Good morning. I would like your suggestions on the following matter. I started using Home Assistant three weeks ago. I decided to replace all my wall switches with smart ones, so I initially bought the SONOFF SwitchMan Smart Wall Switch-M5. I got 5 out of the 16 that I plan to replace.
To be honest, I’m very happy with how they respond and how easy it was to integrate them. However, after a lot of reading, I realized that I might have made a mistake and should have gone with Zigbee switches because of all the advantages they offer. The Sonoff switches I purchased are not Zigbee but Matter-compatible.
The question now is, what do I do next? Should I buy the remaining ones since I’ve already installed the first 5, or should I look for Zigbee-compatible switches for the rest? The ones that look similar in design are Aqara switches, but they’re quite expensive, almost €35 each, which means a significant cost.
My Home Assistant setup is local, running on Proxmox on a Beelink S12 Pro. I’m just concerned that having 20+ smart devices on my network isn’t ideal. What do you recommend? Also, are there any switches you’ve tested and are satisfied with? I don’t want to use relays, etc.—I want complete switches.
Sorry for the long post, and I’d appreciate your thoughts, especially from those of you who are more experienced and have tried many options.
AFAIK neither the matter nor the zigbee version allows full control or ownership.
The only hardware that is not (artificially) locked might be the wifi version based on esp32(?) that allows full control and ownership thanks being compatible with third party firm/software like ESPHome .
Taking this approach (essential use hardware with esphome) allows full local control without any privacy compromises. It is for now probably the best choice building a sustainable smart home and avoid (un)planned obsolescence or (un)acidental bricking by the vendor/manufacture .
IMHO the fundamental matter problem (essentially copying zigbee issues) is that the vendor might still force cloud services, including a registration obligation with need for private data like email. Matter even allows the manufactures to “protect” their walled gardens and force the use of vendor apps, often full of (third-party) trackers, just so the buyer can make use of all functionalities a device offers. Just take this chart as an example
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all the way to 
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