Yeah, I guess the real decision is which network/protocol to buy into, today.
I started writing a whole long thing about different networks and protocols, but I think you just need to do your own research here, as each of us will have different criteria for price, openness/freedom, etc. I will highlight a couple I think are relevant though.
Personally I believe strongly in protocols, not platforms and I am also cheap so I like Zigbee. 
There is a wide variety of devices, typically inexpensive, been around long enough to be stable, forms a mesh network, and it’s an actual IEEE protocol. IMHO Zigbee seems to have the momentum and market share these days, which is an important consideration I think when making this kind of choice.
You will hear a lot of hype about Matter/Thread but I don’t think it’s really ‘there’ quite yet. So personally, I don’t buy into it (literally or figuratively). At least not yet.
Some people also like Z-Wave, and/or Wi-Fi based devices, but you do your own homework there. Z-Wave seem to be quite a bit more expensive (at least where I am), but some people swear by them. I have some Wi-Fi devices, they work totally fine but I always heard the same thing about network congestion which was why I got into Zigbee (which is a separate mesh network from Wi-Fi). But I was having debate with someone about this the other day and I am not even sure any more how legitimate this ‘network congestion’ argument against Wi-Fi really is any more (they claim to be running 50+ ESPHome devices on a crappy old ISP router).