Policy change sees older Arlo security cameras losing support beginning in April

CARLSBAD, Calif. – Wireless surveillance camera company Arlo Technologies is stirring discontent among customers this week following a policy change affecting its products.

On Jan. 1, Arlo released an update for its End of Life (EOL) policy that will be sunsetting support for a number of its products. Two cameras in particular, the Arlo Wire-Free Camera (VMC3030) and the Arlo Pro Camera (VMC4030) will reach EOL on April 1, 2023. Several other products, the Arlo Pro 2 (VMC4030P), Arlo Q (VMC3040), Arlo Q+ (VMC3040S), Arlo Baby (ABC1000), Arlo Security Light (ALS1101), Arlo Audio Doorbell (AAD1001) will reach EOL on Jan. 1, 2024 (This includes services for those products like free 7-day rolling cloud storage, Arlo system notification emails, and E911).

Security Systems News reached out to Arlo Technologies for more information regarding the policy change and was told there would be a statement forthcoming from the company. An Arlo spokesperson pointed to the Twitter feed of Arlo CEO Matthew McRae, who began a late-evening Twitter thread to address customer concerns regarding the new policy and providing more information about the future of their products. “I also thought it would be a good idea to describe the service changes coming in February and how those changes maximize value for our users,” McCrae wrote. “Arlo is not immune to the rising costs of doing business and we have raised the monthly fee on our plans. However, the team worked extremely hard to build out new annual plans with NO COST INCREASE. Why annual plans? An annual plan only has one transaction per year vs. 12 transactions on monthly plans. This allows us to save on bank, processor, and other per transaction costs and pass that savings on to our users.”

He continued, “All plans now support high resolution, 4K cloud recording (a benefit of the migration discussed in EOL thread). This means Ultra, (and) Ultra 2 users can now step down a service tier, still receive 4K storage, and actually SAVE MONEY compared to the old plans. Legacy users will migrate to the new plans, get the latest features, and be unlimited. This means all legacy add-on camera plans will be removed which will SIGNIFICANTLY LOWER costs for users with more than 5 cameras (another benefit of the migration discussed in EOL thread).”

Summary: most users can receive the latest Arlo service offerings with a zero-cost increase or save money over our older plans. And we have a robust roadmap for services and new features coming over the next 12-18 months.

— Matthew McRae (@mbmcrae) January 4, 2023

Users took to the internet to express their dismay on the unofficial subreddit at the policy changes citing everything from decreased resale value of products to loss of the free cloud storage. Arlo is the second wireless surveillance camera company to come under fire in recent weeks following acknowledgment of a serious security flaw in the Eufy security platform where user data was being stored without encryption to the company’s servers that we covered here.

For the full list of policy changes please visit https://kb.arlo.com/000063018/Arlo-Legacy-Cameras-End-of-Life.