I think it has been explained but maybe not enough times.
The original Z-Wave and Zigbee chips purchased for Hubitat had their internal DB locked... couldn't be read. This was a choice made by the chip manufacturer and was in a time when this was a popular technique. These chips were not the only chips on the market with that "feature".
I don't remember when exactly it changed, but probably when the C-5 came out, the ZWave chip could be read, but the Zigbee chip could not. I could be wrong but I think at the time, one could buy readable versions of the chips, but they were not the bulk of the manufacturing process and as a result, more expensive, even if only a few cents more. You can see that today with the caveats around Home Assistant "If you have the right radio stick..." you can back them up.
Hubitat wanted to create a product to extend the Warranty and since that included a replacement hub, a subscription model was created. $30/year, as mentioned. But to do a decent replacement swap, the Z-radios had to be readable. Thus the cloud backup was invented. It's the chicken-and-the-egg thing and since the egg came first, (replacement subscription) the chicken is tied to it.
I understand how cool it would be to have it all for free, but that's not what's on offer.
So.. yes, now, with the C-7, C-8 and C-8 Pro, the radio data can be contained within a backup, and in fact is, if you accept that a cloud backup is a backup. The "local/no cloud" words have never been associated with "ever, under any circumstances" kind of logic. Clearly Alexa, GH, Weather and Platform Updates are all Internet functionality. Although not a Hubitat product, HPM needs Internet access to work, because that's where the repositories exist.
Not so much to me. Off-site storage is a mandatory item for professional disaster recovery. People pay millions to store critical records in Iron Mountain, for example, and banks make profit on Safe Deposit Box rental.
Again, I recognize how cool it would be to have the backup be free, but it's not... unless you're migrating from an older Hub to a newer one.
. But if it is for 'business' reasons, then it is bait; that is, it's intended to attract customers towards a premium/billable & superior experience.
