Coming at this from the perspective of a Wink refugee; I'm finding more and more of my devices are are going to require a decent investment to incorporate/replace in a HE based system. I'm not opposed to that per-say, and I'm certainly not expecting any guarantees, but I do have questions. It looks to me like HE business model of selling hardware to support development and maintain online services (I get a lot of it can run local) is the same trap Wink fell into. What do we know that supports the idea that HE is here to stay, subscription free? I get this may come across as sounding a bit impertinent, but I think it's a valid question. Thanks in advance.
Everything in HE is local unless you add on to it, so what are you afraid of them charging you for? Even if something happened the hub would still function without access to the internet, or HE platform updates.
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The continued support, hosting this community, future development, online integrations with third parties, etc. Not so much worried about them charging a subscription, as continuing to be viable.
so the entire unit as a whole will work with no problem, forever, I guess you will need to register it online to activate it, so once that is done, it should work indefentily.
With that being said. Amazon Echo, and Google possibly could stop working if something happens.
Remote access needs to go though HE Servers, so there is a chance that could stop working or be a part of a Paywall. Geofensing perhaps.. Sharptools. I have MyQ also.
I mean I am not sure if some of these mentioned are an OUTBOUND system , where the HE does the work and talks to the non HE servers to work (for example, does Amazon connections requires HE to talk to Amazon, or does HE just talk straight to Amazon? ).
I know that HE Geofence uses HE tools, but then I have Life 360, and again, the same question is asked.
so.. perhaps someone can clarify that a bit.
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Short and honest answer: you don't know. That's the way of it. 
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I’m also not sure what OP is looking for.
A public pledge that they will never, ever, ever move to a subscription model?
Detailed financial reports so the company’s viability can be double-checked?
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All of the answers here are correct, in my opinion. If HE goes away there will be plenty of pain.. but I think you're seeing answers that it will be LESS pain than Wink or Iris before them. Yep.. the Hubitat Cloud servers would break External Dashboards and a variety of features. But a VPN would mitigate that. If you don't have "experiment with a VPN" on your list of To-Do's then I'd suggest adding it 
Alexa would work because the hub phones home, not the Hubitat cloud, as far as I know. And so on. I think the mitigation steps would extend the life for a long time, vs a week for Wink. If HE shut, yes, you'd have to mitigate, but then you can enjoy continued use for months maybe longer.
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A deed to one of the founders homes (nice one please) or a pledge to provide me their first born child (second born if first is too tempermental) would suffice!!
and all for $129.95 ~ what steal!
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There are no guarantees period ...
The online cloud services maintained by HE are a minuscule fraction of what Wink maintains (all of your device control & automations reside on your Elevation, not the cloud) Tomorrow if Hubitat (the company) disappears, my automations will continue working for as long as both my Hubitat Elevation hubs are functional. I'll get Alexa control either by using the Hubitat Alexa app (as opposed to the Hubitat skill) or through Node-RED.
Also, FWIW, the actions of Hubitat's principals are far more conservative than either that of Wink's founders (Nate & Ben) or Wink's current owners.
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I don't use any cloud features on purpose.
I haven't registered the hub (I would like to know how to get the red notice to go away... I'm never going to register it).
Nothing that happens to Hubitat will affect my experience at all. Not really, other than them hosting this forum.
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I would hope the Hubitat crew would be nice enough to not ditch us like that. Their own homes all run on Hubitat, so they have some investment in this too.
I also believe that there would be very little change in how it operates now. With community based apps and drivers, there is no reason someone couldn't (mostly? totally?) replicate the few apps that are cloud dependent. I am surprised nobody has yet come up with an alternative dashboard, for example.
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We need to start making these threads a sticky. For those of us that have been here a while we see these same threads pop up every few months. Especially when another ecosystem is going under.
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I guess I meant an internal to Hubitat app, but point taken.
That’s a good point, I assumed Alexa etc. relied on hubitat servers for integration, but maybe the hub talks directly to the third party. That would be pretty slick.
The hub talks directly to the cloud services.
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Looking for more information. For example, do we know if there is a revenue stream beyond hub sales? My understanding is no, but if there is it would be encouraging to know.
I would be happy to pay say $20 a year for Hubitat platform updates and integrations. Maybe you get them for free the first year and after that you pay an annual fee. I'm looking at the long game, I want Hubitat to grow, get better and be around for a very long time. A low annual fee sooner rather than later would provide them with money to continue improve the platform and some piece of mind to us that they have constant cash flow to support the business. Just my thoughts 
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Meaning directly to the 3rd party, ie no reliance on hubitat servers? That’s really cool.
