I’m not sure your definition of “cheap”, but the best bang for your buck, that will not break the bank is Home Assistant with a ConBee 2 Zigbee USB controller and Zigbee2MQTT. Although Z2M isn’t a requirement, it opens up more devices with better configurability for each. Plus you’ll get access to just about everything else under the sun that HA supports, without needing to use YAML for complex automations.
I have dozens of Aqara devices that are 100% reliable, passing their state back to Hubitat with Home Assistant Device Bridge. I do my automation with Hubitat Basic Rules and Rule Machine. This very stable setup is not at all difficult to maintain.
