How interested in DIY are you? If you are (and you should be ), ESPHome is the perfect solution for you. You connect the LED strip to your ESP8266 or ESP32 and can flash it with your own firmware (ESPHome).
Totally agree, but if someone wants to start into the “ESPbased universe”, I find it less scary with ESPHome. It integrates better with HA and the installation and flashing procedures are easier, at least if you run HomeAssistantOS or supervised.