Blynk legacy is a great application. It is sad that it ends, the founders do not even know how long it will work… (I can still buy energy? Will Blynk legacy still work tomorrow?)
Blynk 2.0 is not for everyone (certainly not for me yet). He is very immature compared to legacy…
The big problem is that the Plus I could buy is limited to only 10 devices. No one can have more simple devices and must buy Pro which is already expensive. The opportunity to purchase additional devices has disappeared. I know “no one” used it… Maybe because he just tried it and hasn’t transferred everything to Blynk 2.0 yet. Or simply the makers are as hesitant as I am.
It seems to me that the founders change their opinions very easily and quickly and I am afraid of that! What is valid today may not be tomorrow.
I would like Blynk legacy to remain as a paid application. Otherwise, so far the only solution I see is to start the local server and work as long as it works. Then I hope I’ll make things clearer or the competition will make a similarly great app…
From the Blynk became a difficult business and these are just my disappointed thoughts…
If you want to automate few switches in the house you better use sonoff mini’s and get over with it. As it is one time investment.
If you want to experiment like everyone here in the forum does ! Then there is no way, you have to subscribe to a plan that suits you. As you said pro plan is too expensive for maker n hobbyists.
As per maintaining the legacy platform they have made the decision to shut it down n they mean it. They wont change the decision made.
I don’t really appreciate your answer. It’s sounds to harsh.
Why did promote the legacy in such a way? Made many of us believe that it wasn’t all about the profit, but that’s clear now. All of these guys in the forum helped FOR FREE so many as my self to make applications work.
But it turned out that the plan was to hook as many as possible and then force it for profit.
Blynk has never promoted itself as a charity. It has always had a commercial aspect, and it’s never made a secret of the fact that development is driven by paying business customers.
Blynk IoT has made Blynk more accessible for small businesses, and therefore makes it easier for start-up users to get products to market.
As far as the “maker” community is concerned, Blynk IoT is somewhat less accessible compared to Legacy, but if you think about it the Legacy pricing model for a one-off payment that commits Blynk to having to provide server space and processing power indefinitely is one that wasn’t sustainable.
I’d say that we should be grateful for what we had, and bite the bullet and pay the going rate for the product.
Lets see if they bring any new plans that suits makers.
As Blynk legacy was misused, they have strict monitoring now. So now who wants to use it commercially should subscribe to a plan. As free plan is of no use if one wants to sell their products with.
everybody has a choice in life, if its something you like then dive right in ! if its something you dont like then walk away. If I were in Blynks shoes I would do the same, heck there has got to be thousands of man hours in this type of platform, and so there has to be some sort of payoff for them otherwise why even bang your head against the wall for nothing. Kudos to the Blynk team and for all they have done, there is no other platform out there that can even come close !!
In another post of mine I wrote that Blynk team could have the same type of payment plans even for legacy. I’m willing to pay the cash for Legacy. We should get that option.
@Gsoulas I have no connection with Blynk, I’m simply a moderator on the forum.
However, as I’ve said before, I don’t believe that Blynk will take the approach you’re suggesting as it doesn’t make economical or practical sense.
Blynk have invested a lot of time and money in Blynk IoT and that is the way forward.
Attempting to maintain Blynk Legacy and develop Blynk IoT makes no practical sense from a resourcing point of view.
Personally, in my experience, it is a little more complicated than that. Legacy is a sunk cost and, as far as my few years of experience with local server code, is close to flawless. Runs forever, no significant problems. From my point of view there are a few key issues for them. First, they really cannot continue to maintain their cloud servers for Legacy. Too much cost and effort. Shut them down. Now that said, what is the cost of continuing the local server code? Maybe re-compile for a new release of Java, maybe not. As far as the applications are concerned they would eventually need to update them (not feature wise but compatibility) with new Android and iOS releases. They need supply no technical support at all. So, the cost would be minimal and many of use would be happy to license these new mobile apps when the time comes.
Now, maybe they feel that they are losing significant income from the legacy private servers that are being used illegally for commercial applications. If that is the case…then they will have to let it go, but those application won’t be incompatible with mobile releases in the wild for quite some time, so they had better not start counting their money at this point.
You could make many of the same arguments about car manufacturers. Their old model has sold well, has lots of fans, and it doesn’t owe the company anything.
They invest a lot of R&D money in their new model and do a big launch, but the fans of the old model keep arguing that they should keep manufacturing the old one alongside the shiny new model.
Car manufacturers don’t do this, and for good reason, and Microsoft don’t keep selling the old version of Office when they bring out a new version.
Blynk needs people to migrate to their new cash cow IoT version to justify their investment.
Just my take on the situation, but we’ll see how things develop.
