As an OG customer who was grandfathered into Cam Plus Lite, I wanted to help support Wyze, so I purchased an annual Cam Plus license at least three years ago. Unfortunately, a few months ago, Cam Plus stopped providing notifications of recorded events on my Android phones. The moment I remove Cam Plus from the camera, notifications resume. Sadly, I do not have time to check the camera events throughout the day–I require timely notifications. My Cam Plus sub is up for renewal in Augst, and I will allow it to lapse. If Wyze fixes this issue (which customers have been reporting in the forum for the past year), I will be happy to re-subscribe.
I will have to try removing cam plus as well. My cameras are garbage these days. They fail to do pretty much everything they’re set to do. Thanks for the idea.
I would like to say goodbye WYZE cam. When we bought both our cameras it wass $1.99 each a month for the service. Then within a short time you raised it to $2.99, and an even shorter time later again increse to $3.99. Now im notified you’re wanting $4.99. Thats [mod edit]. Sorry i will be buying new cameras and hoing elsewhere as will yhr rest of my family and friends. Today with our economy and world the shape its in thos is not the time yo [mod edit] your customers. Bye
Mod Note: posted edited to conform with the Community Guidelines
Welcome to the Wyze User Community Forum @roxannehunt36! 
Not quite sure where you are getting your information from, but it isn’t accurate.
Cam Plus Monthly is still $2.99 per cam just as the first post here indicates. If you pay all 12 months at once for Cam Plus Annual, it is $1.67 per month per cam, less than the original $1.99 you were paying.
I have a copy of the email from wyze cam telling me of the upcoming price increase.
Post a screenshot of it. Would love to see it. Their website I linked shows otherwise.
Please post any screenshots about this along with the email address of the sender. If you got an email saying a single Cam Plus subscription is going up to $4.99/mo it didn’t come from Wyze. Not even their Security subscription “Cam Protect” with professional monitoring costs that much.
It may be that you received a special email offering you a BUNDLE of multiple Cam Plus subscriptions all together for $4.99/mo a while ago Like maybe 4 licenses for $4.99/month or something like that. They have done some bundle packages like that before, but that’s not for a single camera. And honestly, for most people I would just suggest they get the Cam Plus Unlimited packages if they want multiple cameras covered. That covers up to 99 cameras for just $99/yr.
I think there is either a misunderstanding from any email you may have received, or else it didn’t come from Wyze, but if you post a copy of it we can help figure out which it was.
when future historians, economists and monday morning armchair biz consultants reflect on the Subscriptions Era* - the era where companies around the world freely embraced a new business model based on entirely subscription-dependent physical products - i imagine two things: 1) the first is a condescending though not unsympathetic sigh - similar to those emoted today when contemplating historical snafus like: ponzi schemes (sigh), the ratification of the 18th amendment (US) (double sigh), the selling of Indulgences during the late European Middle ages (lol sigh), etc. the second, in contrast to the first, 2) a condescending but not unsympathetic sigh as our future economist/historian/everyperson views the (for fun, insert Wyze gadget of the future) ‘termination’ of yet another former citizen unable to pay the citizen subscription fees necessary for continued life, liberty, and service. Sigh “nothing is certain in this world but death and subscriptions…”
if this were an aesop’s fable, i suppose some insect would quip: ‘Live by subscriptions, die by subscriptions lol’ as they sunk down into some obviously avoidable bog.
thanks for the update Wyze Team. i’ll never forget the good times we shared back in the early Covid era during the peak of communal fear and anxiety - real and imagined - when you quietly announced the webcam firmware release. i’m being 100% sincere when i thank you and say: i have no doubt, you literally saved the lives of tens or hundreds or maybe thousands of people - in a myriad of seemingly indirect ways not obviously connected to the ability to easily acquire a basic video web cam and thereby a lifeline to ‘Life’ (mic was total garbage tho lol
Wyze did that.
i’m sure all possible Wyze puns have all been made by now so let me end with a sigh.
I suspect subscriptions are here to stay. Wyze cameras still work fine without them (I have used them that way), but for enhanced abilities, you need them.
The thing is, the industry and startups like Wyze have learned that they can’t survive by giving away everything for free, or for a measly $2 profit on a camera. The COVID era really drove that home, for sure (Wyze doesn’t sell your data).
I can still get 24/7 recording without a subscription on any powered camera (battery cameras simply can’t support that), and I get cloud-saved motion detections too, just like the original Wyze cam. The only exception is they can’t pay for all the free cloud storage on a negligible profit, so to get video you have to chip in.
You can still get video on legacy products with Cam Plus Lite, tho. ![]()
To be clear, as Newshound pointed out quite well, Wyze’s business model is not actually a “subscription model” for services, it is more accurately a hybrid of the “Freemium” and “Subscription” models, which economists are calling “Freemium with optional subscription,” which offers a basic version of a product/service that you can buy for a one time fee and then use the product for free, and it will do a lot for free (unlike some companies like Ring that make you pay a subscription for even basic use that doesn’t cost them anything). Then if someone wants to, they are also able to pay a subscription fee for premium features (cloud storage, cloud AI features, etc).
From what I see, most experts believe the “Subscription” model is not likely to ever go away entirely. It’s been around for centuries, but started to take off in the 1990s with the rise of the internet (first major subscription service CompuServe which actually launched in 1969). Then subscriptions became huge in the early 2000’s due to the entertainment industry embracing them. This then led to SAAS which I kind of despise, but I have to admit it’s probably here to stay.
As long as capitalism and digital technology exist in some form, there will almost always be subscriptions now, as there have been for centuries. However, there are things that can help society move away from subscriptions, and which I am very supportive of: Open Source projects.
The problem with Open Source projects at the moment is that they are often not very simple for people to use. You kind of have to be technologically inclined to use them. But they are powerful and growing exponentially. Still, while they can be amazing, there are only a few instances where the open source alternative for something is as good or better than the SAAS subscription version because of how they get that extra income so they can pay tons of the best dedicated employees to ensure they are constantly the best.
In some ways I’m thankful that is the case. It keeps driving innovation and competition and open source projects get better and better too and everyone wins. I believe we actually have more positive progress due to subscriptions. But that’s beside the point here.
I have used every Wyze product with and without subscriptions and still do. Wyze works great without them. Most of my extended family has Wyze products, and most of them don’t have subscriptions and they work fine for them that way. Others of us love the premium features we get with the subscriptions and we like that Wyze is able to use to that to keep adding improvements and new features, etc. It is easy to view the release notes and News category and even AMA’s to see all the things being worked on and updated all the time, often thanks to Wyze being able to have an ongoing income.
Still, I love open source and am also very supportive of non-subscription options. In fact, I just barely bought a Synology NAS during Prime Day this last week, and I’m going to get more involved with some open-source solutions, including for my Wyze devices. I have no plans to stop using Cam Plus, or HMS, etc, but rather will look to augment and add new features and automations and customizations in addition to what I get from those.
Here’s my perspective: back in the early Wyze days I expressed concern that the business model was not sustainable. You can only rely on new hardware sales to cover ongoing service costs for so long (especially with razor thin profit margins). It was hard not to say “I told you so” when they finally bit the bullet and started charging.
I have a few other non-Wyze devices that still don’t charge for ongoing server services (eg. Guardian Leak Detectors, Rachio sprinkler controller, Sense energy monitor, etc.). Every time I use their web/server services, I worry (a little bit) that they are going to shut down leaving me with useless hardware and scrambling for an alternative. I actually secretly wish that they will start charging a reasonable, nominal fee for the ongoing service. That would give me more confidence that the service will continue long term.
Why would this effect the users that bought the 4-cam bundle at 5.99 a month? All the details on the price increase email and this post talk about a single license for a single camera and not on bundled products that were sold as one item. Does anyone have the term and conditions paperwork for bundled items so that we can read why they were affected or what is the legality of this?
You can check to see your individual pricing details by going to services.Wyze.com and then click on My Account. Then you can see what subscriptions you have, when they renew and what price they will renew at. If you don’t want them to renew, you can also select “Manage subscription” next to that subscription and tell it not to auto-renew.
I looked up the current price bundle for 4 pricing and as you indicated, it is indeed now showing that the regular monthly cost for it will be $9.99.
I had thought the price increase was mostly for single licenses as well, but it seems the bundle price also increased at some point.
If you’d like to read the Terms of Service, here are the General Terms of Service:
And here are the supplemental Terms for Cam Plus Services we had to click to agree to when we signed up:
This looks like a relevant legal term related to any price changes though:
Thanks. Now we can see that it is talking about a special and limited 2-license bundle. Your previous comment made it sound like a single Cam Plus license was going up to $5.99, which is not the case.
The email is basically saying the same thing as this original announcement, namely that each license is going up to $2.99 each. Hence the $5.99 rate starting August 10th.
In your case, I would consider switching to a yearly license. They are only $19.99 for the whole year which would be like it costing only $1.67/month (just all up front). That is WAY cheaper. So 2 licenses would be $39.98 for the year, which is like paying only $3.33/month (just all up front). That would be even cheaper than the rate you had the 2 licenses before in the monthly bundle at $3.99.
Regardless, price changes are always frustrating, I get that.
Your email screenshot was very helpful in providing clarification. Thank you for sharing so that it makes sense to us that you were talking about 2 licenses instead of just 1. ![]()
Your post weaves such a delightful yarn.
But life is a subscription service – nothing comes free. Whether we pay in money, time or toil, we are still paying in some way.
If you want just the camera and an SD card, no subscription needed here. If you want to use services that Wyze has to pay for to maintain and rent, then it certainly seems reasonable that something must be paid. Maybe it actually costs 20¢ and they charge $2.99 but the programmers, the testers, the designers, the servers, the coffee to help all of those come with a cost that $25/cam can’t cover.
Expecting it free indefinitely seems a dream always longed for, never found. Fair travels (or in this case, perhaps, fare travels?).
I am an owner of the first Wyze product also. Back in the day when they told us we would never have to pay a subscription fee. That didn’t happen. I tried the grandfather in clause, but that only worked until they went to cam plus. Glad I never bought another camera or paid any subscription fee. My camera has very few functioning operations but I am not paying them anything and glad I didn’t after reading these comments.
If you have older Wyze cameras, have you tried Cam Plus Lite? You can name the price you pay including Zero dollars.
Yes I did. It didn’t work.
What was the issue?



