Flagship VeraSecure being Abandoned? Apparently not!

Vera Controllers, Services & Devices General Vera Discussions
#1

Update: Ezlo has just released a new generation of VeraSecure as “EzloSecure” for preorder

So, I have 3 VeraSecure controllers, all set up as automation plus security. First I lost monitoring on all of them, then finally got “VeraProtect” back for one that is in NC, and now the only other security notification that reliably works–the text notifications–is being cancelled as well!! I have reached out multiple times to get a status update on VeraProtect with no response. I had trained up an employee to begin installing these systems in homes and small businesses, but put the endeavor on hold when services got suspended. Now I don’t see a path back to this. I saw the new VeraSecure as Vera’s Flagship product, and the evolution of HA, but the device is clearly being abandoned instead. I am now running out of reasons to stick with this platform…
I’m very disappointed.

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#2

That totally blows! Was the monitoring service something offered through MCV?

#3

VeraProtect was in Beta when Ezlo took over. The Beta was shut down in February 2019, and then Ezlo rolled it back out on November 2019 with the following firmware note: “VeraProtect’s availability is limited to the United States, where the service is available in most of the states, with the exception of UT (Utah), TN (Tennessee), AL (Alabama), VA (Virginia), MD (Maryland), CA (California), TX (Texas), and FL (Florida)”

Radio Silence after that…

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#4

No Vera Protect outside some US states. Text service ended. Support ignore raised issues. What next. Is this the beginning of the end of Vera?

#5

That, I believe, was some time ago.

#6

Excuse my ignorance but does Ezlo intend to bring out a new, compatible product in the near future? I do not want to learn a whole new way of implementing my home automation on a new ezlo product when I might as well use another vendors product with a defined timeline/future and start from scratch with that.

Thanks.

#7

The only ‘compatible’ environment that I know of is openLuup. This allows you to retain your logic and plugins, plus your overall familiarity with Vera, but in a much more stable environment which can be migrated to pretty much any hardware platform.

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#8

Hi John, someone will be with you shortly, sorry for the delay.
The guys are doing their best given the current global situation.

VeraSecure and VeraProtect are not getting abandoned. They are both alive and well even tho in parallel the team is working on the new line-up of controllers and awesome new services.

#9

Hello @JTG I was sorry to hear that. After the announcement about the SMS notifications we received several complaints about it. So here we created a list. We will ask everyone to fill in there with their username and email address if they are in need of getting the sms notifications after next week.

So please go to this post and add your username and email adress there. That will be enough for you to keep getting the SMS notifications after next week.

I also saw that you have 2 of your units in Florida. Please be informed that Florida (and California) are currently being added to Vera Protect service. The Vera Protect service will be up and running also in those 2 states soon.

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#10

More the middle of the end, really…

C

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#11

Soon is clearly relative–I lost monitoring over a year ago; and the VeraSecure is now showing “out of stock” at the Vera store. At what point do actions speak louder than words? We live in an age where tech product life cycles are limited to 5 years or so. With the opening up of the Z-wave chips by SMC, Vera/Ezlo was poised to take on the ISPs, Amazon and Google for HA with security from a strong foundation of supported devices and platform maturity, with several options to get there, whether it be a deeper partnership with 2gig/Alarm.com, or bringing better security-centric apps and components in-house to offer complete solutions without the subscription-based model of other vendors. I simply don’t see any of these things happening from where I sit. I’m not sure why Ezlo bought out Vera if the only goal was to appease current Vera users while pushing a different platform that was already developed. Unless something changes fast, the moment Amazon and Google reach a level of maturity on their HA/Security platforms, it will be game over for Ezlo and the Vera brand.

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#12

4 months later–still no visible progress. I really don’t want to be right about this…

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#13

Amazon and Google will NEVER develop HA/Security platforms that are non-subscription. Security implies that you own something worth stealing which implies you have money. They want that money and they take it with a subscription. Very simple. Amazon and Google only give stuff for free to people who are poor and don’t have anything worth stealing.

Vera is trying to figure out the age old question of how do you bring out a security platform that isn’t based on a subscription model. How do you sell a product that is reliable enough that you won’t get your pants sued off because some criminal tripped an alarm that was never caught by your rock-bottom priced free monitoring, while breaking into a house and killing someone.

i think the endeavor is futile and I don’t understand why you don’t either. I can CERTAINLY see you developing an income based on “buy our burglar alarm that doesn’t require monthly subscriptions” and selling it to homes and small businesses, at least until someone gets knifed in one of those small businesses and the cops don’t come. Then you will lose everything when you are sued. If I were in that line of business I would concentrate on explaining to customers who want a cheap burglar alarm that there’s reasons why Brinks Home Security and others charge up the wazoo for monthly monitoring.

#14

Ted,

This is a relatively cogent response, and more than I have ever heard from Ezlo, but it is a gross oversimplification of the issue, and misses some important facts:

  1. Who ever said the monitoring service has to be free? The monitoring offered now by Ezlo is subscription-based (I believe about $20/month).

  2. Partnerships with other companies like 2gig or alarm.com are the key to making the system robust/reliable enough to be considered a “security” system

  3. The cellular backup and protocol support of the VeraSecure uniquely bridges from HA to standards for wireless security sensors used by these other vendors, which was a great first step in that direction.

  4. Convergence is the evolution of home security (and HA). The convergence can come from either side. ADT is investing heavily in converged systems–Vera began to, and now Ezlo is not. Xfinity started, but backed out–possibly due to the concerns about liability as you mentioned. Both Google and Amazon are evolving their product offerings rapidly toward convergence (Nest, Blink). Honest dialog here is clearly lacking on this issue, likely because Ezlo has every intention of letting the security side ride off into the sunset. When that happens, they lose the HA market as well due to convergence. Either way, Ezlo loses, and so do we. @ioana are you listening?

#15

You are never going to get someone who doesn’t have money to fork over $20 a month for security monitoring.

There is a HUGE market between the people who are too poor to own a house (20% of the population I think) and thus will not be HA buyers (perhaps 3-4 sensors in light bulbs and such but they won’t be installing smart switches in the wall) and the combined-income-of-$200k-a-year couples owning $800k and above homes who would be concerned enough to reliably fork over the $20 a month for alarm monitoring who would be a target of “convergence”

The “high end” market of people who will fork over the monitoring fee is among the absolute worst market to sell to because while they DO have enough money to be reliable subscription customers, they are in a way champagne-taste, beer-budget customers. I own my own IT consultancy and I have sold services to some of those customers. I have one of them for example who is a doctor and practices out of his house (he has an exam room in his home for example) and is one of the few who DOES understand the money part of the business but even he is unreasonable when it comes to it. I only retain him because I put him on a $150 a month retainer, but every time I go over to his house to do something with his home office it is at least a 6 hour visit. If I do more than 3 of those calls a YEAR then I won’t make any profit off of him for that year. I get it - a lot of people think “what kind of complex IT could a doctor with a SOHO ever need” but he’s got himself a combination wired/wireless network in his house, a Sonos system, 2 line phones fed by Comcast with voicemail, 2 Macs, 2 PC’s 3 network printers - and he’s “not technical” if you get my meaning. But he is a nice guy so I’m willing to take a risk.

But so many of those people DON’T understand the cost stuff so companies like Brinks Home Security have figured it out with them. They have a cookie-cutter system and they hire people they pay around $20 an hour to (just a few steps above minimum wage) who are willing to crawl around in attics and crawl spaces and know how to use a drill and fishtape and a 3 foot long drill bit. They come in and sell you the complete system, all sensors and the box, a yearly monitoring contract, and their crew comes in for 4 hours one time and rigs the house and from that point on nobody will set foot in your house, all reconfiguration is done remotely. And the customers of those companies cannot stand them - because they won’t provide the kind of customized service that consultants like I will - because those customers won’t pay $600 a visit which is what it costs in the industry to get an IT person who knows their azz from a hole in the ground to step into your house for a visit. In other words - champagne taste, beer budget.

My guess is the single largest thing holding back the HA market is the inability to get someone who knows the HA tech back and forward to go into business running a HA consulting firm. You need to know the tech back and forward to be able to setup a WORKING and stable HA system because every home is different and every customer’s needs are different. And you have to be an advanced user of it to be able to write scenes and so on. In short, you have to be as experienced with HA to be able to put in a successful HA system that the customer loves and depends on to the point that they will reliably pay a subscription fee for the rest of their life, as I am with Windows Server to be able to build corporate networks for small to medium businesses. And, if you are able to get there with HA then you have the ability to get there with Windows Server and you will make far more money doing what I do with businesses than doing what Vera needs you to do for them to sell HA to a customer.

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#16

And just last night, Google cancelled Nest security, and is now partnering with ADT!!

The convergence is happening–and Ezlo is getting left behind…

#17

I’m not sure what your point here was–yes, people want an all-in-one “converged” solution; no, not very many vendors are willing to set up HA systems, and yes, Ezlo will disappear if they don’t join the bandwagon.

#18

People also want a 9 course meal with dancing girls for afters…all for the low low price of $9.95

“visionaries” love to yak on about “converged” systems but assume everyone in the world is making 6 figures. You are dong the same.

If you want a high-end “converged” security system, and you want someone to come and install and program it, that will cost top dollar. Price/quality/speed-AKA-convenience. It is a famous maxim called the “retail triangle” you are unacquainted with. You cannot have all 3. 1 must be sacrificed.

The Google pairing with ADT represents a textbook case of failure of this triangle. Google tried doing a high quality, complex advanced system, and marketing it to people who couldn’t run a cable through their attic if their lives depended on it, for a low price. It failed. So they looked for someone they could scrape the few people who had signed up with them off on to. That’s ADT. ADT will perk along happy as a clam selling maybe 10 of these a month compared to 500 of their basic systems a month and the buyers will all be like you - completely not understanding why anyone wouldn’t go for the more expensive but tremendously superior ADT smart system instead of the ADT basic system

If you go to ADT and start running on about wanting a “smart” alarm system to get the full meal deal with video and smart and secure and google and Nest and all the rest of it - that high end “converged” system you are talking about - and you want someone to come install it and program it so you don’t need to know anything about it - you will pay over and over and over, top dollar.

Ezlo is aiming at the “unwashed masses” because that is where the numbers are. If they can put together a cheap setup that does a handful of HA tasks for a low price - they will sell millions and make hundreds of millions. People like you will see that system and decry how much better a converged system could be - but the unwashed masses that will fork over $119.99 for the Ezlo limited-cookie-cutter product WON’T pay $599.99 plus monthly that a high end “converged” system would cost.

You know another big “converged” proponent was Bill Gates. The decade before he left Microsoft he touted convergence of TV and the PC. That’s where Windows Media Center came from. I ran Media Center and it was unbelievably better than any “smart TV” Unlimited DVR space, the ability to rip shows to mp4’s that I could copy to my phone and watch, plus an enormous number of hours of free TV to watch on the Internet. Very convenient. And if you had cable - even scrambled cable - you could record 4 or 8 shows at the same time while watching another.

But, it was complex to setup. So either you were a PC Expert or you paid a LOT for a PC expert to set it up. Convenience/Price/Quality. And because of that it flopped and Microsoft withdrew Media Center from Windows 10.

#19

You have now thoroughly and completely hijacked an open discussion with your own narrative that is at best only tangentially related to my original question and thoughts. You do not seem to work for Ezlo, but have a lot to say authoritatively with no qualms about painting a negative picture of others. I will resist the desire to puff out my chest and prove myself, and instead end this dialog.

#20

Did I miss somewhere that Ezlo was building the next-gen “EzloSecure” hub, or was that kept under wraps? I would have though an PM to me would have been in order, as I’m a bit beyond “power user” level on the VeraSecure platform, was getting pretty frustrated at my perceived lack of support for the security platform, and would be/would have been quite interested in evaluating the new product, and potentially migrating 1 or more of my VeraSecure systems. What says Sorin?

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