Smart Home Automation: Is Local Control Still Worth Prioritising?

I’ve been looking at different smart-home setups and one thing I keep coming back to is how much of the system should depend on the cloud.

Cloud-based platforms are convenient because they make remote access and setup relatively simple, but local control seems appealing for reliability and response time. If the internet connection goes down, I’d still want basic things such as lights, switches and sensors to work normally.

For people who have built or used smart-home systems, how have you approached this?

Do you prioritise devices that can operate locally, or is the convenience of cloud-based platforms more important to you? And have you found that interoperability between different brands is a bigger issue than the local-versus-cloud question?

I’d be interested to hear what has worked well in real-world setups and whether your priorities have changed as your smart-home system has grown.