@JDRoberts yes the rules are more complex then alexa, but on a bigger scale they are not complex. The old classic app rules were much more complex then the new app.
I agree, I think the primary market for those with a hub optional configuration is people who have some of the expensive Samsung smart appliances and want to add a few lights or a video doorbell or smart shades. Still they may appreciate the more complex rule support as well. Combining smart shades and lights In a single rule, for example, is nice, and works well with smartthings.
I do think Alexa routines will get there eventually, the new custom action feature is moving towards this, although right now you can only have one per routine.
But I do hear from some friends who get frustrated because they have a particular use case they want to do and they can’t get it done with just Alexa routines. Sometimes something as simple as having a multi button handheld remote, or having a switch trigger another event. So they want a wider selection of triggers, and the smartthings app has that. 
Just throwing in my two cents.
Samsung being company in Korea, a country with arguably one of the best and fastest internet and cellular connectivity, Smartthings user there probably experience the Smartthings products different from other countries. So slow down or delay may not be as apparent.
At its core, Samsung is a Hardware company focusing on repidly pushing out new product year after year with new features that entices you to upgrade more than necessary (like phone, tablet, laptop). However, Smartthings Hub and sensors are all One-Time Purchase that’s not super expensive and with long ownership period (3+ years), however, Samsung has to pay all the messaging traffics across the Cloud year after year, and has always been free. So how could a One-Time purchase cost pay for on-going maintenance and infrastructure cost? The Hardware sales alone doesn’t seem profitable (Samsung sensor were 1/2 or 1/3 the price of other brands before they discontinued); and while SmartThings made Local would perform better, Hub unlike a phone or tablet, is not fun and usually error prone migrating to new version, and you only need one per home, what is going to pay for developers continue working on Smartthings software? An option is eventually come out with annual Service subscription.
I think their Cloud platform partly allows Samsung to collect usage information and indirectly monitize and pay for Smartthings service via observing how these sensor-action are created, the potentially shorten the step and incorporate directly into their Smart Appliances.
There is nothing wrong with building a good flexible Rules Engine for Home Automation and charge a subscription fee. I know there are other Home Automation tools that offers that, but they miss the simplicity and usability from a phone or tablet, the Smartthings App isn’t there either, I’m hoping they are going in that direction.
Wow, well done!
Thanks very much, JDR!
This is exactly what completely killed Wink and if Samsung implements subscriptions on Smartthings it will result in death or near death as well especially since other competing systems do the same thing (devices as well as automations) as Smartthings completely local, and devoid of cloud to cloud. I’ll guarantee Hubitat is praying Samsung will take this road
Subscription service should never exist without offering something substantial in usability. Basic rules should always be free, and subscription offers complex rules (this is basically how original IFTTT and Stringify differ), service performance and stability, and truble-ticket help . No one likes buying a hardware that they can’t use unless they also subscribe to ongoing service. I have not personally used Habitat or WebCore which I assume allows complex rule building already for power users, thus IF Smartthings were to offer subscription, they have to up their game by making Rules building and flexiblity easily accessible through Tablet or Phone and not have to open a laptop log into a website.
Since you mentioned Hubitat, personally I have been hesistant moving to it for the exact reason I state, I don’t see how a single-time purchase hardware sales can offer years-after-year ongoing software upgrade. I know some people buy more than one as a way to support the company, but that portion of the user probably stops after 3rd unit. And eventually Hubitat will have to find a way to pay for everything. Samsung is no better since they haven’t openly discussed their plan forward, but at least they are a large well known corporation.
Maybe for the .075 % of their customer base that uses a hub and complex rules.
But remember those hundreds of millions of users (literally) who use smartthings without having a hub at all. As long as it’s free to use with their Samsung televisions and appliances for some simple rules, they won’t care and neither will Samsung.
I have no idea if this is true or not, but it would make sense that one of the reasons for Samsung wanting to get their name off of the hubs is so that they can feel free to change the business model for hub users in the future without damaging their own brand. 
Homeseer and Insteon both have for many years. They have somewhat different Business models. And both charge more upfront than smartthings does.
Homeseer is interesting. There are some add-on subscriptions you can get for a different optional features. And then every couple of years they do a big new software upgrade at a big new price, typically $150. You don’t have to get the software upgrade, your old stuff will still run (there’s no cloud piece for the basic system), but there’s are always a lot of new stuff to consider and many customers do pay for the upgrades.
They also sell branded accessory hardware with special features at a premium price.
Insteon is a little different. They have a subscription for their cloud features. A high upfront cost. And then I suspect they make most of their profit from their accessory hardware, which only works with their system and can mostly only be bought from them.
So those are two niche companies with different models that seem to work for them.
Both work by packaging upgrades as something Optional but worth paying for, An approach that smartthings has so far not taken Except with the failed camera program add-on. And neither offers a free cloud, so they save themselves that expense.
If you want to make a one time hardware purchase with Homeseer or Insteon, you can, and it will continue to run until the hardware fails. But if you want cloud services or in the case of homeseer, software upgrades, you have to pay for those.
The smartthings business problem is that they are forcing customers to accept the upgrades, which makes it harder to require customers to pay for them.
Sure, for users of the appliances and maybe TVs (Hubitat does already have implementation for Samsung TVs) would keep the Smartthings app but lets get real…the majority of hub owners would leave for a stable (something painfully obvious that Smartthings will never be), locally controlled and free ecosystem. I’m still holding on through this mess but if subscription comes, that will be the straw that breaks the camels back and I will indeed go Hubitat…the only reason I havent already done so is because if the initial hassle of transferring and setup
Agreed, my point is that all the hub users together is still just a tiny tiny fraction of total SmartThings app users at this point. And probably the least profitable fraction at that.
Thats very true.
The HomeSeer model is very similar to some of the IT Firewall Appliance business model where hardware can be comodity (e.g, build your own, in this case its other manufacturer), and the software is first a One-Time purchase that can run forever, upgrade is also one-time upgrade, also subscription offers real person trouble shoot, cloud backup of configurations and potential cloud storage. I personally feel thats a good compromise.
Current Smartthings seriously feel like the result of indecision, they need to seriously think through their business model, announce the plan a year ahead upfront to allow users weigh their choices and time to migrate if necessary. Losing Customers is not always bad since you can’t lose money on every customer, you want customer who’s willing to pay for your business model. But as of right now, SmartThings software is way behind, if they are going this route, they need seriously evaluate their feature/bug backlog and spend a minimum a long year to clean-up and catch up; just to give an example, we still don’t have a Hub/Rule configuration backup(export/import) after how many years?
In a nutshell, nobody cares. This piece of crap app will continue to grow into something pointless that links to the temperatures of a smart fridge or whatever, and the power users will become less and less impressed.
The die hards will remain until the bitter end, valiently hanging onto the belief that what they have here is actually fairly awesome, and there’s no point in moving to any other system because, well…they all have their problems, don’t they…
… And nothing will ever quite work the way it used to.
Samsung will continue to run the smartthings division with just the right minimum costs/staffing/support to justify the outsourced contracts and 3rd party hardware. Meanwhile Bob and Cheryl will be mildly impressed that the app on their phone manages to know what temperature their expensive new Samsung oven is at, and how much detergent is left in their Samsung dishwasher.
Working from scratch there’s not a single reason for anyone serious about the HA market to mess about with ST. And a few of the older crowd probably can’t be arsed to start over with something new because their lights work most of the time.anyway.
/ opinion.
I wonder with the changes most likely coming to home automation from the Project Connected Home over IP imitative is going to change the protocols and hardware we have now. I believe Samsung is part of the group. Maybe they know something we don’t and they are making longer term plans. If they can get this all working securely with wi-fi and interoperable between manufactures, much like what we have now in everyone’s house with laptops and cellphones , the market will explode and a lot homes can more easily automate with out all we do to make ours work as well as they do.
Most of us here understand having a strong mesh ZigBee network and Z-Wave repeaters for lost signals and reaching further for battery devices . Regular people now understand the concepts to getting better Wi-Fi around there houses and more mesh networks are solving this for them. Now with a new IP protocol in home automation and an already useful mesh Wi-Fi anyone can buy just 1 smart lock and a couple of leak sensors and get them working with a lot less effort than it is now. IMHO.
I am a tech and really like this hobby. I would not recommend this to mere mortals in its current state and I am not just talking ST.
I don’t see a need for ST to offer a Zigbee or Z-wave hub at all. It seems mutually beneficial to ST and Aeotec. It could perhaps do with some better marketing and ST has to really get the platform right.
The more interesting aspect is Wi-Fi, and maybe eventually Bluetooth, from the hub connectivity perspective. That seems the sort of thing to potentially be integrated elsewhere. Possibly TV but also routers, access points, Sky boxes, Google Home etc. Things that people have anyway and keep switched on.
Samsung just came out with their Smart Tag that uses BLE, but its connected to the phone (galaxy only) and not hub. I understand just adding a connectivity protocol like Bluetooth still requires the device coding to api standards, but its certainly possible. Zwave and zigbee are specific to home automation - so less confusion, if Hub enables Bluetooth, it may cause general consumer confusion what should work. But given bluetooth is such a commonly accepted protocol, like you said, it would be great if we could pair Smart Tag with the Hub and use as a presence sensor (It doesn’t even have to be accurate, just In or Out of area)
In my fantasy world where Samsung abandons Bixby in return for close integration with Google Assistant, SmartThings hubs would be cast clients and Google Homes would be detecting Smart Tags over BLE and activating presence sensors.
I received this email today about discontinuing support for the ADT Smartthings hub and devices. I’ll never buy another Samsung product in my life, and I’ve bought nothing but their phones and TVs for over ten years. Not only are they not supporting the hub or offering alarm service, but it and all of the ADT Smartthings devices will stop working entirely. Pretty sure I can flash the hub to continue using it but I’ll probably switch to hubitat since I’ll have to add everything back. This is absolute BS. F*** Samsung and ADT. There’s no nicer way to say it. The time and money I’ve spent on this.
Email links to an FAQ talking about possible full or partial refunds. Obviously I’ll take a refund for these paperweights, but are they going to refund the hours I’ve spent on my system and the hours more I’ll have to spend setting it back up.
https://mailchi.mp/smartthings/retirement-announcement-adt?e=b8df222935
Your ADT SmartThings Home Security System will be retiring in 90 days
Hello,
We wanted to let you know that we will be discontinuing support of your ADT SmartThings Home Security and Safety system effective June 1, 2021 .
Some questions you might have, and answers you might want
What will happen after that date?
Your ADT SmartThings Home Security and Safety devices (including the Security Hub, Detectors and Alarms) along with the optional 24/7 professional monitoring from ADT will no longer work. You will also no longer be able to use the SmartThings app to control any Zigbee, Z-Wave, or LAN devices that are connected to your hub.
What options do I have to continue having monitored security?
Your continued safety is our first priority. Learn more about how about how ADT and Samsung can help you continue monitoring your home security and stay protected.
What should I do with my old equipment?
You may be eligible for a full or partial refund. Please visit our FAQ page for instructions.
We apologize for any inconvenience this causes you and remain deeply committed to providing you you with the highest level of support during this transition. You can find more info on our FAQ page.
Thank you,
The ADT SmartThings Team
I am beyond livid, I feel like I was robbed, this is so bad, and I had so much invested as a very early adopter.
Yeah, the refund is bogus. You can’t enter more than $300 on the form which doesn’t even cover the cost of the starter kit without any additional sensors. 