About a year ago I bought a Max BR1 Pro 5G router, and i’m absolutely more than happy with it. It’s flawless running 24/7 since then, and the software is a breath of fresh air compared to some other brands of routers.
There is only one small drawback that is not immediately made clear on the Peplink website, or during the purchase: the quite expensive paid subscriptions for online/extra functions and services.
For business use, this is often different, but in my case, where I use the router privately, it does play a significant role. If I buy a CarePlan for approximately $180.00 annually, I’ll have paid for the router twice in five years.
I don’t mind paying for good online services, but because I use the router privately, I would prefer a subscription that is reasonably priced.
Could it therefore be an idea to launch a cheaper PrimeCare “Light” subscription, limited to InControl2 and the eSIM functionality only?
I know there are Peplink routers that come with a cheaper CarePlan subscription, but it seems odd to me to base the hardware choice on the corresponding subscription prices.
Hi Andy, that’s correct. The CarePlan includes warranty, and the CarePlan+ even includes replacement under warranty if I’m right. But that’s not always the high service level needed for private use.
That’s why I thought about the idea of a cheaper PrimeCare Light subscription, with only InControl2 and eSIM functionality.
For example: I want to use an esim, but also then you need to have a CarePlan subscription of $180,00, otherwise the eSIM data cannot be entered. This means, when using an eSIM in a Pelink router, this will always cost you $180.00 per year, plus the cost of the eSIM itself.
I do get where you are coming from, I am using a fair bit of Peplink hardware for non critical/personal use and it’s annoying to not have a reasonable way to keep older stuff like a balance 305 on incontrol after it’s been semi retired. For that router, it’s $330/year at the cheapest. I can buy a B One for $300, put a 4 year extended on it for as cheap as $41/year and it will outperform the old 305.
My old Max Br1 Mini actually can just subscribe to InControl for as low as $25/year. But that device has no ESIM capabilities either.
Now on the other hand, as far as I can tell PrimeCare devices are not being marked up very much, especially considering that these are not off the shelf rebranded devices. I can get current prices on the modems in these things and I looked up the 1000 unit cost when I bought my Br1 Pro with the Sierra Wireless EM9191 and later when I bought my first B One 5g with a Quectel RM520N-GL in it. These modems are not cheap, assume 1/2 to 2/3 of the cost of some of these devices (and yes, those costs may have come down, but they may have bought tens of thousands at the initial launch price to ensure they didn’t run out of supply mid life cycle of the hardware).
It’s just my guess, but I don’t actually think they are making much money on the low end hardware, the software ongoing fees is what is keeping new firmware and features coming at all. I can easily argue this both ways but at the end of the day, they offer a product that still has value to me, so eh, take my money please.
Now on to the $180/year, fyi, if you grab your SN and enter it in to the Peplink store (or 5Gstore or maybe some others) it will give you a list of all products offered for that serial number. For a Max Br1 Pro 5G, it should come back with PrimeCare (not plus) for $150/year, that’s a bit better than the $180 or you can get Primecare + for $501, so $125/year. Still a chunk of change but still a bit better. That would keep your device under warranty for the entire time and if you had other unlocks like $400 of virtual WAN licenses, they would get transferred to the replacement hardware.
Indeed, if you pay the full subscription of $150,00 a year (€180,00 incl. tax in the EU), then you get all the benefits of the online software, high level warranty, and full support.
But if you would like to simplify all of this, because you can do without most of them, and you would like to choose for InControl2 and eSIM functionality only, this is unfortunately not possible.
At this moment I’m running a MAX BR1 Pro 5G, and two MAX BR1 Mini’s, and that would cost me an annually €540,00 incl. taxes on subscriptions. And that is maybe quite a bit of money for non cirical use.
We have encountered a very similar situation with some of our clients. In many cases, they do not wish to take on the cost of the full subscription, as once they do, the solution loses competitiveness compared to other alternatives.
We understand that in high-criticality scenarios, the value that PrimeCare provides is unquestionable. However, in environments where the priority is to combine service quality with operational efficiency, we believe there may be room to offer more flexible options.
The initial Care plan is adequate, but we sometimes face the challenge of no local stock for immediate replacements, with a wait time of one week per unit, which can impact operations in certain projects.
We believe it would be interesting to explore solutions that benefit all parties, such as a “light” subscription including only key features like InControl2 and eSIM management, thereby maintaining competitiveness in deployments that do not require all advanced functionalities.
We greatly value the quality of Peplink equipment and support, and for that reason, we believe this flexibility could open new opportunities and broaden adoption in more scenarios.
I’ll just point out, that Peplink used to offer EssentialCare (warranty), SpeedFusion, and InControl as separate options. so you could do full warranty, which included InControl, or just InControl with optional SpeedFusion… But for most (if not all) of the new products they’ve moved to PrimeCare which is all inclusive with no option for InControl only. While I can’t speak for them, I have to assume this was a business decision to essentially force users to a full warranty to get remote management features, and the like in an effort to increase overall revenues.
I agree it would be great to be able to keep old devices on InControl only for management and allow the warranty itself to expire in some cases, but I don’t think we will see that any time soon, since Peplink specifically stopped doing that fairly recently.
I understand your perspective, and that Peplink needs to keep food on the table. But in certain cases, the mandatory PrimeCare subscription isn’t necessarily the most commercially viable option.
As mentioned above, I sell my customers Peplink 5G routers for $500.00, and then they would have to pay $150.00 per year for online management. This means they’ll have paid for the router again after about three years, in licenses. Especially with routers that are over five years old, this isn’t financially feasible or justifiable towards the customer.
In this case, I’m afraid a different professional brand 5G router with one-time or cheaper licenses will become the more common option.
It isn’t just online management remember, its also the actually warranty for the device (and quite a few other things- intouch, speedfusion connect, fusionhub license etc).
If you are talking about the B One 5G, $USD599 to buy, $USD115 per year for primecare… or $USD455 for 4 years.
so its more like 6 years (1 year included, buy 5x more) to match the device cost if you do it year by year, which is pretty competitive with what most other vendors do.