works great, absolutely love it… Where do I start paying? Looking forward to it. Great work team.
Worked perfect to add the cloud component, create account and login. If this work I will happily pay $5 / month to support it and HA in general.
But clicking ‘Activate the Home Assistant skill for Google Assistant’ only returns a 404. Any suggestions?
It should no longer be returning 404, it went live a while back. That said, the instructions will walk you through an alternative approach that will work.
Hi all
I’m trying to use it with Alexa in Italy, but I don’t find the HA Alexa skill in the italian Alexa store list.
What can do or how can I help to get it also in Italian skill store?
Thanks
I have been using this for a few months. However, I have two issues. The first is the free period is supposed to end on June 30th, and it’s the 26th and there is not information on how to pay. The other issues is that there needs to be a way filter out the things in home assistant that I don’t want exposed to Google Assistant and Alexa. The assistants are showing over 100 devices but I only need about half of those to be exposed to the assistants.
It has been extended 1st Sept asposted here
Items can be filtered
read this post
And a search of the forums has many posts on excluding items to alexa
you can already limit what is exposed. check the docs.
i constantly get unable to connect to cloud. any tips? it’s has worked once or twice but then just signs out constantly
Love this cloud service (been using it for at least a month and it’s working very well for me). I’m honestly looking forward to paying for this service (please keep it $5 a month or less) so that I can support continued development of Home Assistant. Have the subscription plans been ironed out yet?
Sorry to sound like an old record… but I hate subscription services and have recently cancelled several. I would way prefer a one off ‘buy in’, if it does evolve to a paid service.
I’m with you on that. ongoing payments are just a pain
Just out of curiosity, what would a fair price be for a service that you got to use forever? (Not trolling: Since servers cost money to run every month, what single lifetime price do you feel would work?)
I like plexpass model
$4.99 per month
$39.99/1 year,
$149.99 lifetime
Basically heavy discount for upfront
Price Model could change at any time really if needs change.
1 Like
Lifetime of what? Your life? The life of the Plex organisation? - All things must pass, and what if plex goes broke, or the guys behind HA get busy with life and give it up.
I am happier paying per month, and if the service stops, I stop paying.
2 Likes
Thank you for work. Will this become tool for remote access? Really interested in using UI out of house. Sometimes it is critical, like watching cameras when you are out of home, controlling the temperature by sensors and thermostats to avoid issues with water pipes in winter…
I just can not use ddns because my router can’t open only one port.
1 Like
HomeAssistant Cloud is an ongoing service that has ongoing costs. A one time payment does not work unless it is enough to generate returns needed to cover ongoing costs, including inflation.
If it is $5 a month, an annual subscription would need to be at least $55 (1 month free) and a life time subscription would need to be expensive enough to generate about $50 a year (somewhere between $1,000.00 and $2,000.00 depending on what one expects for an investment return).
Giving 4 months free ($40) and letting one pay for 2.5 years and get lifetime service cannot possibly be sustainable.
Lifetime service not tied to hardware with a fixed lifespan, cannot work otherwise.
Plex does this so must be doable but not sure if this is at loss to generate subscribers and monetize through users somehow or if this is at $0 profit.
Not sure what cost would be ($100 -$200000) and not sure what profit is desired but this was not point. Point was, if possible and not ridiculously priced it could be good.
From your examples it looks like you have an assumption that the cost of cloud services will remain constant over time. When actually the cost of compute and storage units decreases over time due to Moore’s law and economies of scale created by organisations moving from self-hosting to the cloud.
Personally I agree with others here that yet another monthly sub is not desirable.
I also think that $5/mth is massively overpriced, and the language being used to describe it confuses ‘donation’ with ‘cost to provide service’, which are two different business models.
Business Model is key.
If goal is profit than my apology, charge away.
If goal is not profit, lifetime or other pay methods can make sense.
Thanks for pointing out Moore’s Law @CJB
Actually, my assumption is based on their statements that they plan to increase the services provided over time, which means that costs are likely to remain fairly constant since even as rates what they cover would increase, keeping things at a wash.
There is a great moment if one takes a tour at Pixar. The guide shows off the render farm and says that in 1995 when Toy Story was made, it took 8 hours to render a frame. He or she then says: “Given Moore’s Law” how long does it take to render a frame today?
The answer is, of course, at least 8 hours (some are even longer). As machines have gotten faster, the complexity has increased. That, coupled with inflation, is why I expect that they need a constant stream of revenue.
In addition, they have said that some of the cost will go to supporting staff to ensure the project continues without suffering from burn out. This is also an ongoing cost that requires a constant revenue stream.
To be clear, nothing they currently offer as part of Home Assistant Cloud is of interest to me, but I am happy to help provide $60 to maintain software I think has much more value than that.