Here’s my two cents:
Everything that can be local, should be local. With a lot of third party stuff relying on the cloud, there is of course still a need to have some stuff relying on it.
As for money, I’d rather pay a sum up front for the hardware. This should also cover support for a period of time for things like bugs and support for similar devices as it supported when I bought it, for example if a supplier of Z-wave switches launches a new version of their product.
The idea of paying for fw updates don’t sit too well with me since I might not care about 4-5 updates and then in the 6th update there’s a feature I want, do I then pay for all 6 updates? If possible i’d prefer the general fw to be free and the specific new features to be payed for. That way everyone gets an up to date system with bug-fixing and such and if I want voice control for example, I buy it.
If you have a model where I pay monthly, what happens if I stop paying? will the things I have still work is are all my money gone with nothing to show for it? What happens if I start paying again?
If you have a model where I pay up front for a period of updates, will there be a list of promised features, or is it a complete gamble that any features of use to me will be included?
All in all, I’m more likely to spend money on cool new features (even if I end up barely using them) than just paying to get more fw updates. If the boring stuff can be funded for everyone by those buying new features, that would be ideal. No one likes paying the utility bill.
there in lies the problem. Expecting new customer to fund the old ones. You are risking your system by hoping that new customers will fund it. Why should others fund a system you use?
First nobody expect new customers to fund my hardware at home, i expect company that manufactured and sold me and got paid from me for the product that i bought to maintain and update the product that sold me as long as the product is not EOL.
That is why you are choosing a system that is from reliable manufacturer and not a startup.
If you buy the latest iphone is this mean that your are funding iphone 7 users or you are buying a product that you like and don’t think about the iphone 7 users, or Samsung TV or roku stick or whatever it is that has software and firmware inside?
From all the post that i read on this topic i can understand only one thing. Ezlo is too afraid or unsure of their product and business plan because if i’m confident in the product i and will know that i will sell 100.000 pcs every month i will not care for existing customer to fund my company and pay the salary of my employee. This philosophy can by applied on a startup company or Kickstarter project.
It’s a bit like a buffet… Some will cost more than the average customer and some will cost less. The whole point is to find the price point where customers don’t feel shafted while still making a profit. I realize that that kind of system doesn’t always work, but it’s a nice one used in many businesses.
I forgot one more thing, why should new customer benefit for integrations that old customer funded… sold them a hub without support for devices that were funded by old customers. only devices and integrations that were developed in the month that hub was purchased
Another practical question is whether a customer who owns 10 Ezlo products would have to pay 10x as much as someone who owns just one. Perhaps we should be talking about a licensing system that is per-user and not per-device?
This way, whenever a controller is sold or reused, the new owner has the option of purchasing a new license from ezlo to unlock all the “Pro” features (again). Lots of revenue-generating potential there.
Also, there’s the conundrum of “If ezlo controllers can be set to run 100% locally, how could they ‘phone home’ to validate that monthly payments have been made?” to consider.
I agree with the basic statement that the “Cloud Model is Flawed” I bought my first Vera, six years ago and I have purchased two more since. The most important feature was the ability to work without Internet access. I have these units at remote locations with intermittent Internet and I need them to keep working when the internet is down. The HA “hub” should be able to run fully independent of the cloud with local control and local API. That being said, paying a monthly/annual subscription fee for remote access and updates for those interested is fair. New features for those not subscribing could be purchased. Buying a product and getting free security/feature updates forever is not a reasonable expectation.
If features would be sold I suppose it could lead to faster implementation of cool new things. There is however always the problem with official vs community plugins (payed vs free), so they have to be competitive in releasing quickly or at least in reliability and user friendliness.
I strongly believe that continuing to use this Forum – as it now stands – as a makeshift wiki/FAQ and tech support portal will impair future success for ezlo products.
Users need a (far) more structured environment for things like bug reports/resolution, firmware/plug-in documentation, and instructional materials!
Finding critical info in a timely manner here in the Forum is almost impossible.
No. App is dead. Still hasn’t propagated thru the interweb to my location.
I can access locally. Thats the whole point.
I’m sorry, its 2020. Why in the world would you move a physical server without virtualizing it and deploying it at your new location on other hardware, syncing them, and then switching over to the new instance (or for God’s sake vmotion them over), then kill the old one and move it?
I mean, seriously, I am not an IT guy by day and this just boggles my mind in 2020.
Why would you physically need to go down i. This day and age for something like this?
We are still dealing with left over architectural issues from legacy Vera server infrastructure.
we haven’t fully moved to “Ezlo/MiOS Cloud Infrastructure” yet. We are working towards that.
We hope, by the year end we will have moved everything completely to the new Ezlo/MiOS Cloud infrastructure.
