Since people mentioned outages, I work for Google Cloud 
We have outages from time to time you can always check this page here if you run into issues as this might not be the Glowforge’s team fault at all 
https://status.cloud.google.com/
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Ooooh! That is handy…thank you! 
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(not being arugmentative, genuinely trying to understand) Are you saying that a machine that costs 600%-1500% more should have a similarly priced subscription software price to the cheaper machine?
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I’ll keep that in mind thanks !
Then in your case I’d suggest not subscribing. Instead, take advantage of the new export capability (which is available to all users, not just premium) so you can do those things in an external editor and then re-upload.
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I believe that you do need to put a credit card on file to access the free designs, although you can use them and cancel before you’re charged on Nov 3.
I’m so sorry it wasn’t clear! The $15/month rate doesn’t expire, it’s yours as long as you want it.
The discount is attached to your personal account, which cannot be transferred.
Converting bitmaps to vectors can create incredibly complicated vectors that can cause all sorts of trouble, depending on the settings. Saying something like “95% accuracy” instead of “99% accuracy” will give similar results but be much faster to process.
Thanks for the feedback!
Yeah, about Tuesday morning… 
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I’ll be happy to answer that one though it wasn’t directed at me. The price of the machine itself has no bearing on the premium software service. I could argue that the cricut design space sofware (which is FREE) is more capable than the current glowforge software (with premium tools). So there needs to be a lot more value-add from other things for glowforge’s subscription to be worth significantly more than the cricut subscription. I just don’t think the unlimited space for your library, and additional speed warrants the extra price. The free design catalog… depends on who you are and what you are looking for out of your glowforge. I personally have never printed anything from any of the catalogs except the gift of good measure when I first got it. So for ME that value-add isn’t really any value. What does premium get you with cricut? 30,000+ premium images, 50% off digital purchases and an additional 10% off of any hardware/tools/physical products you may buy. That’s a good value-add for 9.99/mo if you plan on buying vinyl or a new machine or anything else physical from them in the year. That could easily pay for itself in short order.
So yeah… the hardware means nothing. We’re comparing the service itself. And sadly, even with premium, I’d say GF service is sorely lacking to justify anything REMOTELY close to 50 dollars per month. And in my opinion is shy of being worth 15/mo as well. When you compare it to the cricut service and sofware, it isn’t even 10/mo. But I wouldn’t be too put out at 15/mo as, like with cricut, you really aren’t able to use anything BUT the service you are locked into. And since @dan has said they are working on expanding the value-adds for premium it’s worth keeping an open mind about where things are going. They’ve never failed to come out with regular updates giving us new and better features over the year that I’ve had mine so I don’t have any reason to believe that it won’t continue in the future.
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I agree with most of your points, I asked the question only because the poster had specifically called out the price of the Cricut and I wasn’t sure if that was meant to be applicable.
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Yeah I don’t know and can’t speak for them. But the hardware obviously has no bearing on it as no matter what it is, if there’s a software service attached to it, it’s merely a delivery method for the software.
For instance, my corvette was 60,000 dollars and I pay 15 dollars per month for a mobile wifi hotspot for it. But a 15,000 dollar chevy spark also has a mobile hotspot and also runs 15/mo. The vehicle itself is just the delivery method for the service.
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Hello there Henry,
I was already waiting for your comment, as you being a frequent poster. This thread is started here to hear our opinion isn’t it? So we gave our opinion, you did and I did, that’s it.
I love freedom of speech so to say. My opinion did not change and I rather do not repeat myself, so I leave this thread for now.
As I was reading some of the other comments, I had an epiphany of what I think is a great analogy for the service and the premium benefits.
Think about the Glowforge as an airline ticket. Whether we bought it far in advance (and had to wait for it’s delivery) via crowdfunding, or bought it recently (7 days before a flight), and whether or not we bought basic economy (with no baggage or meals), bought a plus - standard economy, or paid for premium economy / economy plus / etc, - we all bought a ticker on the a plane taking us to a destination.
The Glowforge Premium service is kind of like they just added a First Class Cabin with extra amenities - wider seats, drinks included, extra luggage, a special check in lane, etc. They did this, however, without taking away any of the amenities that came with the standard / premium economy tickets.
Anyone who chooses not to pay for the premium service and fly first class still gets to travel in the seats they selected and paid for - without losing any amenities. (In fact, some would say that just like someone who has an aisle seat and has someone sitting next to them in the middle seat, if that middle seat person buys an upgrade to first class, the economy class flier gets a benefit too - that space has opened up next to him/her, and s/he gets extra elbow room.)
Glowforge has not cancelled any flights, nor have they taken away boarding access… it’s like when the airlines have a large-body plane with two boarding ramps, one that goes into the first class cabin and one that goes to economy.
Premium travelers / forgers get access to the First Class boarding and additional amenities, but not at the expense of the economy fliers.
For me, I chose to upgrade for $14.99 / month, just like I do (did?) on some longer, cross-country flights, but not if it costs too much. $14.99 is definitely pushing the threshold for me, but I’m ok for now. We’ll see just how much I use it, and I could very well drop off before too long and just fly coach.
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No not necessarily but if we want to appeal to even more user that might be less technically skilled having some of those basic features included might entice more users to purchase a machine in the first place. I think having the selling rights to item created with the images, the faster processing time, free project files, fonts is worth a lot. But I feel that the basic shapes, mirroring features and even the outline tool are in a different category for me. Even having a basic tool set at like 5$ -10$ per month and then the next tier add the images/projects and fonts would maybe suit different users. Also programmers salary doesn’t scale up according to the device price point but the number of users and eventual subscribers makes a difference.
I can definitely use my machine without them but I would feel I would maybe benefit from the tools on a yearly basis versus maybe using the images/project for some specific periods of the year. Like I don’t pay all the time for my premium cricut access but I would be willing to pay for the tool part on it’s own especially if that helps Glowforge develop even more features that are time saver. Things like packing design in a sheet or shape, aligning/distribution tool, a merge/boolean/grouping tool ect.
I bought the Glowforge because I wanted the ease of mind I know I could deal with a more complicated tool like my 3d printer and it doesn’t have those bell and whistles.
I subscribed anyway I am just worried that if I want to turn it off for 1-2 months when I am more busy that I will have to come back to paying 50$. It’s an amazing tool and I even regret not buying it before . I still think that offering different payment tiers options might be more profitable potentially. Even adding an option to prepay for a year or 6 months with higher rebate incentives could be interesting options to consider as well.
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Also for the curious here’s some insight about what Google Cloud services are used by Glowforge : https://cloud.google.com/customers/glowforge?hl=en
And that crazy pricing is due to gpu which I don’t think is required for this type of workload I think our Glowforge would cost much more if they spend that much on servers haha.
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Like I said, the numbers I picked were not meant to be illustrative of anything other than that cloud services cost money, and “faster servers” don’t come anything near free.
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Agreed!
A lot of folks seem really upset about this “fast lane” concept and seem to think it’s going to slow them down.
The best analogy I can think of is the “Nexus” lines when you’re crossing the border.
There you are… in your regular lane… sitting there with everyone else… and you look over and see someone roll right on through the “Nexus” lane. They’ve paid for the privilege, done the interview, got the pass, etc. That option IS available to you… or you can stay in the regular lanes with everyone else.
In other words, your lane didn’t become slower because a “fast lane” was created.
One might even argue that some resources were freed up because the folks using the “fast lane” are no longer queued up in the regular lanes.
The only concern I would have here is if Glowforge units continue to sell and people decide to remain in the “regular lane” and Glowforge (the company) doesn’t expand capacity for the regular people. That would be a disservice to customers and I don’t think Dan and company would do that.
At the end of the day, they want the cloud services to run as smoothly as possible… for everyone.
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$50 is a hard sell for some shapes and graphics that I can get already with a tiny bit of extra work. Fast lane will save me a few seconds per print. I already store my designs on my computer. I do my own designs, so the catalog has no interest to me. Premium must be for different types of makers, but I really can’t see how $50 can justify what you get out of it.
I understand that I can stay at Free for life and nothing is being taken away right now. I really hope this doesn’t start a slippery slope where all new features go into Premium and Free slowly becomes crippled. That would be very frustrating.
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We started using GPU instances earlier this year… and they do run up the bill fast. Especially the extra-fancy ones we use now for Premium.
Indeed. Cloud services make the comparisons more complicated, because we actually add “lanes” constantly as new users log in. Another metaphor is that we’re a car rental company with infinite cars to get you where you’re going, but some folks choose a nice sedan and others upgrade to F1 racecars.
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I would expect most new features to go into Premium. Whereas improvements on what we’ve already paid for should continue to be free.
One exception is any feature that was promised to us at the beginning (DXF import, passthrough software for the pro, etc.) should be free, not part of Premium.
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Are we currently getting the “Fast Lane” print prep during the free trial period, or is that something that isn’t available until/unless we sign up for the premium service? I figure it is not globally active because it would cost a ton to give it to everyone for free, even for a month.
Speaking of server cost. A program run locally on my PC would cost you nothing…just sayin.