Archived Projects

I was a premium user for a bit, but the $50 price tag didn’t seem worth it. The only thing that was noticeable as a gain was the storage of more projects. Now, without it, it automatically stores my projects as archives and I can’t access them. I moved to a new house and then immediately went away for a week vacation, so I wasn’t home to ‘click’ on the project to open them to avoid them being archived. So they’re lost.

My questions are these:

  1. Is there a way to access the archived projects from the GFUI?
  2. If not, is there a way to request them?
  3. If I upgraded to premium, would I get those projects back or are they permanently archived?

I appreciate any help I can get!

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Oh no! Did you maybe keep a copy of the projects on your hard drive that you can reload? Because I believe the files are deleted after 30 days of non-use, not archived. I don’t think they store them. :neutral_face:

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. :frowning_face_with_open_mouth:

(They do offer 60% off the price if you subscribe annually though, so if you wanted to use Premium going forward, it might work out better for you financially if you want to store on their servers and use the other perks in the subscription. That was announced a couple of months ago, but i think it still might apply.)

New Premium Plan - Annual

Customers have asked us to offer an annual option for Glowforge Premium, and this week we’re launching this new plan. For a limited time, this plan is available with the biggest discount since our initial launch: 60% off the regular price at $239/yr, which is equivalent to only $19.92/month .

If you’re not currently subscribed, click on the Upgrade badge at the top of your Dashboard, and choose the Annual plan.

If you are currently a Premium subscriber, you can take advantage of the discount (while keeping the time you’ve already paid for) by following these steps:

  1. Click the name of your Glowforge, and then click on Settings
  2. Go to Purchase History and click Manage Subscription. This will take you to checkout
  3. Click on your current subscription
  4. Click Edit subscription
  5. Use the top tabs to switch to the other plan. Use the code GF29352MA to apply the March discount.

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6. Click the Update Subscription button and checkout.

Note: Plan changes take effect at the end of the billing cycle.

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For those of you went from Premium to the Basic (or whatever it’s called), did you notice a difference extra processing speed due to Fast Lane?

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I thought I did at first, but it was because I was using Chrome. It was less the processing time and more the time it took for the objects to move inside the GFUI when I gave the move command (arrow keys). I switched to Edge and it worked flawlessly… I didn’t notice any difference in processing time at all. That’s why I don’t think that $50 a month, even at the discounted annual rate, is worth it for premium. If I can create text and other shapes in inkscape, I see no reason to pay that much money for that feature either. Really, the only thing I can see the premium is useful for is the storage of the files, which I’m not even sure I can even say that the measly amount of storage for your projects is worth even a fraction of that price. If I can store videos of up to 5gb on google for free, I don’t see how a vector project with very basic ‘features’ is worth as much as they’re charging for.

Hope this helps though.

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Thank you. I use a Mac. Safari seems to work fine. I guess I’ll find out when my 14 day trial runs out!

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Thanks for the answer @Jules, that’s right. I’m afraid that unlimited storage is a Glowforge Premium feature. We are currently offering all an annual subscription for $239, which’s just under $20 a month. The discount will be automatically applied when you sign up and will give you the annual rate of $239 discount for as long as you remain subscribed.

In the Dashboard , when you point to a design that is nearing 30 days of inactivity and about to be removed, you will see an inactive alert. If you want to use that design in the future, you can do one or both of these things:

  • Open the design to keep it active for another 30 days.
  • Export and save the design.

You can export your designs from the Glowforge app and save them to the cloud or on your computer to use in the future.

To export and save a design

  1. Go to https://app.glowforge.com/ and sign in.
  2. On the Dashboard , point to or touch the design you want to save and click Open.
  3. Click the 3 dot More menu, select Export Design , and then follow the onscreen instructions.

When you export designs, the exported file includes any designs that you uploaded, images that you traced, and any artwork and graphics that you inserted using the Premium Creative tools.

If you are missing designs that you have opened in the past 30 days, please let us know and we can troubleshoot with you.

It appears that it has gone quiet, so I’m going to close this thread. If you have any other questions, please don’t hesitate to post a new topic.

so if we upgrade for 1 month can we access the files or not? no one told me this so all of my files are gone. this is my business, not just a hobby. i need my files!

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Without the Premium subscription, if you created the files in the GF interface and didn’t use them for 30 days, I believe they were deleted, and no longer recoverable. (Even if you sign back up for a month…they are likely unfortunately gone now.) If you created the files on your own outside design software and have a copy on your hard drive you would need to re-upload them from there to use them. You don’t need the Premium subscription to do that, but they will also go away after 30 days of non-use. Unlimited file storage is a Premium subscription option.

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This is a joke. What a money grab that your creations are deleted without a subscription. I am a new user who created a bunch of content in the first month. Then I went on vacation only to return to an empty dashboard. At the very least it would have been nice to know that my content would be deleted so I could have been able to download it.

I verified with the support that files are deleted after a month of not being accessed.
This is the robotic response to my support inquiry about this:

Thank you for sharing your experience and I’ll be sure to pass this along. We didn’t do a good job of communicating to you about Glowforge Premium. I’m truly sorry about that.

Your Glowforge comes with a free lifetime subscription to Glowforge Print, which includes everything you need to print amazing things on your Glowforge. Your subscription to Glowforge Print is included with the purchase of your Glowforge and free forever.

However, I’m afraid that I don’t have a way of retrieving those files, I wish I had a better answer for you.

BTW… “Using” the files needs to be defined. I was opening the files to try and keep them from being deleted and even that was not enough. You must have to print them…

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