This article provides an impartial overview of the capabilities and limitations of LoRaWAN, a Low-Power Wide Area Networking (LPWAN) technology. LoRaWAN is widely adopted for outdoor IoT applications, offering long-range communication and simple network structures. However, it has limitations that need to be understood to avoid inflated expectations. The article discusses these limitations in the context of various use cases and lists open research and development challenges. LoRaWAN is based on the LoRa physical layer, which features low power consumption, low data rates, and long communication ranges. It operates in a star-of-stars topology, with end-devices communicating through gateways to a central network server. The technology supports three device classes (A, B, and C) with different capabilities and power consumption levels. The article analyzes the network capacity and scale limitations, particularly due to duty-cycle regulations, and discusses the suitability of LoRaWAN for different use cases such as real-time monitoring, metering, smart cities, smart transportation, and video surveillance. The article also highlights the challenges in deploying LoRaWAN for real-time operations and the impact of network densification on capacity. It concludes by identifying open research challenges, including new channel hopping methods, Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) over LoRaWAN, geolocation of end-devices, cognitive radio, power reduction for multi-hop solutions, and coordination mechanisms for co-existence with other LPWAN technologies.This article provides an impartial overview of the capabilities and limitations of LoRaWAN, a Low-Power Wide Area Networking (LPWAN) technology. LoRaWAN is widely adopted for outdoor IoT applications, offering long-range communication and simple network structures. However, it has limitations that need to be understood to avoid inflated expectations. The article discusses these limitations in the context of various use cases and lists open research and development challenges. LoRaWAN is based on the LoRa physical layer, which features low power consumption, low data rates, and long communication ranges. It operates in a star-of-stars topology, with end-devices communicating through gateways to a central network server. The technology supports three device classes (A, B, and C) with different capabilities and power consumption levels. The article analyzes the network capacity and scale limitations, particularly due to duty-cycle regulations, and discusses the suitability of LoRaWAN for different use cases such as real-time monitoring, metering, smart cities, smart transportation, and video surveillance. The article also highlights the challenges in deploying LoRaWAN for real-time operations and the impact of network densification on capacity. It concludes by identifying open research challenges, including new channel hopping methods, Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) over LoRaWAN, geolocation of end-devices, cognitive radio, power reduction for multi-hop solutions, and coordination mechanisms for co-existence with other LPWAN technologies.