I, personally, use Home Assistant running on a Raspberry Pi, a Broadlink RM Pro, Aukey wireless outlets, and an Echo Dot. There's a learning curve to getting it set up, but I enjoyed the process. The RF outlets do not communicate their current state, so the state on the site is assumed, this is the biggest downside, but is not a huge issue for me. My set up was also very cheap. The whole thing is about $200 worth of equipment. The Broadlink does IR and RF and also has a temperature sensor inside you can access. With the RF outlets I control 3 lamps, 4 fans, and my fish tank's heater, lamp, and filter. With the IR, I can turn on and off my TV and my wall AC unit. The IR also gives me the ability to control certain things on my Roku Express. Everything I have connected can also be controlled by the Echo Dot. I have 3 switches I eventually want to replace with Z-wave switches. This can be added to my system with a Z-wave dongle connected to the Pi. It was all a very fun and inexpensive way to connect a crap-ton of stuff together in my apartment.