Explain the Pro Plan MRC Increase

Hello,

We just saw the recent change in pricing model and wanted to provide our feedback on it. We had been paying the $0.40 per month per device which was quite reasonable so the increase to $1.50 is quite a painful price increase for solutions with negligible data usage (approximately 4 times). The new pricing model fails to accommodate devices with low data volumes that will not benefit from the cheaper data plans.

We also do not see any detail around per unit SIM maintenance costs scaling with volume.

We had just put together some pricing and this will force us to rework it. I can say that if we had significant customer deployment, this price change would be a deal breaker so I urge your business team to make clear who your target customers are going to be or you will face some frustrated customers. Such significant increases in price reflect poorly on the service provider.

Thanks,

Jason

Have you gone to the pricing page and moved the slider at the bottom of the price “card” image?

Hi @longtimer - Thanks for reaching out with your feedback on our new pricing plans.

As an existing customer, your existing devices are grandfathered into their existing plans and rates. Full stop. We currently have no plans to force any migrations or upgrades over for customers already connected on our platform and our legacy plans will be available for new activations for a limited time.

However, we do hope you take a look at some of the new plan features. Some benefits that may be of interest based on your post.

  • Lower single, global data rate: We’ve lowered our $/MB data rate from $0.85/MB to $0.40/MB, anywhere on our global network without zone restrictions. From talking to our customers and analyzing behavior of IoT devices on our network, we learned that our previous pricing disincentivized customers from sending data over our network. This was restrictive on applications that could use more insights from the field and also for initial exploration of how much data is needed to be useful for a new IoT device.
  • Automatic device scaling - Both our MRC or monthly active device cost and data rate $/MB scale automatically for devices on our Professional Edition Flexible Data plans starting at 100 devices. You can see the full breakdown here (IoT Data Plans & Pricing) which will hopefully help with your forecasting as you plan ahead. This is standard for all customers looking to connect and scale their IoT devices with Hologram.
  • Custom plans - We’re excited to offer these new standard plans and features but understand they may not fit your business needs to grow as an organization. If still the case, I definitely encourage you to reach out to our sales team at sales@hologram.io so they can better understand your goals and work together on an IoT connectivity plan tailored for your organization.

Here are links back to our blog post and pricing details for further info:
Blog - https://hologram.io/introducing-new-cellular-features-and-pricing-editions/
Pricing Details - IoT Data Plans & Pricing

Thanks again and let me know if you have any further questions. Happy to discuss.

-Ryan

Great that you have raised this, I didn’t realize they increased prices.
But I also agree, I think this misses the point of having a “cheap, low data usage, IoT connected device”.

I am sad, because Hologram.io seemed to give great promises, but it seems they are not really caring about hobbyists and small players anymore.

EDIT: Sorry, I just read and realized that there’s a Maker Edition (up to 25 devices), which looks better.

Still, for “Makers” the shipping prices are still expensive for the second SIM:

One second sim costs:

PRODUCT PRICE QTY TOTAL
Global IoT SIM Card
Combo Mini/Micro/Nano SIM
SUBTOTAL $5.00
SHIPPING $31.61
ESTIMATED TAX $0.00
GRAND TOTAL $36.61

Hi @john4242 - Makers and hobbyists are definitely important to us here at Hologram which is why you’ve seen we created a dedicated Maker Edition for easy access to our global IoT cellular network and connectivity platform.

As for the shipping, our operations team is constantly working with our 3LPs to improve the shipping experience to our global customers. Would you mind shooting a note to success@hologram.io so our success team can investigate the shipping cost for your order? It can vary quite a bit based on speed, carrier, and destination.

Hi Ryan

To your comment on reduced data pricing, that works for only some classes of applications. Based on your pricing structure, we will only see benefits once we have 10000 deployed units so your pricing model has effectively created a barrier for launching with a 4 times price increase for those attempting to scale low data applications. We are using the COAP protocol with DNS queries so our data usage is negligible.

A better approach might be some minimum monthly cost for the combination of SIM plus data to allow different application models to benefit during their launch period.

Thanks,

Jason

Could some from hologram clarify the current shipping costs for sims in the USA. For example, if I order 1-10 sims to a US address - is the shipping cost now $35? Thanks for the clarification.

Bob

No, that’s only for international DHL. Domestic shipping rates should be pretty normal. If you’re seeing anything unexpected there, let us know.

Great news. The rates for domestic shipping have always been fine. Thanks for the clarification!

Bob

Hi @longtimer - Our scaling discounts at 100 devices. If you’re seeing somewhere on the site that indicates otherwise that 10,000 devices is required please let me know as that’s not intended. As always, the custom billing plan you described is the type of requirement our sales team can assist with if you’re interested (sales@hologram.io). Thanks again for keeping us honest.

-Ryan

Hi Ryan,

Your scaling does start at 100 devices but doesn’t reach the same $0.40 per unit monthly pricing for the SIMs until 10000 units. So for low data devices, the price doesn’t match until 10000 devices are active.

Thanks,

Jason

Thanks for the tip Ryan, I’ve fired off an email, let’s see if we can resolve the shipping cost issue (to the United Kingdom).

I think any hobbyist Today might be an influencer and recommend-er for the product Tomorrow.

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