My smart home actively avoids anything with a cloud sign and tries to avoid anything without a Zigbee logo for exactly this reason. There’s no way a Zigbee device could get flashed with a firmware which requires an external server.
Same here, but man, it's hard to find devices with zigbee ... manufacturers all want to sell you their f-ing cloud service. They heard it is more monetizable yet they don't really know how and end up shutting down the service anyway. Long live to (literally) programmed obsolescence. Annoying.