TinkerCad is ending in a few months.
In a very real way I owe TinkerCad for Joe's Makerbot. My boys love TinkerCad. But with TinkerCad's recent switch to a very prohibitive paid model it was difficult to continue recommending them. And now they're ending. Part of me wishes that someone will buy them up and keep it going, maybe make a slightly more accessible paid model. But for now this is the state of events. Sad.
When they created that paid model, I sent them an email that said the model was not priced correctly, and they would fail. They raised a bunch of money from investors, and had to come up with a model that made money... but I had told them that the model was not priced correctly for consumers.
ReplyDeleteI also shared some solutions and predictions. I guess I was right in the end.
I posted a long letter on their blog. Seems they should figure something out for their paying customers.
I did the same. Dropbox, Google Drive, Pandora, oh so many web services use the same model. Make something awesome, make it free, have some paid model that you're only going to need when you rise to power user level, profit.
DeleteSeems they weren't interested in the long term and they're no longer interested in their paying customers. They've found something better that works for them, and that's fine. Can't blame them for looking out for themselves. It sucks for us as the consumers, but hopefully they'll do something awesome. I just no longer care. If I had $10k I'd buy their source code and maintain it myself, but I don't need another project and I don't have $10k.