Blynk will introduce paid subscription in Q1 2016

Hello, sorry for the English google translate, my opinion is that Blynk is not suitable to be a subscription product although it could also be considered a service. Rightly your work and time must be paid for in some way, you could for example do as many major software: one-time payment, and free upgrades, then instead the new release to payment with reduced price.

@Pavel

Will home screen widget capability come with subscription based service? Any such plans in working? I understand it is harder to implement, however, interactive full size widget on home screen will beat any competition and will make Blynk a true connected app factory. (opening app to see current stats and etc is a big turnoff for an average user when it comes to web connected devices)

Also, are there any plans for opening a possibility for community provided widget skins?

Another suggestion for immediate future, please add date/time selection widget popup. Something like standard Android alarm/date-time selection popup. (now it is possible with slider but looks very unprofessional, and takes lots of limited space)

One more suggestion, please add expandable widget area. With some projects it is just impossible to fit everything on one screen. Plus it would be convenient in debugging stage.

But overall Blynk is a great project. I hope it will become financially self sufficient and continue its existence in years to come.

@laynd I’ll answer for Pavel while I’m here =).

No. In plans only.

Yes. And Blynk is ready for that already, still we need to think on how to make skinning simple.

This will be our next widget.

Thanks.

Paid widget now live. Not bad at all the system you created.

Yes guys, please read here:

@glorifiedg, glad you liked it!

A lot of places as I’m living tai South-Eastern Asia, where 3 billion people but only on income 2000 usd/year. And this opinion is also eager to submit to you the administrator Blynk:

  • Private users will never be able to pay much, especially in countries outside US/EU (China, India, South America, Russia e tc)… $2,5 / month is definitely too much for them. I suppose, the maximum ONE-TIME fee a user can pay to include Blynk into his project is equal to 0,2-0,5 of other hardware costs, that means Arduino/Raspberry board and peripherials. If you set higher price, you’ll definitely kill yor Blynk before it gets really popular (1M downloads), because people simply won’t evers start projects requiring Blynk. You should go WhatsApp-way (you know, they asked $1/year and got millions of users).
  • On the contrary, commercial users could pay even more. There are plenty of commercial applications Blynk is suitabe for. You just need to offer a very stable, robust, extremly well documented platform, going behind handheld devices, with lots of api’s allowing it to incorporate into commercial apps. Make commercial-only widgets with functions a private user will never need. And yes, that’s what you could ask to pay for. And they will, because they’ll be getting profit out of using Blynk.
    So the bottom line: give unlimited private version to everybody for as low price as you can, this will give your success like Arduino of WhatsApp. 10k users paying 2,5/month are not better than 1M users paying 1$/year. The idea to make expirable free tokens as very good. An amateur will be able to get a new each month and re-flash the device… A professional business user will definitely prefer a paid perpetual token…

I want remember all user that blynk is a company, and a company don’t go forward if don’t make money, before ask 50 cents for months or less inform about cloud and development costs, first of all support blynk who help us on every project problem, after we can ask more.

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I sympathise with users from very low income nations but equally they generally have a very low cost of living so much of the inequalities even themselves out. I don’t really know where Blynk is ‘based’ but presuming their team is not all in South East Asia then the ‘cost’ of the service will reflect their cost of ‘living’.

Blynk have already given free access to everyone as far as I know and I believe they have said additional free energy will be available for watching ads / videos so they are doing all they can to make the service available to everyone.

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Hello dear all blynker

I’m New Blynker I just want to give some advices to founder. Thanks for developing a blynk that make easiest way connecting to my arduino. Since the founder announced paid blynker that make me think twice to use blynk. It’s Ok to cost the blynker with some moaney. But I just suggest you to make another option besides free and full box. Give me unlimited version ( both time and features ) and you can cost me like $10 or $20 for that option. I think so many user will be objected by the choices that you made. I’m Indonesian and I’m sure million people in south east asian like blynk. Thanks… Hope you’ll find best solustion for us.

Guessing you haven’t opened the app yet then?

If you spend $10-20 then you get so much :battery:Energy that you’ll be able to build whatever you want :wink: Which is very close to Unlimited

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Pavel
If I’m going to use blynk I need to be able to make a project for my clients that just works forever without any “tax”. If I pay you something up front for your technology that is fine. But the project has to be insulated from any paying. For instance if I make a watering control for my wife she would just throw it out if it asked her for payments.
Ron

That’s exactly how the current setup works. You pay per widget; the more complex the app, the more it costs. It’s not an ongoing thing. And IMO it pretty cheap for what it is.

Have you checked how sharing works before posting? Because this is exactly how it works now :wink:
What kind of “tax” are you referring to?

I was unable to find information on the “energy” involved in the application. Sorry if it is something you have built in. Maybe a page and link on your web site explaining the charges (what I referred to as “taxes”) you make would help.

@adlmail

There are no “taxes” involved. Please read the first topic that describes how Energy works. Thanks.

When will this be implemented and how will the payment method is works?

It’s already there. I don’t know how the actual paying goes, since I run a local server and the biggest advantage of running local is that you can determine everything yourself.

I understand the Blynk team would love to have you do everything in the cloud (and there are VERY good reasons for doing so of course), but running things local is “free” as far as money concerned. So, there are options to explore and see what is best for you.

And that is why I like Blynk so much, the freedom to do whatever you want. It’s your choice :slight_smile:

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Hello, Love this service, love Blynk.
May I suggest one thing? I was studying my credit card statement this week and could not figure out two charges for 3.99. I could not figure out what they where so I deputed the charges.

A short time later to my chagrin I remembered Energy Points! I called and canceled the dispute.

My suggestion is to get the word BLYNK into the charge line item to help the weak of mind like myself to remember what I paid for. A personal name tends to raise concerns.

Thanks for considering my suggestion.

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Hi Pavel !

I just discovered this app and that’s a wonderful discover, the possibilities are endless. Thanks for developing that. I just go into the nearly entire mass of messages about the cost of Blynk. I think your idea, about the energy and just pay for more energy so we can do more projects, is really cool, simple and easy for everybody.

Thanks to Blynk to make my projects alive !

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