Device Cloud Pricing For Particle Mesh Now Available

We have passed your feedback along so do wait for an official response once the team looks into the points raised. :slight_smile:

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Another big concern in terms of the proposed mesh pricing is that it seems to bundle cellular data and device privileges into one payable.

In our use case (and many others in the Particle community), we are not using Particle’s MVNO cellular data plans since Vodafone’s roaming partners in the countries we operate in have very poor connectivity.

This means that if we decide to implement a mesh network using Particle Mesh, we will end up having to pay $5 per month for each network we want to set up, which includes 5 MB of data.

So in essence, if we set up 100 networks, we will be paying $500 per month and a large chunk of that will be going to paying for data plans on a pile of SIM cards in a garbage dump somewhere.

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I’m in a similar boat, and would be happy to stick with the Photons/Electrons for my needs due to the pricing changes. I’m also curious if it’s possible to withdraw our pre-order?

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I was nervous about the pricing announcement until I read the FAQ regarding standalone devices.

“Our standalone device pricing is not going away. The Argon and Boron pricing will work the same way as they were before. If want to learn more about how standalone devices pricing works, check out our FAQ here.”

So, if I’m understanding this properly, if you plan on using the new Mesh hardware in the same standalone way that Photons/Electrons are used, then the pricing stays the same.

The continuous monthly cost for the MESH networks does make it harder to integrate the advantages of the MESH networks into lower cost price sensitive products that could benefit from it.

I’m sure Particle will adjust the different pricing options as feedback from the end user community starts to pour in as they think through and analyze what deploying these new networks actually cost.

They have to keep the investors and customers that support the company happy for long-term success. I can see where this can be a bit tricky, trying to find the sweet spot for both parties.

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:

  • 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.

  • 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:

  1. Discounted data pricing and pooled data plans
  2. Access to specific network partners that are key to enabling connectivity to your fleet
  3. 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.

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Hi Will,

You’re pricing is great for businesses and it’s what you need to keep your business going. Which is a high priority for me too as someone who has Particle devices throughout my home. :slight_smile:

What I’ve setup using Particle devices, although small (5 devices) is very important to me. Having multiple gateways to cope with my bad coding and the inevitable device crash/hang is a must. But $120 a year is a lot for a home user.

10 devices for a micro network is a good limit but is there any reason it couldn’t consist of 3 Argons and 7 Xenons without having to pay for a HA network?

I would be happy to pay (and will if available) $2.99 per month so one of the 3 gateways could be cellular in the event of the WiFi been unavailable. I didn’t include a Boron as part of my preorder unfortunately.

Thanks,
Kev

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I wholly agree with this for home hobbyists. I have very spotty cell service where I live, and I’ve seen enough times that my Photons lose their wi-fi connection that I would like to be able to have two Argons on a small network. I have no trouble with the new limitation of 10 devices to be considered a micro network, I understand Particle’s needs, but the limit of one gateway seems unnecessarily restrictive.

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@will

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.

First, that's a bit insulting. Did you really mean to officially state that the only in-home use that Particle can envision for their hardware is temperature sensors? I definitely expect to have use for more than 10 but fewer than 30 mesh devices on my network. So I will need your $120/year plan. Even if I want a Boron on the network for reliability, that's still only $36/year instead of $120.

Anyway, when you say you will honour the original pricing for pre-order hardware, does that mean all the hardware on my pre-orders will get the old plan? So if I buy a new Xenon later I suddenly go from $36 to $120 per year for my network? Does particle have a record of which devices are part of my pre-order?

And do I have to set up the network right away? It sounds like you're saying set up my network anid then you will waive the fees? I expect it to take me a very long time to bring all my mesh devices online as I will be building a variety of different nodes myself. Do i have to contact you every time I add a device?

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Hi @will,

I too would very much value the ability to use multiple gateways in development without having to pay the $10/month. Especially for the ability to use a more data intensive application with wifi or ethernet gateway but still have the backup of Cellular if the wifi drops (you could still have each gateway count toward the total of 10 micro networks so that no-one takes advantage).

I doubt I’ll be able to get all the development done in the 3 month timeframe of free service.

I’d also like to experiment with a >10 unit network, but that’s not absolutely critical to my current use cases.

I’d like to suggest that if these are in personal or development use - non-commercial, that we could use a network of 10 units of any combination without having the pricing tier go up - just having to pay for the devices as if they were standalone units. It seems like this would encourage more mesh developments and I don’t feel like the cost would be significant to Particle, but it could make all the difference to other bootstrappers like me!

J

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@JumpMaster @Ric thank you for the feedback. I can understand how network redundancy (multiple Wi-Fi gateways, or a cellular backup) would be valuable in the contexts that you're describing. As I mentioned in my post, we'd be happy to honor our original preorder pricing to ensure that you're able to achieve the desired result with your network.

I'll also take your feedback back to our internal team for discussion and follow-up here with the outcome.


@DevRandom I certainly didn't mean to imply that and, looking back at the words that I wrote, I don't think that I did. From my experience, temperature and humidity sensing is a very common in-home use case for Particle and was one of the first applications that many Particle employees, including myself, deployed with Mesh in our own homes.

Here's how we'll do it – preorder customers will be put on a special billing "plan" which has two characteristics:

  • For every Argon or Boron in your account, you'll be charged "standard" Device OS costs:
    • Free Device OS for first 100 Wi-Fi devices
    • Free Device OS for 3 months for cellular devices, with our $2.99 (not $4.99) rate thereafter
  • You can configure your first 10 gateways in any combination that you want, without fear of being charged anything beyond the established standalone Device OS charges above. This plan captures the commitments we made around pricing as communicated in the preorder period.

All gateways configured beyond the first ten will be subject to our newly established network pricing.

What I want to communicate is that you don't need to be worry about being charged in the meantime and that you should feel free to configure your devices as soon as you receive them. You will not have to contact us each time you configure a new device, and billing will be automated by the rules outlined above for preorder customers on this plan.

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Thanks Will. I’m happy with that. It’s great to be able to provide feedback so directly.

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I would also like to agree with a need for hobbyists and Developers to have at least one micro Network that allows High availability for free. It doesn’t need to have the full capabilities of the 30-plus devices but just small enough to develop and test. I only bought nine mesh devices. 6 Xenon, 2 argon, and one boron. I’d like to put them all on the same network. Going forward, I do have an idea for a larger mesh Network that would require High availability and I wouldn’t mind paying the $10. I believe that is a fair price for what you are offering. If it comes to it, I will contact support to honor the pre-order terms. Thank you @will.

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I feel that's 100% fair and sticking to what was initially promised.

I think we all knew pricing, terms, and specs were subject to change as the whole MESH project progressed from concept to finished and ready to ship status.

I also feel pricing and options will probably still change some as time progresses and more real-world user feedback come in.

I know the MESH project was a massive amount of work to get to this point and I'm eager to try it all out!

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Here’s a few questions I’m wondering.

If I have a boron can I have it act as a dumb mesh node without any cellular functionality and keep it in a micro network, or do borons/argons automatically become gateways? I ask because if I want to have a wired network but don’t have enough xenons to cover all the nodes I’ll need, I’d like to be able to sub in some of the higher models without the price jump that unnecessarily redundant gateways would cause.

How does one go about managing and deleting mesh networks? I can see a new network tab on the console but it doesn’t give me any way to remove the network or see/edit the network password.

How can I change a Xenon from a node to a gateway and vice-versa?

Apologies if I’m veering slightly off topic with some of these but they felt relevant given the new angle of per network and gateway pricing.

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my goal was to have a home mesh that over the next year would grow to 6 xenon with a boron and an argon. however both gateways do not necessarily need to be active at the same time for the first year. what i decided to do was buy one of each device and an ethernet feather for testing, to see, no offense, if it all actually worked before buying 5 more xenon. so what i would like to ask about is this phrasing that the pre-order plan applies only to pre-order hardware. does that mean that as the pre-order plan applies to my use case that i will not be allowed to expand the xenon device count ? or, once i determine that they all play nice together and over the cloud can i add 5 xenon to fill out my mesh? thanks.

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@will
I like it, thanks for listening!
:+1:t3:

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There is a feature in the setup process where you choose if you are going to use a xenon with the Ethernet or not. I’ve been able to change that by re-adding a xenon that is already on my account, giving me all the setup options again.

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Thanks all for the helpful discourse!

Once you have removed all nodes from a mesh network, the network will be removed.

I think these features haven't been added yet. The problem with changing the network password would require all devices in the mesh to be notified of the change otherwise they won't be able to reconnect next time. That's fine for devices that can be reached at that point, but how to deal with actually absent devices that may be re-joining some time later.
I also (currently) don't see an API to change the designation of a device (end-node, repeater, gateway) on the fly.
But it's early days :wink:

I think Will has already addressed that when he said

It's not that your devices are pre-order devices but you as an individual will be treated as pre-order customer, even if you add more devices to your account later

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