To really put things in perspective, you do realize that Hubitat:
I came here from Wink myself. I do have a second hand SmartThings v2 hub that is unused and I would absolutely never move backwards from HE to ST.
Funny bcopeland you should bring Smartthings up. Before the toilet paper apocalypse me and my wife was getting our current house raedy for sale. We decided we would leave some of the old zwave gear I had laying around to create a smart home for sale.
I added the old zwave stuff and lightify bulbs to my old smartthings hub and we have been living with it for about 6 weeks now and I can tell you itās been pure hell iām serious itās been hell. Bulbs come on 10 to 15 seconds after being turned on or off, sensors are slow to respond and before you go there yes there are repeaters zigbee and zwave all through the house.
Smartthings has been down like 4 times with no explanation and itās been a horrible experience, the wife has been in a cranky mood with the system, so if you ask me I still say HE is worth it no matter the price.
I don't think Hubitat is overpriced at $129. I don't know how $129 is possibly enough to support their business.
If I add up everything I've spent on Home Automation devices, $129 for the hub is a small fraction of my total costs.
Just my perspective.
So... how does it communicate with say, Alexa? Or rather how does Alexa communicate with it?
I guess what I mean is; Alexa and hubitat are both on your local network, so presumably you could issue commands to Alexa remotely and hubitat would respond?
Do you mean, can you use the Alexa app to control the Hubitat devices you've chosen to integrate with Alexa?
If so, the answer is yes.
Iām not sure if anyone else has responded to thisāas long as youāre using the HE wink relay app, and disabled/deleted the wink app, youāll be all good 
Ugh. This whole wink thing is terrible timing. I really wanted to get my Eggminders/propane thingy/piggy bank working locally but canāt commit the time to do it before the 13th.
Yeah, Iām just confused, I need to do more research, but whatās tripping me up is how do you normally issue commands to Hubitat? Presumably from a (phone, Alexa, etc) on the same network? Iām just puzzled hubitat isnāt sitting on the network via wifi. Them from there, if you are off network, how do you issue commands to hubitat? A VPN was mentioned above, but Iām assuming if yo7 can remotely issue commands to the (you can), then the echo can relay the command over the local network to the hubitat?
It is physically on your LAN via ethernet cabling.
You can use the Hubitat app, which uses a secure connection via a Hubitat server to directly control devices on your Hubitat. You could also use the Alexa app, which does something similar.
Personally - I switched from Wink an year ago. I rarely use any mobile app to control my Hubitat. Everything is done via automations I've set up.
I moved from SmartThings a month ago because of all the issues with the platform. I was using the ST platform since December 2014 so it wasn't that I didn't give it a chance.
I have had a few bumps moving over but all I can say it is wonderful to walk into a room and the lights turn on, RIGHT NOW. I come home and know that when I key in my pin on the keypad, my alarm is going to disarm, not start blaring because of some cloud hiccup. And better yet, I know that when the internet is down, my stuff still works. In fact, because the sensors and alarm are battery operated, my alarm system will even now work in a power outage (I have my hub on a UPS). And the best part, my WAF is higher than its ever been. The only time she even mentions something now is when she discovers a bug in something that I messed up moving things over. I am finding that I have a lot more time on my hands because I am not spending tons of time trying to figure out why my smartthings rules aren't firing today.
I would spend the $129 over the $59 any day of the week. Otherwise, your just trading one problem platform for a different set of problems on another.
My opinion, FWIW.
Thanks
ST isn't the only route out there. I was just using ST as an example. I think some of you who aren't current Wink users may be missing the point. It isn't about $30 bucks. It is the message that Hubitat just sent us.
To put the reaction that you see into more context, Wink users are being strapped over a barrel. Wink is on its way out (promise features for years and not deliver... why would we believe them now for $60/year?) We now look at Hubitat. How does HE maintain their business model in the long-term? They just raised the price 30% within a couple hours of the Wink notice being sent doesn't send a positive message to us. Is this company trying to regain revenue from selling so lean below MSRP in past months? What is their long-term prospect, so we don't face a similar situation in the next couple of years? We, as Wink users, are probably vested in several other cloud-dependent platforms (I am in 6), so how local can we really be? Integration makes us dependent on HE for some of this. For example, Hubitat's terms and conditions read they can pull 3rd party integrations at any time. Great.
Please sell me on this platform. Not by "its not cloud" but by being future-proof of my independence as much as possible. Not by comparing HE to ST as we're accustomed to the outages. I need wireless, not Ethernet, so unless ST is so much worse reliability-wise than what I've been accustomed to with Wink, I'd be investing in a whole bunch more hardware-related changes. Will Hubitat have a WiFi version soon? Is the adoption/learning curve easier with HE vs. ST? How about the UI? I see a basic iOS app that has just been updated after four months of inactivity. What is the committed roadmap/timetable for future updates to get to parity? Will the UI ever be comparable to Wink? Etc.
Please help.
Alexa integration is still cloud based, but in my experience, faster than Alexa integration with Wink.
Well... if you have/rely on a lot of Zigbee devices then you are kinda stuck between a rock and hard place of ST or Hubitat....
On the flip side if you have mostly Z-Wave devices then you have plenty of options available that you should look at.
I only know ST since I was on it for 5 years. They have been promising the "world" for several years and haven't delivered. If you are accustomed to outages and don't mind them, go with ST. If you read their TOS, they have the same thing as wink. I take that back, they have to give you 10 days notice to start charging you. They can also add or remove (or break) things as they see fit without recourse from the user. This is just something you will have to accept from pretty much any platform you choose. So you know, I have been looking at HE for a year now and just made the switch. I didn't jump on a whim and it really does stink that you have to. If your not ready, maybe you need to spend $10 for a couple months of wink and really look at all the platforms.
Have you considered the possibility that Hubitat doesn't want to create a support nightmare for itself with a large influx of users attracted by a highly discounted price-point ($99)?
You cannot be local. And this is exactly the sort of reason that it is in Hubitat's best interests for people who migrate to this platform to be fully aware of:
I moved from Wink to Hubitat in late March of 2019. I spent an entire month before that carefully cataloging my devices that worked with Hubitat using built-in drivers, versus the devices that required community drivers (I also downloaded copies of these to use when needed). I realized the one of my cloud integrations was Hubitat-created (ecobee), whereas the other (MyQ) was written by a community member.
I spent at least a week asking questions here about unsupported devices - and received very helpful responses from members of the community (@waynespringer79, @zarthan, @ogiewon, @JasonJoel, @bertabcd1234, @SmartHomePrimer, @Cobra, @bptworld among others). But doing all this requires time and patience (realizing that those responding to you are doing so out of the goodness of their heart, and have plenty of other things on their plates). That cannot happen when a large influx of users feels compelled to migrate in the span of a week.
Instead of the good experience I had, a large number of users rapidly migrating from Wink to Hubitat who are unaware of the community-support model that Hubitat relies on will:
Anyone have thoughts on Homeseer and Hoobs vs. HE? A buddy of mine is looking into playing around with that platform. In my case, 95% of my interface today ends up being voice through Amazon Alexa and IFTTT for automation and buttons on my phone. I've been hedging Wink for quite some time now. Zigbee doesn't bother me as I can push a bunch of the devices to either my Philips Hue or Amazon Echo for the interim. Key questions are on Z-wave and Zigbee range with whatever new platform home I end up giving them longer-term. The Wink Relay I have also appears to able to be rooted to work with either ST or HE.
If you're largely/entirely z-wave, you should consider HomeSeer. With the caveat that the upcoming migration from HS3 to HS4 will be pricy vis-a-vis third-party integrations.
I was a Wink user too.
While I see what you are saying about the price increase, we have no information why they did so. Maybe it is like Aaiyar said, they are trying to manage influx of users. Maybe they are short of hubs right now, and they cannot supply that many as would sell at less than $100.
I do think the increase looks funny at a quick glance, but it might just be a coincidence too. The price has always been very dynamic. I personally doubt they are being predatory.
If people have time, I am almost positive Hubitat will be on sale at the next major holiday like it almost always has been over the course of the last couple years. I got lucky and paid about $90 almost exactly a year ago (Easter sale). It was a very good price at that time. At no point do I regret paying that much.
Download the Hubitat app
