openHAB vs Conventional Home Automation

Hi Friends,

I have veralite and 3-4 modules that I am using to control lights and AC and few other things. I started off with a conventional method, by adding everything via veralite web portal, creating scenes and schedules and everything is working perfectly, I then downloaded imperihome pro and everything is working from mobile as well. NOW I came across openHAB, and the Geeky insect inside me dragged me to try this and with a truck load of an effort and help from dayday1 I managed to create a scene in HAB Panel add everything and everything was working good.

My question is WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE IN USING openHAB as against the easier alternatives. I mean all this I was able to do, with just few click using imperhome; with openHAB everything was manual and complicated to achieve the SAME thing. I am sure this is not the objective of openHAB, there must be something that I am missing. What exactly is the advantage of using openHAB,??, going all manual, over what already is available and is much easier to setup and configure?

Pardon my ignorance, and apologiese if I sound prudent, but I really would like to know as again my Geeky insect wants to explore more into openHAB to understand what exactly is its purpose.

Thanks
Sammy

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