Yeah the esp8266 is my first IOT device (well apart from the RaspberryPI).. The problem with sending all your traffic over the web in http is its totally unencrypted, you cant create any control devices and open them up to non-local-wifi traffic without passing your passwords/keys/etc in the clear..
That said I think ive found some solutions
1. Use a RaspberryPI to act as the middle man, makes sense if you have lots of devices.. the pi can act as a hub.. perhaps using mosquitto on the pi
2. Found this project (http://www.openhab.org) which supports the PI and has mosquitto support, amogst other.. They have a cloud service (my.openhab.org in the making)
3. More intriguingly in the WIKI Ive discovered that ESP8266 supports a version of Mosquitto WITH SSL support!, on the net there are some Mosquitto servers with SSL so this would work fab (openhab.org is one of them)
So there are ways...
#to be tested, therefore I think...