[th0br0]

There's the ElectroDragon ESP LED Board, which does pretty much all of what the Pixelblaze does (sans FW) for much less - although the footprint is larger...

https://www.electrodragon.com/product/esp-led-strip-board/

[snops]

The electrodragon board is for cheaper single colour strips (hence the large MOSFETs on the PCB) while this is for individually addressable LEDs.