Glowforge was released with a really basic feature set. If you’re fairly new, maybe you don’t know that. Some of us have been arguing for years that they ought to make design tools part of the interface, but there was no sign of that being in the cards. Others argued just as strongly that we should think of the GF software as a print driver, nothing more. Do all your design in Inkscape and all you get from Glowforge is upload, position, and print. Anything else would be confusion and clutter.
They never owed us any more than the initial feature set promised at launch. The biggest thing missing was Pro Passthrough, and once that’s done they could stop.
The company made a strategic decision to not stop, and instead invest in developing a set of additional optional features on top of what was a basic print driver. They decided the best way to do that is to fund it through subscriptions. They could have chosen not to do it at all and this topic wouldn’t be here and nobody would be screaming their heads off.
Think about that. It makes no sense to get upset over an optional add-on merely being available. You are no worse off because of it than you would be if it didn’t exist. All of our machines still have the upload, position, and print functionality they always had. Set focus was added. Camera calibration was added. Faster print speeds and faster processing. Now export. All of these things have been added to the free service over time. Likely more will come. I see no sense in accusing this company of nefarious ulterior motives. Where’s the evidence? They’ve been up front about this the whole time. We’re promised Print will continue to be free. Nothing is guaranteed in this world, but I see no evidence of bad faith, nor does it make any business sense to me for that to ever change.
Canadian user here. Just wondering if the price quoted is in US dollars. To us that makes about a 33% difference at today’s exchange rate so, close to $20/month with the discount.
I was a part of the crowdfunding and spent the extra money for the Pro to use the Passthrough and it’s still not working for me- even with the Passthrough Beta. I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to have to pay for more stuff when I haven’t even gotten what I’ve paid for to this point.
I really have to politely disagree. in my personal opinion, they created Glowforge Premium to have a means of addressing a number of ideas on how to improve the product beyond what was originally conceived - with the financial foresight to recognize what features could not be developed / supported for “free” (in reality, included in the one-time purchase price of the machine.).
None of this are things that were promised when any of us purchased the Glowforge, and in fact, it is in EVERYONE’s best interest that the company remains commercially viable, so that al of the “standard” functionality continues to be supported, so our Forges keep working.
Do I wash the Premium Subscription were less expensive? certainly. But if I take a look at advice I provided on the forum to others on how to price items they develop and sell, it is to understand all of your costs, understand a reasonable profit to be built it, and see what the market will bear. That often means that certain potential customers will pass because they believe it is too expensive, and that’s a good thing - as long as enough people decide that it IS worth the price.
It truly is an exercise in supply and demand. Just my 2 cents.
Thanks Ginny! I’ll relay that to the team. For future suggestions, posting them in Problems and Support as a new topic makes sure they are seen by the folks who build new features.
That’s not our plan, but if you’re skeptical, that’s reasonable. We plan to continue to make Glowforge Print better, as we always have. We plan to make it better than it’s ever been, not let it get worse. But don’t take our word if you don’t want to. I’d just ask you to judge us based on our actions in coming weeks, months, and years.
I agree - that would not be right.
We can tell you anything you’d like to know about the Premium offering today. In the months and years to come, the price and features will change. We plan on improving both Print and Premium for years to come, and not even we know where that will take us… so I’d make the decision for yourself based on what’s available today.
I realize we gave a little sneak peek about future features - I apologize if that made things more, rather than less, clear.
By the way - a gentle reminder to everyone that it’s OK for people to be mad, opinionated, confused, or upset here. I’m here reading everything, and I value the opinion of everyone here. But please remember that this is a forum where we welcome our families, and as such, content here must stay G-rated.
Most softwares have a yearly or monthly fee for use so I’m in at the $14.99 price. Wouldn’t be interested at the $50 and think that’s a bit far fetched pricing but hey you get to set your price point. I pay silhouette, Microsoft, and Adobe. It’s a business write off so I’ll give it a whirl!
This is exactly how I’m feeling. Imagine those who have owned a pro thinking they bought the “best” model due to the “upgrades” and features that the cheaper models don’t have just to realize there’s not to much difference at this point aside from a much higher price tag . While we pro users have the pass through its only been a more user friendly feature if you were approved for the beta test which worked only a handful of times at first. I’ve had a pro for a year and only just now am I able to use the pass through I paid extra for but it’s not always 100%. I’m not sure if this premium plan is meant to be an incentive but it seems a lot of us are less then impressed and more insulted than we are excited.
Dan, when you say price and features will change in the future, will those who “lock in” the current discount / coupon get a fixed discount percentage ( 70% off, a. Fixed price -$14.99, or the lower of the two - 14.99 or 70% of the current monthly price)?
When I say that price will change in the future, I mean that I don’t expect this discount will continue to be available. But the discounted rate is a flat $14.99/mo, not a percentage of another number.
Technically that’s both true and not true. There are older and newer machines, but that’s practically invisible to the user, truth is the hardware running the cloud is just normal servers (some may be high performance some may not be). The magic of the cloud is the ability to “pool” resources and cpu cycles to reduce idle time and maximize hardware (and profits), minimize downtime, etc… There are different levels of cloud services and the different levels represent processing power (CPU cycles), memory, etc…more processing cost more money, or even dedicated processing versus non-dedicated. Non-subscribing Glowforge customers could certainly see a degradation in performance. (I’m not sharing my opinion about whether I think that’s ok or not, just helping to clarify the technical statements…from someone who works for and builds clouds for Fortune 50 enterprises, including Google’s GCP).
Yeah, I’ve gone through the Noun Project guidelines quite a bit. If it’s an artwork you’re making for display it could be on a separate card next to the artwork, but otherwise it should be either next to the graphic or in a “credits” section if it’s a movie or something.
I have a NP subscription because, honestly, it’d cost me more in time to engrave the credits on to the back of everything I make with NP icons than just giving them 40 bucks a year.
That is extremely short sided. How do you know what people could afford before their companies furlowed or fired them? The US is hurting right now, and somehow a few basic gui features are worth $50 a month? Tinkered, gimp, cricut, and tons of other software provides way more features for free. Glowforge can not even align properly. Not even a red dot optionn to let you see where your job will start. Chinese lasers that cost 1/2 or less come with more features and do-not tie you to a cloud for no reason.