Why Home Assistant is Perfect for Installers

Open Source = No Licence

Because it’s open source, the platform isn’t tied to a single company’s business model. There’s a huge global community constantly improving and maintaining it, so the system isn’t at the mercy of one vendor changing strategy or shutting down a cloud service.

One Platform for Homes, Offices & Small Stores

Learn Home Assistant once, and reuse it everywhere.

Residential:

• Whole-home lighting scenes
• Presence-based heating and cooling
• Smart blinds and shutters
• Security, door sensors, cameras, alarms
• Energy monitoring, solar, EV charging
• Music & media

Commercial (offices, shops, studios, clinics, cafés):

• Time- and presence-based lighting
• Smart signage and shopfront lighting schedules
• Heating/cooling based on occupancy
• Notifications for doors and equipment
• Simple “open” and “close” scenes for staff
• Control via buttons or phone / tablet

Same platform, same logic – just different layouts and devices. That means less training time for you and faster deployment on each new project.

Vendor-Neutral & Future-Ready

Home Assistant is brand-agnostic. It talks to hundreds of different ecosystems and standards (Zigbee, Z-Wave, Wi-Fi, Modbus, BACnet, KNX and many more).

That means:

• You can choose the best hardware for the job – not whatever a single vendor sells.
• If a manufacturer changes their cloud or product line, the rest of your client’s system still works.
• Upgrades are easier: swap devices without redesigning the whole system.

For you, that’s less risk and fewer awkward phone calls a year later when a proprietary system stops working because somebody changed their terms.

Built Around You

Closed systems tell you what you can’t do. Home Assistant lets you say “yes” more often:

• Complex logic (if this AND that BUT NOT that…)
• Cross-brand automations (e.g. “when alarm is armed, turn off all lights and lower blinds”)
• Remote access options for your clients (or for your support contracts)

You can even create standard templates for common jobs — a “typical 3-bed house”, “small office”, “retail unit” — and deploy them again and again with small tweaks.

Huge Community

Because it’s open source, Home Assistant has a massive community of:

• Developers building new integrations
• Installers sharing best practices
• Enthusiasts writing blueprints, guides and tutorials

If you hit a tricky requirement, you’re rarely the first person to face it – chances are, someone has already done it and shared how.

The Benefits You Can Sell to Your Clients

You get a powerful, flexible platform. Your clients get:

• Full control – their data can stay local, not locked in the cloud
• Expandable system – add new devices and features over time
• A familiar, modern app interface instead of multiple separate apps

Make Beautiful and Simple Controls with zendō

Home Assistant can be time-consuming when it comes to control interfaces. Making them look good on mobile, tablet and wall panels is even harder. And the standard Home Assistant app, with its usernames and passwords, isn’t always the most customer-friendly first impression.

That’s where zendō comes in.

zendō is a dedicated control app that connects to Home Assistant and gives your clients a floorplan-based, branded, “it just works” user interface – without you ever touching Home Assistant internal code.

• Home Assistant stays the brain – handling devices, automations and integrations.
• zendō becomes the face – a stable, visual control layer for everyday use.

You get:

• A polished, white-label user experience (UX) that feels on par with Hue, Apple Home or Google Home – but co-branded for your business. This will match what customers are used to and expect from a modern smart setup.
• A visual floorplan of the property where clients tap lights, blinds, heating and more, instead of hunting through lists of entries.
• A local-first app that runs directly on each phone and tablet and keeps working offline. If the cloud or internet goes down, the building keeps functioning as normal; the only thing you lose is remote access.

Behind the scenes, zendō gives you cloud-based central management of all your installations: you can monitor, troubleshoot and update sites remotely, so there’s less “jump in the van and drive out” for minor issues. Configure an accessory once and updates propagate to all the phones and tables, with local copies of configuration so controllers still work offline.

Provisioning new controllers is simple: tap a link, and it’s ready. An AI-assisted initial configuration can get a new site up and running in seconds, so you spend your time on the wiring and design, not on building control dashboards from scratch.

And just like Home Assistant, zendō is built to respect your business model:

• No recurring licence for you as the installer – you’re not paying for yet another professional tool on top of the hardware your client already bought.
• Shared UI for everyone – installers and end-users use the same app, which simplifies training, reduces confusion, and cuts support time.
• If your automation platform ever fails (e.g. Home Assistant hardware dies), you simply restore from backup and all zendō controllers pick up where they left off. The local configuration survives, so you’re back online fast.

Position Yourself as a Smart Systems Expert

Most customers don’t care which platform you use. They care that:

• It works reliably
• It feels modern and easy to use
• It won’t be obsolete in two years
• They have a trusted installer to call

Home Assistant and zendō lets you tick all those boxes, while giving you the flexibility and control you need as the professional on site.

Home Assistant + zendō: A Complete, Professional Offering

Together, Home Assistant and zendō let you offer:

• A powerful, open, licence-free automation platform as the reliable brain
• A branded, floorplan-based, offline-capable control app as the beautiful face

You keep full control of the system design, device selection and automations. Your clients get the seamless, modern experience they expect from a premium smart home or smart office.