Why would that be an onerous step? It’s just one more thing to do in an existing, multi-step process to get zigbee2mqtt operational:
Buying a CC2531 from China (wait X weeks for delivery), along with the paraphernalia to program it, then installing the required programming software, uploading the CC2531 with the firmware, and then installing an MQTT Broker.
If you want fewer steps, and a management console, get a Zigbee dongle that works with ZHA.
EDIT
If viewing the zigbee network map is adequate (for zigbee2mqtt), there’s this project: