Hey, good point! I'll add the Facebook page in my daily round of social media screening routine. The Facebook group is better handled, but the page is often skipped.
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I'd also add to this discussion my own experience which is likely similar in some ways to other who have ended up here... And kindly request that Hubitat don't become an overly commercialised platform....
I started with Philips Hue lighting, including a Hue bridge. I quickly realised a limitation in the Hue rules where I could not more easily define what we know as modes, time of day was all that was offered.... I quickly started use the All4Hue App to define more fine-grained rules, including variables that could act as modes, with widgets on my phone to transition between Bedtime and Day, and maybe Google routines to achieve the same... Can't remember...
Skip forward not too long and I wanted more, including other sensors, more advanced lighting rules and control of more aspects of my home. Like many I looked around and eventually, somehow, landed on Hubitat, after briefly being excited by Homey, but put-off by the price.
My point is, like many here, I expect, we have come to Hubitat for various reasons, but many have come looking for something more than the typical commercial platforms, wanting that "elevated" control of their home.
It feels like it is easier to let the bigger players splash their cash into major marketing campaigns, then let those looking for something more come to Hubitat. Users in that frame of mind are willing to invest the time in a platform that provides them what they are looking for, improving it where they see a deficiency, and get involved in the Community, compared to those simply making a commercial purchase of a hub and some devices.
I'm happy to see Hubitat reap the rewards of their hard work in differentiating themselves from their competitors without all the BS that can come from a large-scale marketing campaign. I'd rather them put those dollars towards UI improvements or other enhancements they see as beneficial to the platform.
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Yet the BEST PRACTICE of "real" automation, whether Home Automation, Facility Automation, Industrial Automation, or even Security Automation ...DOES include Overview Displays (often called Dashboards) that are intuitive, informative, and easy to construct.
I have spent my HE newbie time on the stuff you called "real HA" knowing that if the work horse stuff doesn't pan out well in HE then the display work will have been a waste of time. As things have worked out I have come to wish the Dashboard tools were better and I've flat out avoided them in hopes that something better would be built (and not 3rd party).
And I laugh because just minutes ago I was expanding on the "Morning Status" announcement that I send to the Sonos to give an update of various things on the farm ...and I was thinking to myself that this would be nice ON A DIGITAL SLATE ON THE FRIG WITH GRAPHS FROM OVERNIGHT !
So while the article might have sucked (as per the comments of others didn't bother reading it), I think the Dashboard quality & toolkit facility is IMPORTANT. And while we can say HE is the best-in-class in many respects...it is lacking in this area. And marketing or not, we need new folks to be attracted to, buy, and embrace this product.
I think starting sentences with "And" is an underappreciated tool in English, keeps those run-on sentences under control w/o comas and extra words. Damn my teachers' red pens 
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The importance you put on dashboards is up to you. Personally I find no use for them in a home environment. Facility or industrial automation, sure...but no one is using any of these amateur systems to control such operations, that have completely different requirements.
I think that hubs like HE exist in a completely different stratus to Google, Alexa, etc. Those systems are essentially walled gardens, designed to keep you within their own environments for purposes of product sales, data collection, market penetration, etc. Google/Amazon are never going to open up those environments to let anyone run their own code, or run code locally without cloud access. Thatās not why those environments exist. And the people who buy them don't care about that anyway.
In my opinion, pushing the HE devs to work on a dashboard to rival those systems is the wrong approach. I use HE precisely because it doesnāt try to rival these companies. But you might have a different opinion.
Is it? I thought that Hubitat uses Amazon Polly to generate TTS, and therefore needs cloud access? Or am I mistaken?
I put very little credibility in ZDNet reviews or most of the others. Companies like ZDNet get much of their income from companies who advertise on their platforms. Thus, they push companies like Amazon, Apple, Google, etc. who are the big players in the tech world. The "reviews" and rankings are simply an advertisement for the big companies who pay big sums. Small companies like Hubitat barely show up on the ZDNet radar, so they are ignored.
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Hubitatās TTS functionality does rely on Amazonās Polly to convert text to an audio clip. The hub then caches those audio clips locally on the hub. Thus, if the same TTS request is made, there is no dependence on Amazonās cloud.
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Don't say that too loud. You might offend those holding their breath for MATTER thinking it's the holy grail rather than just another competing standard. Why? Because it's (for the moment anyway) backed by Apple, Google and Amazon.
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I don't understand nor agree with the concept of home automation without the option of user interaction/control.
Certain (many) things can of course be automated. But there's always tines when I feel like turning the lights up brighter, or giving the heating a boost.
Not to sound argumentative, but it feels like most of the concerns over 'unfriendly UI' are frequently met with 'you shouldn't need a ui'.
I'm a huge, huge fan of this product and it brings me a lot of joy - always building something, it's fun. But I wouldn't have got into any of this without entering via a more user-friendly bit of competition. Even though ST is a big bag of w*nk now.
To be clear, I think the beauty of this is you can do whatever you want, if you put the time in. Perfect in that respect. Would be nice to have a head start out of the box though.
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Isnt that what the original controls are for? 
Well the very phrase "Home Automation" does imply hands-off. That's why I prefer "Smart Home" it implies more flexibility in use.
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I'll rephrase that.
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Some devices don't have 'convenient' original controls. Example, I have a stack of WLED modules. Beautiful interface, but not something I want to have to open my phone for, and then open an app and locate options. In the same room, I have some zigbee plugs, out of reach. Again, not convenient to flick on/off.
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Sometime it's nice to use operate things at the same time. For example, sometimes it's great for the kids to flick on the disco lights, but sometimes I want this to also have the front room lights on dim, other times I want the lights off, etc. I really can't see any way of setting automatic rules for every occasion, which satisfies everyone's' choices, every time any of the occupants wishes to use it. This can be said for multiple devices.
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Due to both of the previous reasons, it's great to have a nice, organised, accessible control panel. I also have physical controls to satisfy all needs - eg a push-button control box with LEDs for ease of use of our heating system. Again, can't run 100% automated - want to occasionally boost a room, etc. And grandma doesn't want to access a tablet (even if it's wall-mounted) because she feels chilly.
All in all, it is possible to satisfy all needs. But this currently requires a decent dash to pull it all together (in my household). This is currently 3rd party (sharptools, awesome). And ultimately I'd challenge anyone to take a peek at our equipment and convert the lot to 'automated'.
Horses // courses.
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This feels like a common spiral that we get into. Easy for me to say, I am someone that enjoys the fruits of both automation and manual control through various methods, including dashboards.
In the end people come to a home automation platform for different reasons, and if that reason is not the same as your personal preference, so be it, it's no harm to see various aspects of the platform flourish and satisfy the needs of a wider user-base.
Personally I do not have any Z-Wave devices, but to have the developers spend time expanding and improving the Z-Wave capabilities of the HE hub means a broader group of users will likely find Hubitat as their hub of choice, broadening the pool of experiences and ideas to add to the eclectic mix we already have.
So if dashboards aren't your thing, that's cool, I still have a respect for those who spend the time to make their home work for them, rather than requiring attention like mine often does. But I also want the option to see what is happening in my home and respond to situations I haven't thought of yet, or spent the time to automate. Neither approach is right or wrong, and offering the choice to new users should be seen as a plus for the platform.
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Well said 
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Well I dont agree with that article either. For me itās either Homey Pro if I ever will have the budget to spend over 4000 kr (witch is egual to around 400 $) on a hub, Home Assistant if I feel the need to make things really complicated and advanced, or Hubitat if I want to have kind of like a mix between those two.
I think Hubitat is great but as many have mentioned I would like to see a much more user friendly UI for the app/webb page and for the dashboard built in into the hub.
To have everything in the app avaliable in swedish would be a big plus to even though Iām fine with englishā¦
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It's slightly agitating that standard consumers looking for smart home stuff pretty much see alexa controlled bulbs as the pinnacle of HA.
But hey, these guys don't then spend countless hours building cool stuff.
I think that for me, the product needs to have a very simple standard dash to please the masses.
For expert mode, well, let's just crack on with how it is.
/ opinion.
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I think this is the issue. As far as mass-market consumers are concerned, voice-control and/or phone-control is home automation. Smart devices are things that connect to your router and use wifi. Maybe some of the more enlightened consumers have ventured into SmartThings and made a few scenes.
HE is in a different league, as I said before. I can't imagine most people wanting to worry about a robust zwave/zigbee mesh or build rules - that's pseudo-code and most people arenāt interested or capable.
If people in the HE community want a slick UI/dashboard to complete their own home automation projects, then so be it. But to think thats going to attract the mass-market is, in my opinion, just wrong.
HE is, and probably always will be, a niche product, for exactly the same reasons that most people just accept the router their ISP gives them and never even change the password or SSID, let alone any of the settings.
And I'm good with that 
I have a neighbor who said "Oh, I do that too" when I showed him some parts of my home automation (basic motion/contact sensor lights). He then said he had three lights connected to smart plugs that he controls via voice exclusively using Alexa voice commands. And he's pretty much done. He might add a few more plugs, maybe. Aside from my "geek patrol" friends, everyone else who has mentioned home automation is either doing GH/Alexa basics, or WI-Fi stuff they control from their phone. Ick!
HE (or any real hub) has a really hard slog to get these guys, and they make up the majority of the HA market. I don't think we truly get how small a portion of population will want to get beyond that point, or are even aware there is any place to go beyond basic Alexa/GH voice control or Wi-Fi/phone stuff. So from a mass market perspective that article is sadly mostly right about which "hubs" to compare.
If HE wants to address the mass market more directly they could try to get around some of this problem, via things like:
- Automate (or at least greatly simplify) GH/Alexa voice control integration: E.g., customer adds a plug to HE, prompt comes up asking if they want to use it w/GH or Alexa, adds to necessary apps in HE (GH integration, Echo integration, Maker API or whatever) and completes anything else HE can and then provides customer guide/help for any final steps outside of HE that are required.
- Play up the Privacy benefit of HE. "Local control" doesn't sound very sexy (and not really clearly understood by the masses). Privacy is a much hotter attention getter. So sell HE in part as a way to privately automate their homes while retaining their personal privacy. BUT...takes careful messaging along-side easy integration w/GH or Alexa.
- HE needs a sexier front-end for marketing to less experienced HA users. No matter what any of us think about dashboards, those folks love them and think they have to have them. Current dashboard (mobile and PC) looks like it was created a generation (or two) ago. Time to invest.
Of course, HE could also decide they aren't going to try to chase the HA mass market, and will be happy w/a (hopefully growing) niche from users leaving SmartThings, Wink, and the slow upward movement of a pecentage of the GH/Alexa users into "real" home automation.
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I pre ordered the first Alexa simply because of the promise of this. Then it arrived and I realized I had nothing TO control. Alexa spent her first days in our live as a novelty. Mostly had fun messing with my kids with the Simon says feature.
My situation is not one to easily automate. We've got ages 12 to 75. There are too many different patterns to automate for and educating grandpa to not touch switches or unplug things is near mission impossible.
So Alexa and displays are nice tools for us. Even the groups that say automate everything usually will also recommend lutron/Pico's for button controllers. Which I don't see as much different aside from the cloud need of Alexa.
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