Great! Thx, ekla!
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So, we never actually get our free designs we were promised in the beginning. You promised that all designed were in the first commercial will be available to us. And you told me you are working on it. 3 year pass. And now I have to pay monthly to use some simple tools? How is that a good customer service?
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@dan $50 is way too expensive, I understand I don’t have to get Premium, and I won’t, I can’t.
I literally can’t get Glowforge Premium at the $15 per month currently even if I wanted to.
I think $15 is very reasonable, not $50. It is frustrating, that in the future when I can get Glowforge Premium it will be $50. Would be nice if we were given lifetime access to get Glowforge Premium at $15, doesn’t seem like too much to ask. Really regretting buying the Glowforge Pro. I understand I’m not losing anything, by not going Premium, at least I hope I’m not, but so far, the value has not been there in the Pro. I guess I never expected that Premium would be $50, wow! Subscription fatigue is real. 
Just my 2¢, oh well.
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With you. Isn’t it frustrating when the general suggestion is that we all have disposable income?
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anyone know if registration marks are going to be part of the free service? or will this be part of premium only?
Also, what’s the status of the open source interface to glowforge?
Finally, is it tied to the glowforge, or the user?
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If by registration marks you mean Snapmarks then yes they will be Premium only if and when released.
As far as an open source interface that does anything much, wouldn’t plan on it.
yes, snapmarks. sigh. As it turns out, the camera on my unit works so poorly snapmarks never worked anyway …but still disappointed.
I must say, that the lack of very basic functions in Glowforge Print are frustrating. I just realized that basic functions like flip horizontal or flip vertical or create outline are going to be Glowforge Premium, that’s pretty lame. Outline as Premium, ok, but Flip functions, come on, what the heck? Why Glowforge Print still doesn’t have basic align functions is maddening. (alining multiple copies of objects horizontally or vertically with each other, or spacing evenly)
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We’re trying!
Please send an email to support@glowforge.com so they can get you square!
Yes. If the tube fails, then that’s all we fix and all we charge for.
I’m not satisfied with the way repair is working (having heard everyone’s feedback about transparency) and the team’s working on moving repairs to improve this.
Thanks for the suggestion! That’s in our product hopper.
Dang, Doctor.
I’m not sure how that would work - if you send a note to support, they’ll get it sorted.
It’s this. (To compare, this is not a “first few months are cheap, then the price jumps” type deal).
We’ve released almost all of them. We don’t have a great way to give away designs that take 50+ pieces of material right now so things like the globe and dollhouse are still blocked, but I want to get them for you!
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I agree with Todd and I might get it for a little while. I have plenty of room on my computer to save my designs to. The cloud space is totally unnecessary and we should not be forced to use it. We should have software that lets us use it without any internet requirement at all for the price we paid for the Glow Forge.
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That would ruin the leverage they have to make you feel like you have to subscribe. They would get far fewer numbers if they made the offer structured this way. While I agree its the “right” thing to do, expect companies to make the right decision for their wallet, not the right one in general.
Just my 2 cents, but honestly I don’t see what the fuss is about. Maybe because none of the stuff offered in the subscription is stuff I really need, it’s just nice to have. So I’ll pay for it, and if I don’t use it, I’ll cancel later. And if they release something super cool, well, I doubt I’ll pay 50 bucks a month for it, but it won’t lessen what I have already been doing. I don’t feel like it is a big deal at all.
PS - As for this fast lane thing, I really, truly have not noticed a big difference in processing time. Granted, most of what I do is not that complicated, but I was kind of nonplussed at how I couldn’t really tell a difference at all.
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This is the whole premise of what made Glowforge different from other laser cutters. It seems silly to me that people buy a Glowforge and then complain about one of its most fundamental design features, which was NEVER hidden from them to begin with!
You don’t have to pay for it if you don’t want to. The premium features are NOT NECESSARY for using your $5000+ machine. Many of us have been doing just fine without them for going on 3 years now.
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I feel just the way you do, too.
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Yup, I understand. Sad but true.
Thanks for the clarification @dan . It’s a bit disappointing that I’m being forced to sign-up now as a one time only offer and maintain a subscription in order to get the discounted price.
Looking at the premium features I’m a hobbyist like many others and don’t use my Glowforge very frequently. The only feature that has now been classified as premium that I care about is Snapmarks. These I use on many of my projects and foresee using it for a long time. The price of the Premium subscription however is too much for this one feature in my opinion.
It would be nice to have a bit more of an a-la-carte price for Snapmarks or even a lifetime one-time cost for that specific key, and important (to me), feature. Is that or has it been considered?
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I agree. Not only do you not need to pay to use your Glowforge Pro, you will never need to.
It has. Unfortunately, once you split things up so each benefit is a la carte, none of the benefits make business sense to build out because the market for each would be smaller. Putting them together increases the audience for each one, and lets us build more great stuff for everyone. That said, everyone’s opinion here is valuable, and we’re always looking to improve.
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I understand that from a business perspective. From this user’s perspective, it will look like the following: Everytime I would have used snapmarks I will be reminded of why I can’t - because I have absolutely no use for or interest in anything else in the subscription, and I won’t be paying $50 a month for just snapmarks. So, either I collect all my snapmark jobs up and subscribe for a month, cancelling again immediately after, or I go back to using jigs and workarounds with the knowledge that there would be an easier way. This will make using the Glowforge a more negative experience on the whole… I’m sure that’s not what you want, but if companies have to choose between business and customer satisfaction, business tends to win out.
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None of these companies sell expensive hardware to their customers and then expect them to pay a subscription fee to have access to newly-developed features.
For $40, I bought a lifetime license to use LightBurn, including all future software upgrades.
For the premium price they charge for the same hardware that is in a $400 Chinese laser, GlowForge should be putting ALL of their best development efforts into improving their baseline product and support model for all customers.
I would have trouble convincing myself to pay even $5/month recurring fee for the features offered.
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…Except that now, if I didn’t purchase a first class ticket, I have to wait extra time while the “elite” passengers board ahead of me and block the aisles when I try to board.
Your analogy is spot-on. Your assumption that a company can diversify its product offerings without compromising each individual product is not.
The company will increasingly focus on keeping the first class passengers happy. Those of us in steerage will inevitably suffer.
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