Prices & Basic Features

[astrochris88]

Dear Arlo,

You must reduce the prices of your subscriptions. I'm even considering moving to another camera brand. CVR is $19.99 per camera per 30 days which is outrageous. That's a basic feature that should come free; I have literally no idea why this isn't available to CVR locally instead of the cloud. Lastly, $15 per month is quite silly as well. The only thing that I personally find useful are having smart notifications however even then, those don't always work because the app keeps logging me out after a few days.

I love the system but the subscriptions have to come down in price if I am to keep this system or recommend it to anyone else.

[LandJS]

Opinion only here but I believe it's because their business model is based on selling subscriptions not on selling the hardware.  Hardware is a one time purchase and a subscription is a ongoing income source.  Some are starting to add smart notifications to even wired systems and once they develop them and can prove them reliable and they will, then things may well adjust costs. 

[StephenB]

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@LandJS wrote:

Opinion only here but I believe it's because their business model is based on selling subscriptions not on selling the hardware.  Hardware is a one time purchase and a subscription is a ongoing income source.  Some are starting to add smart notifications to even wired systems and once they develop them and can prove them reliable and they will, then things may well adjust costs. 

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My opinion too.  Covering the cloud service costs with new hardware sales is a bit like a Ponzi scheme, and not likely to be sustainable as the customer base grows.  So I expect other folks who are offering AI in the cloud or cloud storage will also eventually charge for those services.

Of course we all like free, but I don't see a sustainable business model for that with a cloud-hosted security system.