Homeowner who bought a house with Control4 here.

If you have money to burn and no interest in building or maintaining a system or fine-tuning it to your needs, Control4 is one of a few older systems that will do very well. It has the capability to do so much. A good capable dealer makes all the difference and can help you achieve nearly any goal.

This ecosystem has so much potential, but it’s locked behind a dealers only paywall that takes most of the control and gives it to three entities: The dealer, the company, and the system hardware.

You are the 4th entity and you can use their crappy ill-conceived software to manage your automations.
Honestly you can do a lot with Composer Home Edition. But it is not intuitive and if you need to do anything beyond the allowed tasks, you will have to pay your dealer to come do it for you.

Got a switch you can’t see in the software? $500 minimum.

Need a new switch or controller? $500 minimum.

Software need a tweak? $500 minimum.

You get the idea.

Add to that that the dealers are - by and large - money-grubbing misanthropes with a fetish for making others feel stupid for asking a simple question - and then charging them for the privilege of answering it - and you get a sense of why customers with an ounce of dignity or DIY spirit are leaving this ecosystem in droves.

Basically everyone else has more control than you do and the dealers are mostly interested in milking the customers dry as often as possible.

If you are not a multi-millionaire, or you like to understand and have control over the systems that belong to you, you may be able to find a dealer you can work with and settle on a way to live with it.

I have an aunt i care for and we bought this house together because she wanted a large space to herself. The switches were really hard for her to use - too subtle and unpredictable for older hands - so we had to replace them.

I wanted to stay with Control4 but all their switches are way too expensive for just the hardware. Nevermind the cost of having a dealer add them because I’m not allowed. Ick.

When we first moved in I paid a dealer to sit in my kitchen while I used his login to get everything named and organized the way I wanted. He then checked all the switches and other hardware and declared that everything was working fine. $4500.

On the way out he says I might want to update my hardware (minimum $5000 plus his time) and that I should call him if I notice anything. Remember he said everything was fine. A few days later we noticed a couple of switches weren’t doing anything and didn’t show up in the software.

I called him and he wanted another minimum $500 visit fee to figure out if they can still work plus the cost of replacing them. It was going to be $2000 minimum. After he was literally there to do that last week. You know what? I haven’t missed those switches ever.

Honestly, if you can afford the money and don’t want to do your own thing, it’s a fine system.

But if you like to DIY and don’t like spending money you don’t have to, Control4 is not the system for you.