The Snoo, a very expensive but widely loved smart crib, now has some of its best app features locked behind a new $19.99 monthly premium subscription. The change, which came into force this weekhas infuriated many Snoo owners, as the subscription puts some previously free features that new parents rely on behind a costly paywall.
A bunch of threads in the Snoo subreddit have exploded with complaints since the plan was announced last month. “Wild choice,” wrote a user“It’s really disgusting to take advantage of parents who are just trying to get their kids to sleep and are already paying a lot of money for the pleasure of something that a) may not work, b) can only be used for a short period of time before it becomes useless, c) requires ongoing payment to use all the features.”
“I’m not opposed to the concept of a premium subscription if they want to add more features. I’m surprised to see existing features that were advertised as coming with the Snoo are suddenly paying for,” says Sarah, Snoo owner in Australia The edge. (Sarah’s name has been changed at her request for privacy reasons.) “It’s like a mechanic intentionally breaking your car just so they can sell you the repair.”
You can get the most out of your Snoo by connecting it to Wi-Fi via the Happiest Baby app, which makes crib use a breeze. When you turn on the Snoo, the crib floor rocks back and forth to soothe your baby while a buzzing white noise plays. If your baby fusses or cries, the Snoo can respond by increasing the intensity of the movement and sound, and you can control many settings from the app. The app also offers features like sleep tracking and a “weaning mode” that helps when you eventually need to transition baby. to a bigger bed.
Until now, all of the app’s features were free. But as of July 15, the Happiest Baby app is offering many features behind the Premium subscription, including some of the app’s best tools, like sleep tracking and weaning mode.
The paywall is particularly painful because the Snoo isn’t cheap to buy. At full retail price at Happiest Baby, the Snoo costs $1,695, while a certified pre-owned Snoo costs $1,195. The resale market is a common way to find one for less, but Happiest Baby is now incentivizing potential buyers to purchase a Snoo directly from Happiest Baby or an authorized partner.
If you purchase a Snoo from Happiest Baby or an authorized partner after July 15, 2024, you get a Premium subscription for one baby for nine months, says Harvey Karp, CEO of Happiest Baby. The edgeIf you rent a Snoo, which costs $159 per month, you’ll have access to Premium features for the duration of your rental plus one additional month.
(People who purchased a Snoo from Happiest Baby or an authorized partner before July 15, 2024 get the best deal. If that’s you, you’ll have access to a Premium subscription with every baby you have. A second baby can be added via the app, and for additional babies you can contact Happiest Baby customer support.)
On the other hand, if you buy a Snoo on the resale market, you’ll have to choose whether you want to pay for the subscription. The company gets a lot of support requests from people who got their Snoos second-hand, Karp says, and “the subscription allows us to provide the same level of service (technical support, troubleshooting, sleep consultations) to SNOO users who bought their SNOOs on the resale market.”
“I’ve already spent a lot of money on the device itself. It would be a shame to miss out on some of the benefits I bought it for.”
Sarah, Snoo’s owner from Australia, says she purchased her Snoo from a company that buy and renovate Snoos but she’s not affiliated with Happiest Baby. That means she won’t get free months of Premium, but she says she’ll pay for it. “I’ve already paid a lot of money for the device itself. It would be a shame to miss out on some of the benefits I bought it for.”
Jordan Leventhal, who is expecting a baby in September, says The edge that he and his wife found a Snoo on Facebook Marketplace for an affordable price. While he says they can afford the $20 monthly premium subscription, “I don’t know if we would have bought the Snoo” if they had known they would be charged.
For my wife and I, the Snoo has been a lifesaver. Before we got it, our baby wouldn’t sleep on anything but us, meaning we would take turns staying up all night for the baby’s sake for weeks. We were desperate for something that would allow him to sleep independently.
We finally found someone on Facebook Marketplace who was selling their barely used Snoo for much less than Happiest Baby’s official options. (Our family very generously gifted us the Snoo, which we’re extremely grateful for, because even the lower price would have been a huge hit.) We’ve been using the Snoo for months, and our baby just transitioned to a bigger bed with a lot of help from the weaning mode—a feature we would have had to pay for if our baby had been born a few weeks earlier.
Despite the outcry, Happiest Baby decided to launch the subscription. “To make Snoo even more accessible, we have to be able to be agile and adjust our business structure,” Karp says.