, there's no right answer here. It really depends on what your goals are and what you're capable and willing to setup.
8 Likes
I didn't say less than 5 
Summary
Hubitat
Home Assistant
Node RED
EventGhost
Tasker
Google Home
Philips Hue
Bond
SensorPush
EcoWitt
Aqara
InfluxDB
Grafana
SteelSeries Engine and Logitech GHub
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Thank you for that hint, but I already tried that driver and the problem was the same. I don't think that it is a driver issue. It seems to have to do with the way the platform handles commands. Spirits worked well years ago with my eedomus system too.
I agree that TRVs are not used in the US and that's exactly what I wrote in my post about the missing support from HE for Europeans. I don't know if Nabu Casa support's TRVs but there is a mass of integrations available and there is a massive European community that develops and supports European devices. In other words, devices that fit European needs and are available and even built in Germany or so like Bosch, AEG, Miele, ...
You can install Node Red over the community store. The main rule engine is built in and has 4 tabs
Automations is similar to Rule Machine,
Scenes is similar to Room Lighting but easier and more powerful
Scripts are basically automations to be reused in other automations.
Blueprints are a mass of prebuild automations. They are like templates to import with an easy way to integrate your own devices.
Me too. And even if the price is shocking, I considered Homey Pro 2023 as an alternative. I had a Homey 2019 before coming to HE. It was a nice hub, but radios were catastrophic (not stable on a contact 3 meters away) and devices worked more on a random base. The 2023 version seems to be a very good and stable solution on youtube but nearly all of these videos are sponsored. Digging deeper I found 3 videos that were not sponsored and they all three state that the problems from 2019 persist on the new device 
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I never tried the integrated backup solution for HA. I installed a solution that does every night a backup on my local NAS and on a Google Drive. Since a week, it works like a charm. The good thing about these backups is that they are platform-agnostic. If I want I can restore them tomorrow on an Intel NUC based HA system.
I tried scenes in HA and it's much better and easier to set up. A new scene is basically an empty list of devices. You can add devices or groups and click on them to go to their control panel to set values. The devices act as you change values. You will see every scene in action while you create them and with a click on the safe button a scene simply remembers the states for the next call. After saving, all devices return to their initial state before you were working on the scene. The best is that scenes are not limited to lights and you can integrate nearly every device you want. So the TV scene can set lights, lower the fan speed and close the curtain if you want.
I agree. The learning curve is higher as you can do much more with HA, but theoretically (have to check in practice) I could do all the things I was not able to do with HE.
I think that every system has it's community and reason to be. Apple HomeKit can be a good stand alone solution for people wanting a clean and easy interface, simple automations and two dozen of devices. Hubitat is a good standalone solution for advanced users that want true programming and mid-level of skills. Home Assistant can be used easily with basic requirements but with a steep learning curve you can probably do nearly everything (to be confirmed).
Thank you for all your replies that I was not able to comment all individually.
Radios of the C8 are often mentioned. I don't believe that they are so much better than for HA. Fact is that HA has no radios and that you have to buy some dongles. The quality and stability of the radios depends mainly on your choice. With a USB cable you can place your antennas away from your system if required.
I’ve never tried Home Assistant restore from backup either. Want to be sure I’m not being misquoted here. I have considerable faith in Hubitat backup and restore. That I have used many times and it works very well.
