Take that Home Assistant!!!!!
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Yeah cause Home Assistant people have a love affair with WiFi devices and mqtt (which I don't think I will ever understand)
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A fellow Minnesotan I see. Can’t be too many on here.
My WiFi devices are more reliable than my Zigbee devices. Troubleshooting Zigbee and it’s elusive mesh is a PITA. Zigbee devices have their place, but it’s not everywhere IMO.
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Until Home Assistant Yellow, there was no official hardware for HA designed/sold by Nabu Casa. Home Assistant Blue was just a rebadged Odroid N2 with endusers providing their own z-radios.
And HA Yellow has barely started shipping
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Its funny, I shy away from WiFi because it adds another controller in the path. This is especially worry some for water sensors. However, I've had a different Zigbee experience than you apparently have had. My Zigbee mesh has been solid from day 1. I've never had to do anything special with Zigbee.
I should mention that I have a number of repeaters. I've been using TI cc2530 for various custom (aka home made) sensors. These act as Zigbee repeaters, likely making the mesh even more stable.
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Same for me on ST and on HE. I've never had a significant Zigbee issue. Feel very good about using Zigbee for water sensors...
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I have had ZigBee problems and just couldn't figure it out. One day I decided to remove all my Ikea hardware and it seemed a little better. Unfortunately I was too dense to pull the Aqara crap and struggled for another couple months. When I finally removed all my Aqara stuff ZigBee had been flawless.
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Same on Aqara - it either would not stay on my mesh, or it (in the case of a button) really messed it up. Aqara is now on HA, fine there, and Ikea is on second hub all by itself and causes no problems that way.
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And don't you then have the potential problems with security when you have wifi smart home devices, needing the user to be more security conscious?
I agree, Smartthings doesn't get much air-time on Amazon... 
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The only time I had Zigbee problems was when I put a WiFi extender on my network. It grabbed a channel that interfered with my Zigbee channel. I changed routers, eliminating the need for the extender. I also manually set the WiFi channel to channel 1. My Zigbee mesh has been rock solid for both the primary hub (Zigbee channel 20) and my second hub (Zigbee channel 25). I think one of the big things to look at is what channel your WiFi is using.
I'm in a very crowded wi-fi space.
When HE was my primary hub, it was on channel 20 (still is) and was/is rock solid.
SmartThings is running on channel 25 and is also rock solid.
I also have a Home Assistant install with a Sonoff zigbee coordinator (Silicon Labs version) and its on channel 15. Can't really comment on stability since it only has one device connected (zigbee inbound message device).
The one zigbee hub i have that I don't know what channel it's on is my Echo 4.
Ditto, tried to focus on getting ONE protocol implemented in a clean topology with repeaters. God knows I have no control over the WIFI that pops up around me but you can be pretty sure I'm one of few Zigbee instances in the proximal airwaves.
But I do look at posts talking about functional WIFI devices and wonder if I'm missing out. Ironically the fact that HE could talk multiple protocols was apart of its' attraction in that I didn't want to be caught if one of these protocols no longer MATTER-ed in the HA space. Gonna be even MADDER if ALL THREE end up being retired !!! 
I have multiple WiFi devices with zero problems.
No point whatsoever in paying 10-20x the cost (in some instances).
Each to their own.
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