Discussions

I am not great at explaining things, so bear with me. To those with a Cricut out there who haven't heard the news, it seems that Cricut is changing their Design Space subs:cription model.  
 
For the unfamiliar, the Cricut Design Space software is free to download and is the only way that someone is able to use their Cricut machine. It has been free, though with the option to pay for an advanced subs:cription or individually purchase assets.  
 
Cricut has announced that while you can still use the software for free, you are limited to 20 free file uploads per month. If you are wanting to exceed this number, you will have to pay a $9.99 subs:cription fee. If an individual does any regular amount of crafting, it is very easy to hit this limit of 20 uploads per month.  
 
In my humble opinion, this change is heinous. While you aren't entirely forced to pay for a subs:cription, Cricut has chosen limits that essentially force those who want to use their machine regularly to pay ten dollars a month. It really says something if a company is still charging you money even after you purchase a product from them. When it comes to a Cricut, it isn't a small amount of money either. Anywhere between $200 - $500 dollars upright, the cost of materials, and now a subs:cription fee? Yikes.  
 
Anyways, I'm curious about other folks' thoughts on this. I personally think that anyone who owns a Cricut should be very annoyed with this change. Honestly if I hadn't owned my Cricut as long as I have, I would probably return it to buy a Silhouette or something.

Thats unreal..I havent used my cricut for a few months.. where did u hear about this as I'd like to read it..thats alot of money to enjoy as a hobby as some people like myself do..

I use my cricut as a hobby and I can easily upload more than 20 files in a single day sometimes. Limiting uploads to not even one a day and then unused files wouldn’t roll over. I was super mad to hear that after paying hundreds of dollars for a machine that they were restricting how I could use it.  
 
This is pretty typical of cricut. They have done things like this before and they just normally get away with it. Or sue companies that try and make their product better. They went from trying to sneak in a $120usd annual fee to only forcing the fee for new customers to now removing their plans altogether.  
 
I don’t think they expected all the backlash they got. People were not having it and immediately returned cricut products, moved to Silhouette, called and emailed their displeasure and started petitions (with almost 64,000 signatures in a day).  
 
It showed the true character of a lot of people involved with cricut. Facebook groups like cricut’s and cricut influencers were removing any negative comments and websites like Michaels were removing reviews. Some people tried to minimize the impact by saying it’s ‘only $10’ but cricut would have made hundreds of millions of dollars in forced profits. Plus it took four days for cricut to respond in any way even though they were getting inundated with complaints from angry customers and were still active on social media.  
 
Even though the forced fees have been removed (for now) I will likely never buy a cricut product again. Before all this, I would have likely been a cricut customer for years.  
 
Upside of all this was that I did some research into Silhouette and realized they have some cool stuff! Some of their machines even have more features than cricut AND are cheaper. I’ll definitely be checking them out.