Hey all – loving this conversation so thought I’d also throw my perspective into the mix. As many have identified, there are a lot of things to consider when comparing the $19 price point of the Photon to other development platforms on the market.
When we first launched the Photon, $19 was the cheapest Wi-Fi enabled development experience you could buy. Since then, a number of really affordable development experiences have been introduced into the market, which is a great thing for the Maker community and IoT in general. Low cost hardware is still one of the biggest barriers preventing ubiquitous Internet connectivity for consumer hardware, so we’ve been very glad to see low-cost options emerge throughout the years.
Here are a few considerations to keep in mind when comparing the Photon to other Wi-Fi development platforms:
-
We get cheaper at scale. As a number of users have pointed out, a lot of value gets bundled into the $19 price point of the Photon including support and documentation, free developer tools, and lifetime access to our Cloud service. Like with most electrical components, once you start scaling, our pricing model changes, and hardware gets much cheaper. If you’re interested in learning more about volume pricing, you can email us at sales@particle.io or apply to our wholesale store at wholesale.particle.io.
-
Raspberry Pi is a non-profit. A couple folks have compared the $19 Photon to the $5 Pi Zero + $6-10 USB Wi-Fi dongle. That is an apples to oranges comparison, since the Raspberry Pi Foundation is a non-profit organization and is able to sell the Pi Zero at zero margin. It would be impossible for us to sell the Photon at zero margin and continue to provide the level of service, support, and free features that provide to our community today. That being said, if you’d prefer to buy a Pi Zero, you can still connect it to the Particle Cloud once you’ve signed up for our beta program for Raspberry Pi + Particle.
-
Wi-Fi is expensive. This one is frustrating for us as well because it’s one of the biggest barriers to ubiquitous hardware connectivity today. The cost of Wi-Fi has plummeted over the last several years ($12 - $15 for a certified module was typical in 2013) and will continue to drop, but is still expensive ($5 - $8 even at meaningful scale). Hardware like the ESP8266 and ESP32 are recent exceptions that have bucked the semiconductor industry, but are, in our opinions, not yet up the security and reliability standards that are required of commercially-deployed hardware. The cost of connectivity will continue to decrease over time, and we will continue to adopt the best chipsets available to provide competitively-priced, industry-grade hardware to our community.
-
Particle is (increasingly) hardware agnostic. We continue to sell the Photon because we think it represents a great combination of affordability, ease-of-use, and robust performance that makes it a great product for both learners and professional developers. If it’s not the right tool for you, though, the good news it that our IoT platform is becoming increasingly open to new hardware:
-
Compounds - As others have noted, we have a number of low-cost compounds that connect to the Particle Cloud, including the $15 Bluz dev kit, the $10 Oak (ESP8266), and the $25 Redbear Duo, which has Wi-Fi and BLE.
-
Raspberry Pi - Last but not least, if you’d rather buy a $5 Pi Zero and $6 USB dongle than a Photon, you can still connect it (for free!) to the Particle Cloud. Learn more about our Raspberry Pi beta integration in our community announcement and on our website!
-
Happy holidays from 
! Hope you all have a chance to relax with friends and family in the upcoming weeks!