As @oldcomputerwiz suggested, check out the “alternative hubs“ section of the forum for discussion of other options. Different systems will work for different people, and there are a lot of choices these days.
With the exception of the now EOL ADT model, SmartThings itself is primarily a cloud-based system: it’s never going to work for security when compared to a UL listed product. Just as one example, you can neither arm nor disarm the system unless the Internet is available and smartthings cloud is up. You can also neither defer nor delay maintenance updates, which means your system can go off-line anytime. They usually try to give us a few days notice, but they don’t always. If you just want a low cost do it yourself security system, ring alarm is pretty good and ranks high on most independent reviews. Abode is also worth looking at.
- As far as a keypad, if you are willing to pay the one time license fee for access to @rboy’s library, he has a nice DTH for the Ring keypad to make it work with smartthings. It will still be cloud-based, though.
- If you use webcore, you can re-create the functionality you had for the eight hour notification, but I understand you may not want to do that.