Hello friends,
First off, I want to thank everyone for the feedback on the pricing announcement. I want to jump into the conversation to provide some additional context and information about the changes that were made to Mesh pricing between preorder and delivery and to try and address some of the concerns that have been raised in this thread.
If you're not up for reading this entire thread (wow it got long!), here's the TLDR:
There are no changes to the Device Cloud pricing structure for standalone Wi-Fi (Argon) and Cellular (Boron) devices.
For the vast majority of Particle Mesh preorder customers who ordered an Argon and 1-3 Xenons to build your mesh network, the pricing update has no impact on what you would pay Particle to use the devices that you ordered.
If you think you might be in the minority of customers that are affected by the pricing changes, please feel free to contact us, and we'll be happy to honor the pricing structure originally communicated when we launched Particle Mesh preorders in February for the hardware in your preorder.
Standalone Wi-Fi / Cellular pricing is not changing
I want to start by emphasizing that standalone device pricing for Wi-Fi and cellular devices is not changing. If you use an Argon like a Photon, or you use a Boron like an Electron, you pay the exact same amount for the exact services (Device Cloud and, for cellular products, bundled cellular data).
To directly address some of the concerns raised in this thread...
That's exactly correct – for standalone Wi-Fi and Cellular devices, nothing is changing. You will still pay $2.99 per device per month for Device Cloud for cellular devices (free for the first 3 months, includes 3MB of data), and $0.39 per device per month for Device Cloud for Wi-Fi devices (free for the first 100 devices).
This is reflected on the updated pricing page, per the screenshot below:
To reiterate, if you are using the Argon / Boron in the same ways that you are using the Photon/Electron (as a standalone device), there is no change to the pricing structure. We encourage everyone to continue using your Photons and Electrons and should expect no change in how or what you pay for equivalent Device Cloud functionality if you decide to transition your product to the Argon or Boron.
The new pricing framework only applies to mesh networks and is likely to provide the same or cheaper cost of ownership compared to an equivalent fleet comprised of standalone Wi-Fi or cellular products.
To illustrate with an example –
1 Boron + 1 Xenon ($4.99 per month) is cheaper than 2 Electrons ($2.99 x 2 = $5.98 per month)
1 Boron + 9 Xenons ($4.99 per month) is cheaper than 10 Electrons ($2.99 x 10 = $29.99 per month)
New framework for Mesh pricing
The previous example takes us into what was introduced in the blog post, which is a new pricing framework for mesh networks created by an eligible gateway device which include the Argon, Boron, or any Particle Mesh device in an Ethernet FeatherWing.
Particle pricing principles
Before diving into the specifics, I want to make a general statement about our pricing framework which is that it is and will always be our goal to provide developers in our community with a way to evaluate and prototype with our development tools for free.
Because of differences between different connectivity technologies, that pricing principle manifests itself in different ways:
- Wi-Fi devices - free Device Cloud for the first 100 devices
- Cellular devices - free Device Cloud for the first 3 months (which includes 3MB of cellular data per month)
- Mesh networks - 10 free Wi-Fi Micro networks (single gateway, up to 10 devices) or free cellular Micro network for the first 3 months
Particle was built with the support of developers, and our goal is to give our customers the ability to build exciting new IoT systems with our tools without having to worry about engaging deeply with our enterprise-oriented pricing structures unless they're building with intent to scale their product.
What changed with the pricing
Let's talk about what changed. Our original pricing proposal, as others noted in this post, was the following:
Particle Mesh pricing builds on existing Wi-Fi and cellular Device Cloud pricing. All Particle customers get 10 free gateway upgrades to support prototyping and evaluation of Particle Mesh. After the first 10 upgrades, Particle will charge an additional monthly fee beyond baseline Device Cloud pricing for Argon and Boron devices acting as gateways within a Particle Mesh network. Adding mesh-only devices (Xenons) to your network and all local communications between mesh devices are free.
With 10 free gateway upgrades you could build:
- One giant network of 100+ devices
- Ten different networks of 10+ devices
- Five different networks with redundant gateways (Ethernet + Cellular backup, for example)
What's different?
The biggest change was a shift from pricing for gateway upgrades, which can be applied to create a multitude of mesh network combinations, to pricing for networks themselves which have various characteristics (# of devices, # of gateways).
This means that, for customers who were not a part of the preorder, two of the three use cases that we referenced above will no longer be free. Specifically:
- One giant network of 100+ devices would qualify as a "Large Site Network" which requires custom pricing
- Ten different networks of 10 devices would still be free under our updated pricing model
- Five different networks with redundant gateways would qualify as a "High availability network" which offers free Device Cloud for 3 months but a $9.99/network cost after that.
Why we changed the pricing
Without an example of another end-to-end mesh networking platform to follow, our goal from the outset was to follow our principles and build a pricing framework that creates enough space for developers to evaluate our technology while charging enterprises who are generating meaningful value from our technology at scale to pay us for our hosted services.
There are two use cases that were free under the original pricing that I'd like to discuss in greater depth:
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One giant network of 100+ devices - This is an interesting one. This configuration might be used by a super-user to build a network of 100 temperature sensors for their home (10 per room!), or might conceivably be used by a factory to build a network of 100 devices to monitor the state and uptime of highly utilized industrial equipment. The topological architecture of each network is the same, but in the latter case the factory might be generating tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in value on an annual basis without paying Particle a penny. If we don't have an ability to capture any of this value, then our enterprise business, which subsidizes the free usage of the our products by our developer community, would suffer greatly.
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Five different networks with redundant gateways. This one is a bit simpler – redundant gateways are useful for ensuring that, even if ethernet / Wi-Fi connectivity goes down, you have the option of a cellular backhaul to ensure successful delivery of your data. This kind of network redundancy is also a feature that creates disproportionately more real value for enterprises for whom even minutes of downtime or data loss can be economically disastrous.
We will honor preorder pricing for preorder hardware
All of this context aside, I want to reiterate that that if you think you might be in the minority of customers that are affected by the pricing changes, we encourage you to contact us. What will happen?
- We'll encourage you to continue to set up your hardware as you normally would. You won't be charged given that we're offering 10 Wi-Fi micro networks and 3 free months of cellular Micro networks for free, and we'll adjust billing for your successfully configured preorder hardware to reflect the original guidance we provided in February.
- If appropriate, we'll adjust your Device Cloud fees for preorder hardware to reflect the pricing guidance we provided when we launched Particle Mesh in February
3rd Party SIM card usage is still allowed
One more thing to note here since I saw comments in the thread – 3rd party SIMs will still be supported for all cellular devices (Electron and Boron) in both hardware (via the external SIM slot) and software. We are still in the process of drafting documentation for how to leverage a third party SIM for new Boron devices since our setup process has changed from a web-based setup flow to a primarily mobile-based setup flow (which is, IMHO, a drastically improved experience), but it will still be supported.
Our preference, however, is absolutely that you leverage the onboard embedded SIM (not "eSIM" or eUICC which is not commercially available yet) with Particle MVNO support, for several reasons:
- Particle SIMs use less data because we're able to negotiate and manage custom cellular "keepalives" with our network of carrier providers and leverage our custom UDP-based communications protocol which is ~50x more efficient than standard HTTPS requests. In other words, every MB you buy from Particle goes much farther than an equivalent MB on another data plan.
- Particle SIMs include integrated SIM management features that allow you to manage the SIM lifecycle state (activate, pause, deactivate), view historical cellular data usage, run cellular diagnostics, and set data limits on each SIM to avoid "runaway" devices.
- We can more effectively provide support for devices with Particle SIMs because we have access to the audit logs for Particle SIMs which are unavailable to us for third party carriers.
- We're always improving our network through new partnerships with carriers around the World. The Boron 2G/3G leverages an improved global network of carriers with significantly more international partners (3-5x in many countries) than the previous 2G/3G plan for the Electron.
Again – we understand that there will always be reasons to leverage 3rd party SIM options, and our goal is not to prevent you from doing so. That being said, especially if you are considering deploying with Particle at scale, we encourage to contact us to discuss any of the following topics or concerns related to our cellular MVNO service:
- Discounted data pricing and pooled data plans
- Access to specific network partners that are key to enabling connectivity to your fleet
- Questions about support for new network technologies like LTE M1 and NB1 that might not yet be a part of our MVNO offering.
I hope this post helps to address some of the concerns voiced here in this thread about the pricing update. If you have additional questions about any of the information in the blog post or in this follow-up, please feel free to reply! We're here to help.