Smart home platform Wink is having a widespread outage, just over a month after it implemented a paid subscription plan for most of its previously free features. First reported by Android Police, the outage appears to have started Thursday. Users started getting email notices from the company on Friday apologizing for the outage, and Wink tweeted Friday afternoon that it was aware of an issue, and not under any kind of attack.
We are aware of an issue impacting the Wink platform. We just wanted to let you know that we’re still here, and we’re not under attack. Rest assured that we are working diligently to get everyone back online. All updates will continue to be shared at https://t.co/WPpNKlhbQv.
— Wink (@TheWinkApp) September 11, 2020
An update at 10:15PM ET Friday said the company had “implemented a fix for wink.com and are continuing our work to bring the rest of the services online.” As of noon ET on Saturday, however, Wink’s status page was showing its main website online, but its core API and integrations for Nest, Alexa, Google Home, Ring, and others were still suffering a “major outage.”
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Wink announced earlier this year it was implementing a monthly subscription fee. Its parent company was having financial problems as of last year; and in May, Wink said in a blog post that “long term costs and recent economic events have caused additional strain on our business.” The company said in another May blog post that it “had no other way to continue the Wink service as it is currently known” without a paid subscription.
The monthly subscription of $4.99 took effect July 27th.
Wink did not immediately reply to a request for more information Saturday.
