I’ve been with SmartThings from almost the beginning and have an extensive home setup with over 100 z-wave devices (along with a few wifi & zigbee on a Hub v2. I’ve always had really good response times with my system and few complaints (other than no longer being able to limit which devices get added to google). Recently however with the increasing size of my system I’ve started to notice poor response times and a general slowing of the system that have started to get on my nerves. I’m wondering if my system is just getting too big for ST to continue to support. I have lots of older automations still built in “smart lighting” that are also not working well - would I see a benefit by switching them to automations?
You may want to examine your z-wave mesh and devices before opting to switch. Just saying… if there is another issue that is not related to ST… then you could be facing the same issues elsewhere 
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Yeah, that definitely helps, but ultimately isn’t ST fairly limited on how much it can support at once? I mean, it’s not exactly a powerful hub. I love the idea of edge, but I worry about the processing power of my little hub being enough to run everything locally
If you have over 100 Z-wave devices you are probably pushing the limits of any system.
There are other people who are more knowledgeable than me about this.
@JDRoberts , @johnconstantelo , @nathancu
Zwave has a hard stop of 231 devices plus the hub. That’s true regardless of brand. (Although that will change in the future with zwave LR, but that’s not on the market yet.)
Smartthings currently has a limit of 200 total devices per location, which includes virtual devices, Wi-Fi devices, anything on your account. That’s only being enforced in the android app right now, though, and staff have said that number is under review. But that tells you where their thinking has been.
Historically most of the Zwave only platforms have handled this issue by making it easy to add multiple hubs. For example, it’s pretty common to hear of a Homeseer setup with 3 to 5 hubs in order to handle 300 or 400 Z wave devices. But smartthings has not made it easy to add additional hubs, and even if you do, it doesn’t get around the per location limit.
A typical US home of three or four bedrooms under 2500 ft.² probably has about 60 outlets and about 40 light switches. Fewer if it’s an older home. And that’s what Zwave was designed to control. So I would say most hubs which are Z wave only controllers were designed assuming that 125 would be more than enough physical Devices for most homes. (Virtual Devices do not count against your max on most home automation systems, smartthings is pretty unusual in that.)
However… We continue to see an expansion of what home automation is used for, as well as the combining of lighting and security systems, something which didn’t used to happen. This is one of the big reasons that Z wave LR is going to increase the max number of devices per hub to 4000.
All of which is to say there are a number of Z wave controllers that assume most people will have under 100 physical devices, maybe even under 75, but most of these platforms also allow you to easily add multiple hubs if you do have more.
I know that in the past smartthings staff have said that most of their customers have 15 or fewer devices, and support has sometimes told people that more than 40 Z wave devices can cause a problem. but there are certainly individual customers who have run a lot more than that.
So… in general, irrespective of brand, I think most Z wave-only controllers assume a maximum of about 125 physical devices in everyday use, although technically they will allow up to 231. But the workaround on most platforms is just to add additional hubs, in fact that’s what the whole concept of “secondary hub“ is for in Zwave.
However, smartthings has set their limits based on location, not per hub, so you can’t easily add additional hubs to expand your system. And the limit is for all your devices of any protocol, including virtual, which I think is very unusual. 
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I just actually checked in graph and I’ve got 138 devices currently, though around 20 are virtual, so I’m probably actually around more like 70-80 z-wave devices, and the rest are LAN (harmony hubs, hue, smartlife rgbw controllers, etc)
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I was thinking of going to homeseer for that very reason. I don’t want to deal with multiple hubs, and I figure you’re not going to get much more processing power than an i7 running homseer.
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Its a big deal to change z-wave networks over to a different solution. That said, I moved to Home Assistant about a year ago and haven’t regretted it. I’m a tinkerer and its just so powerful for testing/diagnosing, and EVERYTHING is local. I come here because I still use ST to control some of the HVAC functions that HA doesn’t have equal performance on (ecobee suite), but HA is the central hub now. Come on over and try it out! (Note to get z-wave changed over you will need a USB). You can even try HA incorporating the integration from ST as well, but it won’t change z-wave performance.
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I’ve dabbled in home assistant and it’s not for me. I like for everything to “just work” and HA requires a bit too much tinkering for my taste. I think homeseer is probably my only option as I don’t want to go to Hubitat and have to deal with multiple hubs.
i had a 300+ device system on one hub before the 200 device hard limit per account. since I have divided things up and leveled out devices to around 50-75 or so per hub across multiple accounts. since doing so i havent had any weird zwave radio issues. also, should something go rogue and i have to reset a hub and re-add devices it wont be so bad as dealing with 300+.
so, stick around for the official edge roll out.
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So my experience has been to get rid of all my Zwave devices, except around 9 or 10, and go all Zigbee. ST’s zwave implementation has improved, but I wasn’t waiting around to see how things would improve.
I’m at just shy of 300 devices on 1 ST v2 hub, and most of those are very chatty Zigbee devices. I have not had a problem since shifting to Zigbee. Nothing, no delays, no drops, nothing, but remember, it’s a strong mesh. Sure, I’ve had devices just fail, but all my problems can, and have been traced back to failed or failing devices, and not ST.
I’ve literally spent so little time maintaining my ST setup now that I can finally find enough time to complain about the mobile app and finding workarounds to the 200 device limit. 
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That’s an easy fix …switch to iOS!! 
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LOL, never but nice try! 
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I’ve actually had the opposite experience, I’ve found z-wave to be significantly more stable than zigbee mainly due to wifi interference (at least that was my guess). Regardless, I purposefully have no zigbee devices and am not going to spend >$1,000 replacing all of them
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I been around for many years now and I too am thinking about moving on. If it was not for the family acceptance factor, I like would have already moved on. The app is unusable on iOS, I get better more accurate, faster response from Homekit going to HomeBridge, which is just sad.
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