Meraki price hikes leave some customers disillusioned

It looks like Meraki's latest move may be having a few repercussions the company hadn't foreseen, with GigaOm now reporting that a number of customers are feeling irked that some folks will now have to pay a premium price for the once bargain-priced mesh networking gear. At the heart of the brouhaha in the making is a new tiered pricing structure that breaks customers down into Standard, Pro, and Carrier groups. While individuals will pay the same $50 per router they always paid, those in the Pro group (which includes property owners and hot spot operators) will now have to fork over a full $150. As GigaOM points out, that has left some users of Meraki's forums feeling more than a little dejected, with one going so far as to say that he was "drawn in by a cost effective method just to be slapped in the face by an uncaring company that used us as pawns." What's more, while those in the lower tier will still be able to get their routers on the cheap, they will have to put up with advertising on the landing pages for their networks. On the upside, the company does apparently have plans to share advertising revenue with network operators, although details on that seem to be light at the moment.

[TrueDis @ Oct 8th 2007 12:29PM]

How about explaining WTF meraki is?

[allaina @ Oct 8th 2007 12:53PM]

i second that.

[Me @ Oct 8th 2007 1:07PM]

Merki Access Points form a self configuring self healing mesh network for back haul between access points, this enable one INTERNET account to be used across many access points. Each access point broadcast WiFi. For the system to work all of the back haul connection data is sent back to Merki's servers where it is analyzed and optimized. A lot of people were using these to give high speed access to low income developments.

[alex @ Oct 8th 2007 1:13PM]

To quote them "Meraki Networks is the pioneer of the first consumer wireless mesh Internet network designed to "unwire the world" and bring Internet access to all. Headquartered in Mountain View, Calif. Meraki attracted more than 15,000 users in 25 countries during its beta period"

Lots hype about this company lets see if there still around in a year if they keep going like this ..

[adam @ Oct 8th 2007 1:25PM]

Good thing this isn't Apple - Jobs would have to send the early adopters a bill for half the difference!

[Nick @ Oct 8th 2007 1:43PM]

Looking at features, the Pro tier is very similar to the old service that they're now calling "Legacy". However, even with the "Pro" tier, you cannot disable the ads.

The ads are injected from a frame that wraps every page you visit... It's rather obtrusive and ugly.

So, even if you're paying $150 per device, you still can't turn the ads off for the users. And if you have an existing network, you'll need to pay 3x the old rate to expand.

This is why so many users are upset.

[Paul @ Oct 8th 2007 3:43PM]

Similar to how netzero used to provide free internet.

[Harold @ Oct 8th 2007 5:08PM]

Just let the market work it out. They obviously recognized that the demand for the product is high so they raised the price. When demand and therefore consumption start to go down they will lower the price again. And with such a high price someone will come along wanting a cut. Someone will mimic the technology and that will cut into the demand for maraki products which will lower the price. Same old story here.