I know this isn’t directly related to the enhanced cloud recording feature but is Wyze working on or considering an outdoor camera? I’m aware of the challenges involved with powering the camera but there are a lot of existing solutions available already. Reviewing some of the ways competitors have approached this issue may be helpful. The old adage, don’t recreate the wheel comes to mind here. Oh and a big shout out and thank you to Wyze for replacing my faulty pan cam. That is top notch customer service and loyalty. I am very much loyal to you. I will not even consider cameras from your competitors.
They are! They’re in the final testing phase of the outdoor camera. I know they’re looking to make it available to customers soon. Tentatively, they’ve talked about having it available for early access before the end of the year. It should be very soon. 
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So, CMC sounds like a compelling feature, but for people with multiple cameras or whose cameras don’t actually get much activity, I don’t find the pricing all that compelling at $17.88 a year per camera. To be fair, for cameras that do record a good amount of activity, $1.49 per month seems pretty reasonable.
This FAQ entry says the expected monthly data usage per camera is 15-25 GB, Assuming about 1 MB per 12 second clip, and the standard 5 minute cooldown period, Wyze is currently prepared to store 12 MB/hour or about 8.6 GB/month per camera for free. That’s worst case of course.
I’d suggest the following alternate pricing model for each camera enrolled in the CMC option. Charge 10 cents per GB of video generated, capped at $1.49 per month (roughly 15 GB). Preferably, make it free if it’s under 1 GB (or some reasonable limit). To avoid tiny transactions, you could use a top-up model for charging – that is, people deposit a minimum of, say, $10, and Wyze generates a monthly invoice and deducts from your account balance, and automatically tops up the account with another $10 when you reach a minimum balance.
I have seen it mentioned that they looked into other ways but pricing was not linear, so this was the best option.
The structure you put forth would also involve a lot more work than the flat fee they currently have come up with.
Well, “best” option is obviously subjective. I’m biased, but I think with my proposed model, a lot of people would sign up all/most of their cameras. I’m not sure a lot of people with multiple cameras will go for $1.49 a month per camera.
You are correct ‘best’ is very subjective. I have 1o cameras but will probably only use it on a few ‘important’ ones.
Without “whole household” subscription option Wyze pricing model is DOA for my purposes (9 cameras and looking to add more). I’ll continue to stick to SD cards for now.
Even Nest will be offering a $6/month plan for all cameras in a household so Wyze should offer a competitive ‘all you can eat’ pricing option as well.
I still think overall it is competitive when you also add in the startup costs (purchase of the 10 or so cams themselves)
Popping by to update that this was released on 11/19/19.
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Except a Nest indoor cam is like $200 list, so you could think of that as a front-loaded cost.
Sure, upfront cost of hardware is significantly higher with nest, but it is also significantly better hardware. But that is a moot point.
I was simply stating that the subscription pricing is not as competitive as Wyze folks would have you believe.
Of course if you look at the whole package (hardware plus subscription) it is a different story. But then again, it is the fact that Wyze hardware is so affordable that results in users having half dozen or more of them and as a result current subscription costs structure is not good.
Please understand that I do not have a problem with $1.49 per camera as an entry pricing point, it is the lack of whole household pricing tier that makes this very predatory pricing.
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It’s actually not a moot point. Is their hardware 5x-10x better, in line with their price? If the $20 Wyze cams were instead priced at $100, but offered “free” CMC for the life of the camera, would that be a better deal? Maybe, maybe not, depending on how long the camera lasts.
I think calling per-camera pricing “predatory” is totally wrong. If anything, asking other users with less cameras than you to subsidize your whole household pricing is predatory. Assuming similar recording activity on each camera, Wyze’s servicing costs scale pretty much linearly with the number of cameras, so how would it make sense to charge the same price for as many cameras as you want? For that pricing model to work with Wyze cams, people with less cameras would necessarily have to subsidize people with more cameras. I say “with Wyze cams” here because Wyze cams are so low-cost that they can’t be folding in much in the way of up-front service costs. With Nest or Ring cam pricing, there is a lot more room for doing that.
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And so far my cams seem to work well (as I write this I am repeatedly making contact with ligneous material).
Seriously? $1.49?
Consider that my Ring doorbell is rendered entirely useless unless I pay them $3/month. No free tier for cloud storage whatsoever, and no onboard storage option whatsoever. If I want unlimited devices, that’s $10/month. And their parent company, by the way, is one of the largest cloud providers in the world. That means they charge that price in spite of vertical integration,
Anyway, Wyze literally launched this service yesterday. This is phase one. They already stated in the AMA yesterday that they’re planning to look into bundling options, prepay options, etc, after they get some real-world data and feedback so that they can better gauge their pricing strategy.
If Wyze is known for one thing, it’s definitely their “predatory” pricing structure. 
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pred·a·to·ry pric·ing
/ˈpredəˌtôrē prīsiNG/
noun
- the pricing of goods or services at such a low level that other suppliers cannot compete and are forced to leave the market.
Yup, I’d call it predatory. Especially if you only have 1 or two cams (think apartment owner).
How low can you go?
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Fair enough. Haha. In @krpan’s original post, it was understood that he meant the opposite. “Preying” on their customers, not the competition.
After a ton of complaints on the limitations of the free Wyze online storage (I was one), Wyze released a paid “option”, a very reasonable paid option in my opinion. Now, I’m seeing a lot of complaints that it’s not whole home friendly (those with many cameras). They’re damned if they do, damned if they don’t, unbelievable!
In a perfect world, Wyze would also offer a $1.49/mo storage solution for my Ring video doorbell, Wyze, you listening? 
Granted at $1.49 per cam a month, its a steal. However, so many of us would prefer local storage and a NAS is the way to go. The cams are great for what they are but reliability on an off-site server can render all of it useless. Ive witnessed this when Spectrum has outages. The cloud becomes useless along with notifications which is why all my cams have chips in them.
If you’re the hack-y type, you can add NAS to the camera yourself. Obviously, this isn’t Wyze-approved, so if you manage to brick the camera, you’re on your own with that. But it seems to work for people and it allows you to use the same app