Insteon's central controller (Hub 2245-222) that links its proprietary dual-mesh switches, dimmers and sensors to a phone app and voice assistants. In April 2022 the company shut its cloud without warning, stranding owners until a group of Insteon users bought the brand and restored service that June behind a $39.95-a-year subscription.
This entry is written from the 5 sources listed at the bottom of the page. The numbers are our editorial estimates drawn from that material, not measurements, and no statistical sample sits behind them.
The pattern in the sources is regret. Only 25% of owners say they would buy it again, and satisfaction falls from 7.5 to 2.5 out of 10 by the two-year mark.
An early review found remote control worked well once configured, though setup hit a firmware bug and scheduling was basic. The long-term blow came years later, when the April 2022 shutdown cut off the app and cloud features, and the revived service added an annual fee.
Cloud access now requires a $39.95-a-year subscription. Factory-resetting a hub during the outage risked losing it for good.
Worth it for: Existing insteon homes willing to pay the subscription; Home assistant tinkerers using local control. Think twice if: New smart home buyers; Anyone wanting open standards like matter; Subscription-averse users.
Our reading of how sentiment moves across an ownership period, drawn from the sources below. It is an editorial estimate, not tracked longitudinal data.
| At purchase | 7.5 / 10 |
|---|---|
| First week | 7.5 / 10 |
| One month | 7.2 / 10 |
| Six months | 7.0 / 10 |
| One year | 6.8 / 10 |
| Two years or more | 2.5 / 10 |
Owner reviews move this score. The researched figure stays visible next to it, so you can always see what the sources said before anyone voted.
Leave a review on the live pageEvery complaint and every piece of praise above traces back to these. The summaries are ours; nothing is quoted, and no link, quote or username anywhere on this site is invented.
Insteon's servers, app and forum went dark with no notice and executives went silent; physical switches still work, Home Assistant and OpenHAB are suggested, and an installer reports confused customers.
Hubs and the app stopped working around April 15, 2022, taking Alexa and Google integrations with them; describes a vocal, generally satisfied user base and blames the proprietary protocol's failure to gain adoption.
A nine-year owner reports the iOS app died on April 14, 2022 but hub-stored schedules, keypads and switches kept working; warns against factory resets and describes moving 17 devices to a roughly $200 HomeSeer setup.
A group of Insteon users bought the company and brought the system back on June 17, 2022, with service now costing $39.95 a year or $69.95 for two; the app and switches worked but Alexa did not yet.
The hub lists at $100 (on sale for $40); setup is simple and remote control works well, but scheduling is very limited and it requires internet access.