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Home Assistant renames its paid Cloud service Link so new users stop thinking it runs in the cloud
Home Assistant is renaming its $6.50-a-month Cloud subscription to Link while keeping its features the same. The steep learning curve that stands between it and mainstream buyers is left to tools the company has not shipped yet.
The Product Desk · Product desk
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What happened
- Link gives subscribers remote access from outside the home, plus optional Alexa and Google voice control, speech-to-text and encrypted backups.
- Nabu Casa, Home Assistant's commercial partner, runs Link, and 60 percent of its profit goes to the non-profit Open Home Foundation that runs the platform.
- The roadmap adds simpler dashboards, more intuitive setup and generative AI to cut complexity, with a more user-friendly hub planned for next year.
- Device makers, in Schoutsen's view, should commit to local control by default, open standards such as Matter and Zigbee, and no basic features locked behind a cloud.
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Why it matters
- exposure Households that skip Link lose control of their homes once they leave their own network, unless they set up remote access some other way.
- cost Link subscribers fund the platform's development, so the foundation's income depends on how many households choose to pay for remote access.
- precedent Once Schoutsen's team finishes its product database, buyers get a pre-purchase check that cloud-only devices like the June Oven would fail.
A new owner opens the subscription screen, sees "Home Assistant Cloud", and concludes that their lights now run through somebody else's server. Some new users read the name exactly that way, founder Paulus Schoutsen told The Verge, and the rename to Link is meant to correct it [5][1]. The software does the opposite. It runs on hardware in the house and controls devices locally [6]. "We are renaming Home Assistant Cloud to Home Assistant Link, because we hate clouds," Schoutsen said. "Big tech ruined the cloud, so we're out." [2]
What the team tells itself is that one word on the subscription screen was confusing newcomers [5]. What users actually do, by Schoutsen's own account, is arrive after hitting the limits of Google Home, Amazon Alexa or Apple Home [7]. Those people have already tried the mainstream product and moved on. The buyer a mainstream push needs has not hit those limits yet, and for that buyer the obstacle Schoutsen names is the steep learning curve [7].
The thing being done this week is a new label plus back-end work on speed and reliability, and The Verge judged the rename mostly symbolic [3]. The thing being pitched is the roadmap, with a friendlier hub due next year [8]. "We're growing up," Schoutsen said [9]. The anti-cloud campaign carries on under the new name. Cloud-dependent products remain a hard no for the project [16].
For a subscriber, $6.50 a month comes to $78 a year [4][17]. The Open Home Foundation's 60 percent share of the profit leaves 40 percent going elsewhere [11][18]. Schoutsen estimated Home Assistant runs in 2.7 million homes, but the interview does not say how many of them pay for Link, so the size of that profit cannot be worked out [21].
The privacy claim rests on how the service is built. Link traffic is encrypted [19]. "We can't see it, and we don't want to," Schoutsen said. "You don't have to trust me not to misuse your data because I just don't have your data." [20] The service was never mandatory, and everything it provides can be replicated by other methods [10].
Schoutsen concedes the cloud has uses. Speech-to-text, backups and AI work better online, he said, and his complaint is with products that stop working without it [13]. On the June Oven, whose servers Weber is sunsetting, he said: "Now you have a dumb oven that cost $1,500. It's crazy." [12] He also said: "I'd love to see a nutrition label on boxes showing if a product is cloud-dependent or not." [14]
His distinction gives anyone kitting out a house, their own or a client's, a 2x2 for sorting devices before purchase. One axis is whether a feature works better with a network. The other is whether the device keeps doing its basic job when the network, or the vendor's server, goes away. Link's features sit in the acceptable box: better online, with the house still running locally if the connection drops [13][6]. The June Oven sits in the box to refuse [12]. For the hub itself, I'd ignore the name and measure time-to-value: how long a new owner takes to get a first automation working, and how many still run one a month later.
What to watch
- The price, specifications and launch date of the new hub, and whether first-time setup on it is measurably faster.
- Whether the database of products that are not fully cloud-dependent launches, and which manufacturers sign up to Schoutsen's local-control terms.
- Any disclosure of how many of the estimated 2.7 million Home Assistant homes pay for Link.