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Wi-Fi Company Plume Introduces New 'SuperPod' Mesh Router Alongside $60/Year Subscription

Meraki (now owned by Cisco) have been selling subscription WAPs, switches, and routers to the enterprise market for quite some time now. If you stop paying, you lose admin access to the hardware. It's an awful business model from the consumer's standpoint, a pity because the hardware itself is pretty good.

Here's the subscription toothbrush, BTW: https://www.getquip.com

My wife signed up for it a while ago, but the interface between the head and the base is very poorly designed, which led to the product breaking. We went back to good old Braun / Oral-B. Quip is quap.

As for the Plume itself: who knows what they have to set themselves apart from an increasingly crowded marketplace for mesh WiFi except for the somewhat trendy metallic hexagon design. I guess I like that the remote units aren't so tall that they block the second power outlet.
 
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Khedron said:
The subscription fee is a complete joke.

But also, why do these things need to learn about usage to optimise for? How about just delivering the fastest and most stable connection all the time?
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Because they want to charge you an annual fee for that. Is it a complete joke? Yes, it is.
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slimtastic said:
This will be a flop. Mark my words.
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I really, really, really hope so.
 
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There is nothing that the subscription model adds that is above what should be expected out of the hardware itself. $60 a year for QoS? If they don’t have this baked in the base product, I wouldn’t trust them with subscription hardware.
 
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vipergts2207 said:
This incessant rush to turn anything and everything into a subscription is a joke. Garage doors, cars, now routers. What's next, subscription toothbrushes? I wouldn't be surprised. Only a fool would subscribe to this, as you'll be losing money after ~3 years. If you want me to subscribe to something, you better be offering me an actual service, not a piece of hardware that I'm paying for in perpetuity.
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Omg subscription tooth brushes is an amazing idea!
 
When unlicensed (no-subscription) routers are outlawed, only outlaws (aka terrorists) will operate routers without a subscription. It is not enough to just obey Big Brother, you must love him...
 
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They will probably offer free devices with a prepaid 3 year subscription like all the streaming tv services offer.
 
As a Cisco certified network engineer, I am very sceptical about the “adaptive wi-fi” feature. There is no such thing and there is no NEED for such a thing.

So a company who is already, in my opinion, marketing dodgy features then goes a step further and has the audicity to charge via a subscription model?! Like that helps its credibility!

I would love to smack anybody in the eye who purchases one of these for supporting some seriously underhanded business practises.
 
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UnseenLlama said:
Most people probably already pay a subscription fee for their cable modem / wifi router combo Comcast, etc. At least this would be a better alternative.
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Except then they will be paying for Comcast’s AND Plume’s router, because Comcast doesn’t want to lose their nickel and dime income stream either.
 
-Garry- said:
As a Cisco certified network engineer, I am very sceptical about the “adaptive wi-fi” feature. There is no such thing and there is no NEED for such a thing.

So a company who is already, in my opinion, marketing dodgy features then goes a step further and has the audicity to charge via a subscription model?! Like that helps its credibility!

I would love to smack anybody in the eye who purchases one of these for supporting some seriously underhanded business practises.
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I personally can't wait for hackers to "jailbreak" products like this.
 
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So $200 +39 for 3 routers and lifetime sub? While I hate subs, if you lifetime then price wise is not bad if the total really is $239. Similar range to other customer mesh networks even if the company goes kaput you would get at least some years from it. Still, adaptive wifi lmao
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ignatius345 said:
I personally can't wait for hackers to "jailbreak" products like this.
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Interesting idea, buy for $39 three of these for the hardware and hack it to work like any other mesh wifi router. I might consider them at that time lol
 
Silencio said:
Meraki (now owned by Cisco) have been selling subscription WAPs, switches, and routers to the enterprise market for quite some time now. If you stop paying, you lose admin access to the hardware. It's an awful business model from the consumer's standpoint, a pity because the hardware itself is pretty good.
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I can actually see it in the enterprise market for a few reasons.

First, enterprises are going to want ongoing updates both of hardware and software. It's more like a lease with service included.

Second, paying over time for enterprises can make more sense than occasional capital investments. They want to know how much per month/year, and not have to worry about lumpy expenditures and adding equipment that may be hard to integrate with existing equipment (say you add a floor of office space and need a bunch of new access points).

But enterprise and consumer are totally different - my house is going to stay the same size and with router systems costing at most a few hundred $$ I'm not keen to pay a monthly fee on top.
 
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Robert.Walter said:
Was just coming here on this topic...

When will hardware companies learn that subscription requirements depress sales?
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Smart companies build this into their sales projections. They understand that a subscription may cause them to lose X sales, but gain Y dollars in reoccurring revenue. If the lost sales of routers revenue is less than the gain in subscription revenue, they're still coming out ahead. It's all part of their sales strategy (or should be).
 
Silencio said:
Meraki (now owned by Cisco) have been selling subscription WAPs, switches, and routers to the enterprise market for quite some time now. If you stop paying, you lose admin access to the hardware. It's an awful business model from the consumer's standpoint, a pity because the hardware itself is pretty good.

Here's the subscription toothbrush, BTW: https://www.getquip.com

My wife signed up for it a while ago, but the interface between the head and the base is very poorly designed, which led to the product breaking. We went back to good old Braun / Oral-B. Quip is quap.

As for the Plume itself: who knows what they have to set themselves apart from an increasingly crowded marketplace for mesh WiFi except for the somewhat trendy metallic hexagon design. I guess I like that the remote units aren't so tall that they block the second power outlet.
Click to expand...

Meraki isn't consumer hardware though and the enterprise market will pay. Prosumers just buy Ubiquiti.

For this, you better be getting subscription IPS/IDS rules and a lot more.
 
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