It would be nice if you bring back the ability to add device at cost(5$/device) for free plan with CAP of 4-5 devices. This would be really helpful for makers.
Gosh!! I did not receive this promo code!!! I would definitely subscribe. I also think that 5 dollars is not much and with 50% I would subscribe even though I don’t need the plus plan at the moment.
Thanks mariaShin!!!
Not at all.
I have paid for energy to last. Then B is saying it will stop supporting the system i have invested in. Also giving an offer. This offer was very vague, easy to miss and really too short in time. If you didn’t jump on within a quite short time frame, the offer was gone.
I remember I looked very fast at the new Blynk IoT and found it (then) to be too inmature in features and documentation to jump on to. It did not offer some things I already had in Legacy.
This is my standpoint.
I fully understand B has to change business model to make money. But you don’t remove things you have sold to people. You keep supporting or make sure you offer good compensations.
I have 2 Swe providers in similar situation.
- X sold to fix price to Consumers. They realized they could not make sustainable business. They switched to selling services to Business customers. They don’t sell to Consumers anymore - but existing customers can still after some 5 (?) years still use the system and do get updates. ( Funny enough I do integrate this system in my home automation and can for example read energy usage in my blynk app.)
- Y sold systems to Consumers including a cloud access. The local system technology (radio frequency) is old and a bit outdated. They now offer a more modern technology and sell that. But, they keep the old system still running and always keeps offerings to upgrade to the new modern system. They seem to want everyone to change, but they do keep the old system running.
Both companies are Swedish and operating (operated in the first case) on a Swedish consumer market. I guess the difference.
I will not comment more on this issue. My point should be clear.
I do like Blynk. I do pay for PLUS. I would actually be willing to pay more if Blynk offered me (some examples, not all):
- Compensation for Legacy. This is a question of trust.
- More datastreams and widgets per template/device. I don’t see why restricting this, better to restrict database usage and/or data transfer. Example; 100 data transfers per hour or xx MB per day, or something. I think this better correlates to Bs cost. I think.
- Better User system. I really lack the possibility to have let’s say 10 devices/projects and define who in a family can see which device/project. Seems with PLUS all members can see all devices/projects. Even if you transfer device/projects. This, I feel is quite limiting.
I don’t need more devices or more users. I need more “data” (widgets and datastreams) and more flexible user access/view system.
I would be willing to pay for that.
// Now back to our Midsummer festivities …
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I agree, hence this little rant a while ago…
As far as your other expectations are concerned then I guess we’ll agree to disagree. However, I guess from your comments that you’ve never used Adobe Photoshop because Adobe seem to be world leaders at screwing every last drop of revenue out of their licence holders year on year.
Pete.
This month’s Adobe invoice was around 1800 EUR. I know the game …
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It all depends on what you pay $5 for.
Sorry, but if you think that in Ukraine consumers are used to paying $5 per month for a mobile app, I’m afraid you’re wrong. They want to buy and use. So here you have to figure out how to get out of the situation.
Personally, I use either the free or plus plan at the moment. In the plus plan, there is no other solution than to include a subscription for a year in advance in the cost of the project.
P.S. The solution in terms of plus limited roles - when all users see all devices - is complete nonsense. Excuse me, but this is my opinion as a Blynk user for over 4 years.
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I have got a message I can have 50% off as I bought stuff on old blynk, can’t see it anymore and don’t remember how to get it.
Please advise
Please check your PMs.
I love the new 2.0 , life goes on and you have to move forward, sure we all are going to miss the old blynk but hey all good things will eventually come to an end. people don’t like change no matter what. change is a good thing…
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I think 5 dollars is not enough to pay monthly, but 60 in a single payment is a lot. I’m already starting to do the math to see if it’s worth it for my little use and if it fits this month or I’ll have to wait for a financial break in another month later.
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Anyone else have the annoying iOS badge notification? Cannot seem to clear the badge and my ocd is going wild.
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@Eugene my iPad shows the badge, but my iPhone doesn’t. This is my iPad…
Both have Badges turned on for Blynk Legacy, and I can of course hide the badge by turning off badges for the legacy app in settings, so it’s not really an issue.
Pete.
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Oh I see. The app don’t clear the badge as we never set badges in our platform pushes. So looks like there was a mistake with latest marketing notifications (they didn’t know it won’t go away)
Yeah, just disallow badge in system Settings → Blynk → Notifications
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you are very right. I will do the same. it doesn’t seem normal to me what the Blynks are doing. I buy “energy”, my application made by me works for a while, after which I wake up that I don’t know what changes they want to make, and nothing of what I did will work for me, and which I struggled with I worked. I’m extremely upset like most users, and I know Blynk’s developers don’t care. I’ll probably drop Blink at some point.
Surely I will not buy anything of the new application knowing how they behave … who knows that in a few months they will not change their mind again and close this project too or make it pay 10 times more. As long as we talk about purchasing services with the monthly contract, everything is fine, but when it comes to application development, what I buy must remain intact until I retire it. These behaviors are a symptom of a company that is not serious and it is better to stay away.
Do you feel the same way about Microsoft, and do you use any of their products?
Over the years Microsoft have done exactly the same thing, changing their product architecture when needed, and moving from a one-off purchase to a subscription based system for products like MS Office. It’s a fact of life when it comes to product development and financial sustainability.
Blynk’s previous business model was one where one-off Energy purchases didn’t cover their ongoing cloud server costs, and the company was reliant on corporate sales to subsidise these costs and pay their other overheads.
In this scenario, the company would have been unable to fund new development and the product would have stagnated. This would have meant that it wasn’t attractive to new corporate customers and that existing corporate customers would have gone elsewhere, leading to the collapse of the company.
The new business model makes the charges for the cloud services more realistic, and provides a steady stream of income for the company. If Blynk hadn’t gone down this route then I suspect that eventually the company would have folded and we wouldn’t have the option to migrate to the new version of Blynk at all.
If the new version of Blynk, and it’s pricing structure, don’t appeal to you then look at the alternatives and migrate to one of them if it suits you better.
But my advice would be not to expect anything to last forever in the IoT world, and that if a pricing model appears too good to be true then in the long term it probably is. Make sure you don’t find yourself jumping “out of the frying pan into the fire”.
Pete.
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The products purchased by me from microsoft (such as window xp, window 7, office 2007 etc.) are still fully functional on the computers on which they are installed. Surely they are no longer updated but no one forces me to change them to put a new version with a different license. This is the big difference. Without much discussion. They have behaved badly and many people will agree with me.