The best features of Snoo are now available with a premium subscription.

Now, the pricey but widely appreciated Snoo smart crib has some of its best app features locked behind a new $19.99-per-month premium subscription. The change, which It came into effect this week.This has angered many Snoo owners, as the subscription puts some previously free features that new parents rely on behind an expensive paywall.

A bunch of threads in the Snoo subreddit have: exploded with Complaints Since the plan was announced last month, it has been a “wild choice.” One user wrote“It’s actually disgusting to take advantage of parents who are just trying to get their kids to sleep and are already paying a huge amount for the pleasure of something that a) may not work, b) can only be used for a short time before it becomes useless, and c) requires ongoing payment to use the full features.”

“I’m not against the concept of a premium membership if they want to add more features. I was surprised to see existing features that were advertised as coming with Snoo suddenly be blocked,” says Sarah, owner of Snoo in Australia. the edge. (Sarah’s name has been changed at her request for privacy reasons.) “It’s like a mechanic who intentionally breaks your car just so he can sell you the fix.”

You can get the most out of your Snoo by connecting it to your Wi-Fi network via the Happiest Baby app, which makes the crib. When you turn on the Snoo, the crib floor rocks back and forth to soothe your baby while playing soothing white noise. If your baby fusses or cries, the Snoo can respond by increasing the intensity of the movement and sound, and you can control many of the settings from the app. The app also offers features like sleep tracking and a “weaning mode” that helps when you finally need to transition your baby. to a bigger bed.

Before now, all of the features in the app were free. But as of July 15, Happiest Baby is adding a bunch of features to the premium subscription, including some of the app’s best tools, like sleep tracking and weaning mode.

The paywall is particularly painful because buying a Snoo isn’t cheap. At full retail from Happiest Baby, the Snoo retails for $1,695, while a certified pre-owned Snoo retails for $1,195. The resale market is a popular way to find a Snoo at a lower price, but Happiest Baby is now encouraging potential buyers to buy a Snoo directly from Happiest Baby or an authorized partner.

If you purchase Snoo from Happiest Baby or an authorized partner after July 15, 2024, you’ll get a nine-month Premium subscription for one child, says Harvey Karp, CEO of Happiest Baby. the edgeIf you rent a Snoo device — which costs $159 per month — you’ll get access to premium features for the duration of your rental plus an additional month.

(People who purchased Snoo from Happiest Baby or an authorized partner before July 15, 2024 get the best deal. If that’s you, you’ll get access to a Premium subscription with Every child you have(A second child can be added via the app, and for additional children, you can contact Happiest Baby customer support.)

On the other hand, if you buy a Snoo device on the resale market, you’ll have to choose whether to pay for the subscription. The company gets a lot of support requests from people who got a used Snoo device, according to Karp, and “the subscription allows us to provide the same level of care — from technical support, to troubleshooting, to sleep counseling — to SNOO users who bought a SNOO device on the resale market.”

Sarah, the owner of Snoo from Australia, says she bought Snoo from a company Buy and renew Snoos But she’s not part of Happiest Baby. That means she won’t get any free months of Premium, but she says she’ll pay for it. “I’ve already spent a lot of money on the device itself. It would be a shame to miss out on some of the benefits I bought it for.”

Jordan Leventhal, who is expecting a baby in September, says: the edge He and his wife found the Snoo on Facebook Marketplace at a reasonable price. While he says they can afford the $20 monthly subscription fee, he “doesn’t know if we would have bought the Snoo” if they knew they would be charged.

For my wife and I, the Snow Bed was a lifesaver. Before we got it, our baby wouldn’t sleep in anything but our bed, which meant we were staying up all night for the baby for weeks. We were desperate for something that would allow her to sleep independently.

Finally, we found someone on Facebook Marketplace selling a little-used Snoo for significantly less than the official Happiest Baby options. (Our family was very generous in giving us the Snoo, and we’re so grateful, since the lower cost would have been great.) We’ve been using the Snoo for a few months, and our baby has just transitioned to a bigger bed with the huge help of weaning mode—a feature we would have had to pay for if our baby had been born just a few weeks earlier.

Despite the outcry, Happiest Baby has moved forward with the subscription. “In order to continue making Snoo more accessible, we have to be able to adapt and adjust our business structure,” Karp says.