Why use MQTT with Shelly devices?

I’m just exploring using a Shelly 1 to control my central heating boiler. I can see how Shelly works as a supported integration, but I also see a lot of traffic where people have decided to control Sheely using MQTT.

Why?

Updates via mqtt are pushed as they occur.

Shelly via the integration uses a polled interval. I think.

I use the Shelly Integration with some switches which seem to work fine but I don’t know about their other devices like sensors etc.

Paulus mentioned on the last HA Podcast that they are working closely with Shelly so I take that to mean that things are going to get better.

There’s been an evolution in the shelly firmware over time.

When they were first released they only offered cloud control. So people started flashing them with Tasmota. And then ESPHome started to support them

Then they offered the option of MQTT or cloud on the devcice itself without needing to flash them.

Then I believe someone came up with a custom integration for HA but I don’t know if it was cloud based or not.

Now I think there is another built-in integration.

That is all from memory so I might be mistaken on some things.

I still have all of my Shelly’s using ESPHome API.

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ShellyForHass? All local.

Right. So it’s really an evolution thing?