Consultants and Dealers depend on margin, I doubt @ashutosh1982 will have much to say counter to the obviousness that there is no margin in it.
Having a separate product to sell alongside SmartThings might be a different story.
Providing technical services supporting SmartThings isn’t a bad business model, if you can endure the pain.
Dealers for custom installed HA and AV equipment rely on margin points on equipment sales to supplement their hourly rates for install, programming and training.
Since ST has only a retail channel, and a $99 price point, this leaves absolutely no margin, period.
So consulting costs are strictly absorbed by the consumer with no support from ST for the consultant, no training, no additional support access, etc. You are essentially charging someone to be their proxy to deal with ST as any other customer would.
The frustration will ultimately shift back to you, The customer has a trust relationship with the consultant, ST in the middle will ultimately make you have to decide is it worth the continued fight to charge the customer for your time for things that you can’t fix, or ST won’t fix (in a timely manner)…
This has lead me to steer these customers to working platforms, that have a proven track record of stability and reliability. Any features specific to ST became integration opportunities with again, a giant asterisk next to them, given their reliability track record.
I’m just sharing my personal experience, others might have differing experiences, but in my 2 decades of providing consulting services for high end customers, I have never had this much trouble with a single vendor, yet some how I keep coming back, hoping it will get fixed…