The ecosystem as a whole is very undeveloped compared to Raspberry Pi, but that's what we're all working on. It'll take time!
I should add that I have another board which uses the same chip & it's slow as molasses, although probably similar to a similarly priced Arm chip running Linux. You get what you pay for, and you're not paying very much.
D1's CPU is comparable to a Pentium III 1GHz, which I remember as something fast, but sure isn't today.
The VisionFive2 is also <$100 but outclasses it, with 4x SiFive U74 (between rpi3b+ and 4 performance), GPU from imatech that's supposedly 4x as fast as rpi4's, better video encode/decode acceleration than rpi4, 2x GbE ports, M.2 port and USB3.
Also if you're building these IoT things at scale, have you looked at the more simple/cheap chips like an ESP32?
Obviously I ask without context for what you're doing, but also as an amateur hobbiest who's not even sure which board I should use for my own minor project after Raspberry Pis became unobtainable.
But yes, options are very much needed.