Home Automation Apps for Android - what is important to consider?

I want to start using my Android phone for home automation. As a starting point, I want set a lamp to turn-on shortly after my alarm-clock goes off. Having heard that there are outlets that can be controlled from your phone, I stumbled across this page which lists a bunch of them and now I am overwhelmed by the multitude of options. From this question , I see that there is also a multitude of software options. I looked a little more closely at Belkin's WeMo which seemed a good harmony of cheap and functional but was discouraged when I noticed that there are so many negative reviews. There seem to be a number of independent apps for controlling WeMo and most have better reviews than the official one. My question is this: what should I consider when choosing an app for home automation? Obviously, its important that the app can successfully interact with the hardware and its nice when apps don't mine your data but I am not at all clear on other considerations that are important for choosing one. I am pretty new to Android (and smart phones in general) so general-purpose considerations are welcome but I am primarily interested in home-automation specific considerations. Any feedback on hardware is also appreciated - I am thinking of getting a WeMo outlet or a cheap Chinese knock-off; as long as it will let me control an outlet remotely as well as based on the time of day. My phone is a Samsung Galaxy S6 running Android 5.1.1