Since 2014, we’ve been committed to providing you with high-quality connected cooking through the Anova Culinary app. It’s been thrilling to bring sous vide cooking into your kitchens and see the #anovafoodnerd community grow. We love being part of the journey, from your first sous vide cook to your latest culinary experiment.
As our community has grown, so have the demands on our resources. Our community has literally cooked 100s of millions of times with our app. Unfortunately, each connected cook costs us money. So, to continue delivering the exceptional service and innovative recipes you’ve come to expect, we’re introducing a small subscription fee for our app. The new Anova Sous Vide Subscription will allow us to maintain and enhance the app, ensuring it remains a valuable resource for all of our users. Here are the details:
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Who will this impact? Only new customers will have to pay for a subscription. Existing customers who have an account with us before August 21st, 2024, will not be charged a subscription fee. To be an existing user, you must have downloaded our app AND made an account in the app before August 21st, 2024. In the event you are an existing user, you will be grandfathered in to free usage of the app. You helped us build Anova and our intent is that you will be grandfathered in forever.
If you don't currently have an account but are using the app with your Bluetooth-connected cookers, after August 20th, you'll be asked to create an account in the Anova app so that we can automatically give you legacy / grandfather status and continued access to the full features of the app.
- What does it cost and what do customers get? The subscription will cost $1.99 per month or $9.99 per year USD. What you get with a subscription will vary from product to product, but in general, here’s what it includes:
- Anova Sous Vide Guides: Learn the basics with guides created by our experts. Choose your preferred level of doneness and press start to get cooking.
- Cook Notifications: Remote updates on your cook status.
- Recipe Discovery: Find recipes from award-winning chefs, #anovafoodnerds, and more.
- Recipe Saving: Bookmark your favorites and share your recipes with friends directly on the app.
- When will this go into effect? This subscription will go into effect on August 21st, 2024. Again, if you already have an account with us and purchased a product prior to August, 21 2024, there will be no change in our service for you.
Thank you for your understanding and continued support. Our mission is to change the way the world cooks and this subscription will help us to continue on with this mission. We are excited to keep cooking with you and can’t wait to see what you create next!
Stephen Svajian
Co-Founder and CEO
370 comments
No thanks – too late. My Anova started making noise recently and I was just about to buy a new one because I liked the product. Not any more. I don’t care if you changed your policy. Sorry you decided to have MBA’s decide your strategy instead of actually anyone even marginally skilled at keeping customers happy. I never even used the app. At least I have local e-waste recycling available here.
I’m on my second Anova Sous Vide cooker; it has developed a rattling problem and I was about to order my third Anova as a replacement. Although I don’t currently use the app or the cooker in a connected fashion, It looks like I’ll have to find another option.
I also agree with the comment made above about your comment:
“Unfortunately, each connected cook costs us money.”
I too am in software development; if you need to use the cloud to control a device that is LITERALLY adjacent to the user’s phone, you’re doing it wrong and it is on you.
I liked the product and bought it for friends and family as a gift. I will no longer be using this product and regret ever supporting this company.
I’ll pretend to believe the post at face value for a moment and act like it’s not just greed:
“Unfortunately, each connected cook costs us money.”
If operating the actual cooking control portion of app is costing any remotely significant amount of money, you desperately need to replace your software developer(s) and rewrite your app.
It is hard to picture an app that needs to transmit less data than the key functions of this software take (relaying a temperature measurement + changing set points), and it ought to be able to be handled at a basically negligible cost by a couple rented servers.
If you used a bunch of terrible practices in development so it’s sending too much data and also hosted this on some cloud service where you’re paying far too much for every separate request – that’s on you to fix.
You must have watched Sonos app troubles and thought “Hold my beer.” Charging your customers for your inability to innovate is a doozy!