To me, it's just as big a deal that you're now at the whim of the provider. Your equipment can suddenly stop working if: * They go out of business or decide to

To me, it's just as big a deal that you're now at the whim of the provider. Your equipment can suddenly stop working if: * They go out of business or decide to drop the product line * Their servers go down (do you know if they're running a HA config, or merely a single server?) * They decide to make v2 of the product and stop updating/supporting v1 On top of this, your home internet connection can and will go down. Depending on what exactly you're doing this may or may not be a big deal: for example, not being able to remotely see your garage door status probably isn't important. Not having your motion sensing lights or timed schedules work, however, would be a pain. There are many products from startups that are hurting themselves because of this. I, like many geeks, love this kind of stuff, but like you, I won't purchase or make my house rely on anything that has these risks, and I steer friends and family away from these products as well. Developers: At least make your internet connection optional and allow the gear work without it. Even better, open source your server software: we can see how secure it is, plus if you go out of business, I can at least run it myself.