Hi @fonzies83,
That’s a loaded question, because you’re asking in an openHAB forum. Most of us fall into one of the following categories:
- Haven’t used Home Assistant
- Left Home Assistant for openHAB and haven’t used a recent version
- Go back and forth between Home Assistant and openHAB, or perhaps run them at the same time
I’m in the “haven’t used Home Assistant” camp, and don’t pay much attention to its development. All I know is that many people use it happily, which means it must have some good features and qualities. The same goes for openHAB. This being the case, my opinion is that both Home Assistant and openHAB are capable systems. That’s great, because we’re not competing with each other.
I encourage you to try openHAB for yourself, so that you can compare the experiences side by side and ask us questions as you learn about it (please read the documentation first). You’re almost certainly going to find that some things are better in HA and some are better in openHAB. Neither is perfect, so all that matters is which one serves you best.
A quick search for “EFERGY” suggests that some folks have gotten this to work using the HTTP binding to request data from the Energyhive cloud server. This is one of the things you’d want to see for yourself, because it’s unlikely that anyone here can tell you how the experiences compare.
This is often presented as a negative of Home Assistant. Personally, I believe that if you benefit from something, you should be willing to pay for it. I’d hate for someone to avoid Home Assistant primarily to avoid a monthly fee of US$6.50. Just order one less coffee every month and it’s pretty much covered.
Some of us donate that much and more to the openHAB foundation to support its operations (which include the myopenHAB cloud server). The only difference is that we see it as a goodwill donation instead of a fee for services.
So like I said, try openHAB out. You’ll either feel like it makes sense for you and want to do more with it, or find that it doesn’t suit you as well as Home Assistant. You might even find that you want to use both. There’s really no wrong answer.