On weekends, people who own Cricut’s crafting machines—What are printer-type devices that can accurately cut documents – have they learned about a future update that will be limited how often can I use the cars they paid. The company, whose cheapest car is $ 180, will now start charging users a monthly subscription for unlimited printing, which until now had been free.
Using Cricut machines requires the use of the company’s patented Design Space software for desktop PCs and mobile devices. Allows you to import projects from other software programs, such as Adobe Illustrator, and arranged them to maximize the use of a piece of paper. Some of the more sophisticated paper stocks that work with Cricut can be expensive. The design space also allows you to create custom artwork from scratch using a giant library of fonts, graphics and downloadable templates – some of which are free, most of which are not.
As we have shown in our document review of Cricut Joy last year, not only can working with machines be expensive if you rely on the company’s projects, but everything must be processed by the Design Space software before the cutting instructions can be sent to the machines. Until this past weekend, the extra step was a minor inconvenience, but now the company has promised a future software update that seems a little unfair to users who have already paid for the hardware.
In a post distributed on Cricut Blog on Friday, the company details several updates coming to the Design Space software, but especially this paragraph has users in its arms:
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The company already offers monthly and annually Cricut Access subscription plans which provides access to the library of drawings, graphics and fonts available through the Design Space app at a cheaper rate than buying them all individually. If you rely heavily on these downloads for your projects, subscriptions are not a bad idea, but until recently they were completely optional and were not required to actually use Cricut machines. That will change soon.
Before the artwork is sent to Cricut machines for cutting, it is first sent to the cloud, where Cricut servers optimize the design and cutting instructions. Currently, there is no limit, and Cricut users can upload as many designs as they want, including multiple revisions, if the optimized results don’t appear the way they want. But soon the Design Space app will limit users without a paid subscription to just “20 personal images and / or models” per month. Ordinary craftsmen may never reach this limit, but those who rely on income machines, such as those who sell their creations through an Etsy store, will have no choice but to start paying at least $ 10 / month. or $ 96 / year to continue using their Cricut machines.
There is no timeline for when Cricut will start applying the 20-upload / month limit or whether it will introduce new, cheaper subscription plans to accommodate those affected. We have contacted Cricut representatives for comment and we will update this story if they can provide more information about this update and what it means for all Cricut users.