Most of the systems don’t allow downgrades anymore. Even if they do, if there’s a cloud service component you can’t roll that back so you are usually stuck with current state.
I’m sorry to hear about the Fibaro issues. Nothing is more frustrating than a system that works great when you go to sleep on Monday and then fails when you get up Tuesday morning.
Right now it seems like most of the home automation vendors in the inexpensive range are rushing each other to push out the most features and device integrations to attract new customers without fully committing to the idea that their existing customer base needs this to work at least as reliably as the dishwasher since they’ve already integrated it into their daily lives. It’s all just: “try a reboot and see if that helps.”
There are a few exceptions in the United States (staples connect, whose target market is small businesses, has made reliability their number one priority from the beginning) , but they generally get that reliability by severely limiting the features and specific devices supported. Similar to how the inexpensive security systems work. That meets the needs of some people, particularly those just interested in putting lights and window coverings on a schedule, but is less than what a lot of people want to do with home automation. So every system has its pros and cons.
My personal belief (but this is just a guess) is that by December 2016 in the US there will be several candidates for a stable, reliable, low-cost Home automation system that will meet my own needs. I expect homekit/Insteon to be one. Works with nest to be another. SmartThings may be a third, perhaps even with thread support, But they aren’t there yet. We’ll just have to see. I’m not even going to draw up my own candidates list until May. It might be another year on before similar systems were available in the UK.
Meanwhile, it’s just a question of whether what you have is worth the time and money it requires to keep it running. And that’s a very individual calculation.
I don’t know if it would be of any interest, but here’s my project report on what happened in my first phase of investment: