Arlo increases prices: Plans for surveillance cameras become significantly more expensive
13-3-2023
Translation: machine translated
Do you have a plan with Arlo to record videos from your surveillance cameras? Then you can expect some steep price increases in April.
Arlo subscriptions under the name "Secure Plus" and "Smart" will have new prices in Germany from 17 April 2023. Arlo has informed its customers of this by email. The price increase - Arlo calls them price changes - is particularly drastic for the single camera plans. Here is an overview of the old and new monthly prices:
- Secure Multi camera: 9.99 euros => 10.99 euros; plus 10 per cent
- Secure Plus multi-camera: 14.99 euros => 15.99 euros; plus 6 per cent
- Secure single camera: 2.99 euros => 3.99 euros; plus 33 per cent
- Smart Premier multi-camera: 8.99 euros => 10.99 euros; plus 22 per cent
- Smart Premier single camera: 2.79 euros => 3.99 euros; plus 43 per cent
The increase for the single camera is particularly striking. Both the "Secure" option and the older "Smart" plans are more than a third more expensive. Arlo seems to be counting on users taking out a plan for several cameras at once in future. While the multi-camera option was previously only worthwhile for the equivalent of 3.3 cameras, the value has now fallen to 2.8. However, anyone who only has two cameras in use will still not switch to the multi-camera option. In future, this person will simply pay just under eight euros for two cameras instead of less than six.
You can avoid some of the price increases by opting for one of the newly introduced annual subscriptions - or a "membership", as Arlo calls it. These are available for the price of ten months, so Arlo is "giving" you two months for free.
Who needs a plan anyway?
With Arlo increasing the subscription price, some users are probably wondering whether the subscription is even worth it for them. I also recently addressed this question in my test report.
Basically, it's convenient to know that Arlo stores the 2K recordings for 30 days (with the Secure plan) or the 4K recordings for 60 days (with Secure Plus) and you can retrieve them from the cloud at any time. Alternatively, it is also possible to set up local storage, but this involves hardware costs and installation work. In the case of Arlo, you need a smart hub at least once, which is not even part of the kit for the latest generation of systems.
One of the cheapest ways to record videos without having to take out a plan is to use camera systems with local SD cards as a storage medium. Below you will find two of the cameras that work in this way as a suggestion.
You can also use the filter functions for network cameras and surveillance cameras in the range to find the product that best meets your needs.
Martin Jungfer
Head of Content
Martin.Jungfer@digitecgalaxus.chMy career as a journalist began back when printing presses were still a thing. Writing pieces for a publication aimed at breeders of small animals was my first steppingstone. Several years later, I got a call from headquarters. I was put in charge of several digitisation projects and establishing audience management strategies for regional newspapers and the NZZ. I’ve been with Digitec Galaxus since 2020, writing articles whenever I get the chance. As I have semi-superficial knowledge of many things, my spectrum of topics is quite broad.