The Pro plan vs the Free plan
The Obico Cloud offers two plan options to our users:
- The Pro plan
- The Free plan.
| Pro plan | Free plan | |
|---|---|---|
| Webcam streaming | Unlimited 25 FPS (frames per second) Premium Streaming. | Basic Streaming up to 5 FPS. Throttled for 30 seconds per minute. |
| Free AI Detection Hours | 50 per month | 10 per month |
| Pre-paid AI Detection Hour Packs | Eligible | Eligible |
| Subscribe&Save AI Detection Hour Packs | Eligible | Not eligible |
| OctoPrint Tunneling | Unlimited | Limited to 300MB/month |
| Multiple printers | Each additional printer costs 50% of that of the 1st printer | Can have only 1 printer |
Other perks included only in the Pro plan​
- Concierge technical support. 8 business hours turn around time guaranteed.
- G-Code remote upload and printing.
- Receiving alerts via text (SMS).
- Secure printer feed sharing.
FAQs​
How much will the Pro plan costs me?​
The Pro plan costs $4 per month if you subscribe to the annual plan. This is barely 1 coffee each month. If you go with the monthly plan, it'll cost $6 per month.
The base plan is limited to 1 printer. If you have more printers, you can add them at $2 per month per additional printer.
You can get more details on Obico Cloud pricing page.
Why can't Obi The Owl just work for free? People love FREE, you know.​
Everyone at Obico loves free too! And we also love 3D printing and we want to make Obico as accessible as possible to 3D printing enthusiasts like us. That's why we offer the Free plan to give everyone an option to remotely monitor their 3D printers. Feel free (pun intended) to stay on the Free plan for as long as you want if a paid subscription is not your cup of tea.
However, we do have some limits on the Free plan. For instance, it doesn't have the sleek 25 frames-per-second webcam streaming. And it is limited to 10 AI Detection Hours (what is it?). The reason is that these cool features do cost non-trivial amount on things like GPU (the expensive computational resources that power the AI behind Obico), cloud storage, and network bandwidth. If Obi just offers unlimited free service to everyone, she and her team can't sustain themselves.
Can I just pay a one time fee for the service, just like Simplify3D?​
Unfortunately the answer is "No" for 2 reasons:
Obico is different from Simplify3D in that it incurs server cost in the cloud (unless you run self-hosted server). And this cost is re-curring. For every minute Obico server runs in the cloud, we need to pay for computation power, storage and bandwidth. If we charge users a flat fee, at some point the money will run out and we won't be able to pay the bills that our infrastructure provider sends us. It does nobody any good if Obi and her team has to surrender herself to the bankruptcy court.
We believe in continuous improvement and accountability. Subscription gives all users the power to hold us accountable, since anyone can cancel their subscription at any time. You probably have heard of examples of early Simplify3D advocates who paid for the software growing unhappier for the lack of improvements. There aren't a lot of resorts when you have shelled out $150 upfront when the software or service gets worse.