Cricut drops a subscription bomb on its users

[neil_w]

Cricut is limiting the use of its crafting machines with a monthly subscription

Crafting with designs from third party apps will come with some big limitations

www.theverge.com

What an extraordinarily crappy thing to do to people that have already purchased the machines.

 

[markschnell]

This looks like it could be one of those epic business fails, i.e., Polaroid refusing to go digital, New Coke...

Then again, I don't know this market. Is Cricut the only game in town? If so, they have the leverage to do something crappy like this.

 

[neil_w]

Then again, I don't know this market. Is Cricut the only game in town? If so, they have the leverage to do something crappy like this.

Not the only game in town, but I believe they are the leader... maybe not for long.

 

[dhbarr]

I hate it when Stallman is right

 

[Jeff Lassahn]

I've been considering getting a Cricut machine for a while. I guess now I know better. Thanks for the warning.

 

[NateB]

I can understand the subscription for certain features, but if you already have a design software of choice, you should be able to use the machine without am extra expense. That would be like Epson charging a sub for their print driver. If I were buying one of these machines, I would shop for a competitor now.

 

[DigBaddy]

Huh, our family has been mulling over getting one. This news doesn't help the case for that at all.

 

[Sandy H.]

If the update is optional and you can continue to use your machine for free with the features you bought it with, I guess its not terrible. However, if you are being forced to do the update and during that you have to do the subscription to print more than 20/mo, then I will not support that company at all and would be furious if I had the equipment.

I'm curious what the terms of service were when the machine was purchased. Where possible, I shy away from any hardware that depends on software that is subscription based.

Sandy.

 

[Marc_G]

I was just thinking of buying one after reading more about them in Sport Rocketry.

 

[markschnell]

I'm speaking out of ignorance here, but then again, when has that ever stopped me (cue rimshot) - I guess I could see some kind of fee if you're storing your stuff on their cloud space, but just to use the machine and not store it with them, that makes no sense to have to pay for that.

Make no mistake, someone at Cricut is a control freak, and I'll bet someone ends up losing their job over this. As in, "What were you thinking, Karen?! We've lost half our customers, you're fired!"

 

[markschnell]

I was just thinking of buying one after reading more about them in Sport Rocketry.

I'll bet there are plenty of others in the same boat - maybe that have already bought them because of that article.

 

[markg]

Yeah, this is a terrible idea for end-users. I've been considering getting one for awhile, but I'm not going anywhere near them with this stupidity.

 

[K'Tesh]

Seems to me that you should have the ability to store your work on your own computer... Perhaps someone can hack them to bypass their cloud service.

Still, it's a pretty douchey move on their part.

 

[tab28682]

Cricut doing things like this is why I bought a Silhouette Cameo 3 years ago and upgraded it to a Cameo 4 last year. Silhouette is much more customer friendly. With an upgrade to the Silhouette Studio software, you can directly use .dxf and .svg files.

If you want to your own vinyl art at home, buy a Cameo 4 and never look back.

Years ago there was an awesome third party software available that worked with the Cricut so that you could use non Cricut art. Cricut could not stand that and sued them, making it so that you could not longer obtain the software.

Cricut acts like they are the only game in town, but they are not.

 

[manixFan]

I'm speaking out of ignorance here, but then again, when has that ever stopped me (cue rimshot) - I guess I could see some kind of fee if you're storing your stuff on their cloud space, but just to use the machine and not store it with them, that makes no sense to have to pay for that.

Make no mistake, someone at Cricut is a control freak, and I'll bet someone ends up losing their job over this. As in, "What were you thinking, Karen?! We've lost half our customers, you're fired!"

Actually, no, it's related to their IPO. They can use the forecasted revenue to juice the price of their offering. Once they go public, they could reverse the decision citing the negative effect on sales, but that could lead to shareholder lawsuits who bought on the expected revenue brought in by the subscriptions. But likely the investors who are looking to cash out their private equity don't/won't care because they'll be long gone.


Tony

 

[watheyak]

I have a Cricut Maker that I've been using to cut carbon fiber layer shapes with, as will as the occasional vinyl paint mask. My wife uses it to make greeting cards as well. You'd be hard pressed to be uploading 20 designs a month. I bet this change only effects 5% of their users, and I bet those already pay for the yearly plan anyway.

 

[GrouchoDuke]

I love my Cameo Silhouette!

 

[Back_at_it]

I have one and the quality is awesome. I use it to recreate pretty much every decal for my rockets as I hate water slide. If this happens, I have no problem abandoning the Cricut for another cutter. They are all basically the same.

 

[neil_w]

I have a Cricut Maker that I've been using to cut carbon fiber layer shapes with, as will as the occasional vinyl paint mask. My wife uses it to make greeting cards as well. You'd be hard pressed to be uploading 20 designs a month. I bet this change only effects 5% of their users, and I bet those already pay for the yearly plan anyway.

Apparently a big part of the problem is that for a single design you often need to do multiple uploads, and it is actually pretty easy to burn through your 20 per month allotment.

If I had one it would almost certainly make no difference, but gross corporate behavior like this would likely to steer me away.

The fact that you can't use the machine without having an internet connection is pretty crappy as well, just on principle. They lock you into using their cloud service and then (after the fact) limit what you can do with it. Not a good look.

 

[Hooked On Rockets]

I bought a Cricut Explore Air2 about 2ish years ago, I was disapointed that you HAD to use Design Space but I accepted it.
Then shortly afterwards, Microsoft quit supporting Windows 7 and I dont support Windows 10...so.......

It's been a $200.00 piece of JUNK sitting on the shelf for quite some time now-completely WORTHLESS to me.

If I would have known that Design Space was required, I never would have touched it.

Now that I see this B.S., I say RUN away from Cricut.

It's almost brand new and I bet I couldn't get half of what I paid for it.
What a rip-off it turned out to be.

 

[watheyak]

Evidently people aren't actually reading the article.

This won't apply to any of us.

neil_w does have a point, but even during my heavy usage with the carbon fiber stuff it only came out to about 10.

 

[Brian H.]

I just bought a Cricut Maker yesterday.
During the software setup, it gives you the option to save files to the cloud, your PC, or both. I opted to save all files directly on my PC just because I am not a fan of my files being stored on someone else's server.

Internet is NOT required to run the program, only to save/retrieve files to their cloud space and access those files from other devices which is limited to 20 file uploads/month without the subscription.

I am running it from a Windows 7 PC with no issues (for now). May be forced to go W10 when the programs I use no longer work in W7.

 

[DaHabes]

I can understand the subscription for certain features, but if you already have a design software of choice, you should be able to use the machine without am extra expense. That would be like Epson charging a sub for their print driver. If I were buying one of these machines, I would shop for a competitor now.

It's like when Wink went to a subscription model for a device that I purchased 2 years before that didn't need one. The original Gen 1 device worked fine. I could see them adding a subscription for a new Gen device to take advantage of new features, but no, their business model was so poorly thought out that they had to screw their initial customers. A software change and it no longer worked - at all. Dumped them for a Smarthings hub. Morons.

 

[Sooner Boomer]

Read "Unauthorized Bread" by Cory Doctorow. Here's an excerpt:

Unauthorized Bread: Real rebellions involve jailbreaking IoT toasters

Cory Doctorow's book, Radicalized, is up for a CBC award. To celebrate, here's an excerpt.

arstechnica.com

 

[Cape Byron]

Wow. That's one of the dumber moves I've ever seen in business.

 

[mtnmanak]

Sounds like every piece of Google hardware ever made. Build a great machine, saddle it with a requirement for a subscription or always online host, then turn up your nose when you abandon the product and software and leave your customers high and dry. Then again, it does seem to be working for Google, customers be damned.

I looked at a Cricut last year and it did look great for a lot of things. I was looking to cut more robust material, so I jumped into the CNC space with a Shapeoko 3. It can cut many things the Cricut can, but not things like decals and fabric, so if that is what you are looking for, CNC probably is not the right avenue to go down. But I often cut cardstock and chip board for things like LPR/MPR centering rings on my CNC router using a low speed and 1/32" bit. For HPR, I now cut a bunch of my own parts for each project.

No proprietary software/subscription required - you can use the CAD/CAM software from Carbide 3D (it is free - no online requirement), but any CAD/CAM software that produces industry standard "g-code" will work. Want to use FreeCAD? Go for it. Already have the uber expensive AutoCAD package? You can use it.

One of the issues I had with the Cricut was the lack of precision in the software to make exact parts. This did not seem to be an issue for decals and fabric, but a centering ring or bulkhead that is slightly off, won't work well. Desktop CNC gives you precision down to about .001" (or better - depends on how much you want to spend). Cricut may have improved the software since I last looked at it, since that was at least a year ago.

CNC is not for everyone, especially if you are cutting paper/decals or fabric, but if you want to cut cardstock and up and greatly expand your horizons, CNC is unbeatable. CNC is not a one-to-one replacement for a Cricut machine, but for some people, it may be an option. Frankly, CNC is a bit of an addiction, I admit - once you start cutting things up, you start seeing things you can make all over the house/neighborhood. Once your neighbors find out you have one, you will become the neighborhood sign maker .

 

[Marc_G]

Evidently people aren't actually reading the article.

This won't apply to any of us.

neil_w does have a point, but even during my heavy usage with the carbon fiber stuff it only came out to about 10.

I'm curious... can you explain why it won't apply to us? I'm not highly knowledgeable on the subject, but have had a moderate interest in getting one of these, upped a little after reading Sport Rocketry.

 

[neil_w]

I'm curious... can you explain why it won't apply to us? I'm not highly knowledgeable on the subject, but have had a moderate interest in getting one of these, upped a little after reading Sport Rocketry.

The subscription requirement kicks in if you need to do more than 20 uploads in a single month. A light user is unlikely to run into this, but if you start to use it for other things, or your wife starts to use it too, or whatever, then you could run into it. More concerning (depending on your point of view) is what they might do in the future, after having pulled this stunt.

 

[Marc_G]

If I got one, I can easily see going hog wild and doing more than 20 things in a month, particularly earlier on as I test things out.

 

[TALON]

Grumpy old man here, and I don't have a clue on this Cricut, but I have noticed a trend. That there are less and less products that an consumer can own. Many products you have to lease/pay for on a annual basis. IE: PhotoShop, MS Word. I fear as an ordinary people we are losing property rights.