Can Hubitat Really Offer a More Private Smart Home?

If you’re looking for an easier way to control your smart home, the right hub makes all the difference. But many of these hubs store all your data in the cloud, causing something as simple as turning on a light bulb to become an invasion of privacy. Hubitat wants to change all that by giving you more control with the Hubitat Elevation hub.

Hubitat Works Locally

While the hub works with a wide variety of smart home devices, including those that have to use cloud servers such as Amazon Echo and Google Home devices, Hubitat skips the Internet whenever possible. On the other hand, many popular hubs, such as SmartThings, require the Internet to work.

This immediately gives you two benefits. First, by working and storing all data locally, nothing’s being sent to remote servers all over the world. You don’t have to worry if your information is secure. Of course, if you’re using any cloud-based devices, such as smart speakers, anything you say or control with those will be sent to their respective cloud servers.

The second benefit is if the Internet goes down, any locally-controlled devices still work. The Hubitat Elevation hub connects directly to your router via an Ethernet cable. This creates a local network that doesn’t rely on the Internet to function.

Control Remotely

Just because your data’s not stored in the cloud doesn’t mean you can’t control your smart devices remotely. Originally, you had to use a website and custom dashboard to control everything, which wasn’t the easiest thing to do. However, Hubitat listened to users and created much more convenient mobile apps for iOS and Android. Users still have some complaints about the app, but it’s still being improved.

Faster Response Time

Local data storage reduces many of the privacy concerns with smart home hubs. It also speeds up response times. Want your lights on? They’ll turn on much faster by using Hubitat’s local controls versus a cloud-reliant hub. When you make a request with a cloud-reliant hub, your request is sent through your router and online to the hub’s servers. It’s then processed and sent back.

With Hubitat Elevation, the request is sent directly to the smart home device. This is true with direct requests and automations.

Privacy Plus Compatibility

You may expect that privacy comes at the price of limited compatibility, but that’s not true. You’re not forced to use just a single line of products. Instead, the hub’s compatible with all of the following and increasingly more:

• Amazon Alexa
• Google Assistant
• Zigbee
• Zwave
• Lutron
• Philips
• Ecobee
• Honeywell
• Iris
• Sonos
• Yale
• Leviton
• Sylvania
• Kwikset

This means most major smart home devices are compatible. Once again, any devices that do require Internet access won’t have the same privacy benefits. For instance, smart assistants send voice commands over the Internet to be processed. This means you’ll need to manage privacy separately for these, such as deleting remotely stored Amazon Alexa recordings.

Is It Worth It?

Hubitat is much more complex to set up than many other smart home hubs. If you’d rather have a simpler setup, the privacy component may not be enough of a benefit. However, if you don’t control your smart home mainly with a voice assistant, you’ll get faster response times, reliable connections even without Internet, and local data storage with a Hubitat Elevation hub.

For the privacy-focused smart home, this is definitely worth it. While it is more expensive than some hubs at $149.95, the peace of mind is worth the extra money to keep data about your smart home usage out of the cloud.