I thought you needed the controller to manage the hand-off between APs. If not, then that radically changes my thoughts on the Unifi solution.

EDIT: Hello all-in-one solution-in-a-box!
http://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-Unifi-Security-Appliance-USG/dp/B00LV8YZLK
https://www.ubnt.com/unifi-switching-routing/usg/

You can run this box as your firewall/NAT/gateway, then add on a switch (with or without PoE) and some Ubiquiti base stations. Interesting.

EDIT 2: The Amazon reviews give me more than a moment of pause. Like this:
Quote:
UPDATE2: 2015-04-20
It's been months since I bought the device, and the updates to it are slow. Not only that, but taking updates is a complete chore. Using the separate UniFi Controller is supposed to make managing firmware updates a breeze, but that is no the case. The last 2 updates wouldn't provision my device properly and to get it back into a usable state I had to completely reset the device. This would mean a downtime in a live production/business environment. I then had to re-adopt the device, (which is still a chore for me since I don't use their default ip range and subnet, it won't adopt across different ranges), COMPLETELY reconfigure the device the way I wanted it (which is still ALL via the CLI since almost nothing can be configured in the web interface), then re-create the json file and move it to my controller. The fun part, was that with one of the updates they added default firewall settings that they didn't do before, so I had to scour those settings and make sure they lined up with what I wanted, all while my network was down.

To top it off, making CLI changes has become less reliable as well. Sometimes I'll make changes, and they aren't reflected in the json output created with the "mca-ctrl -t dump-cfg" command, even though I've saved and committed changes. I had to fully reboot the device to get them to show up (another downtime). Additionally, I've had issues with changes I make in the CLI even being acknowledged at all. Because i have to create these json files, I don't know if it's a compatibility thing between those, or if the device has firmware issues, or if the software is buggy. There are too many variables at this point.

Due to the continual issues with this device, I've removed it from my environment and am using my Edgerouter Lite which is more stable (for the time being). This is not ready for prime-time and the company is SLOW to update/enhance this thing. It's a joke for a company to release something like this on the market. In my opinion it's not even beta testing, more like alpha. Also due to my negative experience, I will be replacing all Ubiquiti brand devices. This includes access points and eventually the EdgeRouter Lite. I don't trust the company anymore and am not going to continue being an alpha tester for them on my own dime.

For anyone who claims it works flawlessly, you must not be doing anything but the basics. If that's the case, I don't see why you'd spend over $100 on a device that literally only does default routing without a headache.