[KNX] Is it worth investing in KNX for the smart home? Alternatives?

Hello esteemed forumers. I was once part of a large smart home project based on the KNX standard. Most of the components were from Gira. The system was connected to SSWiN, KD, Advisor Master UTC alarm (the contacts in the windows turned off the heating) and even a 120kW generator and much more. The builder didn't reckon on the cost as he was fabulously wealthy. My question is: how do you do a smart home in practice? Because KNX is terribly expensive. What systems do you do it on? Is it a bus system or do you download everything to the switchboard? How do you configure because the ETS for KNX is probably something around £2k. Visualisation server £5k. I am looking forward to the factual answers.

Take a look at the forum at roelbroersma.nl, you can run a visualization server on your Synology or a VM. Some people cracked it There are also cracked ETS versions around...