Since its launch, the Medit i500 has been advertised as the "easy entry into dentistry" with absolutely no subscription costs. Although a very good way of penetrating the intraoral scanner (IOS) market, we personally had doubts about the long term sustainability of this business model. The Medit Team do a truly impressive job continuously updating and improving the associated software, and this has been up to this point, free of charge. They also provided completely free of charge cloud storage. The question was, how will this be funded long term? Well it seems we may have an answer. Coming in the third quarter of 2020, there is going to be large changes to this strategy, with three subscriptions models / membership plans to be introduced.
An email sent on the 26th of December 2019 by Medit to its users describes innocuously, updates to the Medit Link Terms and Conditions. In this email there is a lot of information mainly focused on the revised terms and conditions, and frankly, a lot of information that most dentists will look over. There is an external link to the updated terms and conditions and buried under a wall of text is some interesting information under the title membership subscription. This felt hidden away and would have been much easier to find if described explicitly in the email.
Note: there is contention regarding what to call this. Subscription model? Membership model? Monthly fees? To us and indeed the end users, it is all the same. Paying monthly fees for services that are otherwise locked behind a paywall. Take note that this is mainly focused around cloud storage and the Medit team has stated they will continue to provide free lifetime updates/upgrades to the scanning software. I repeat, the membership plans do not effect the scanner capabilities at all.
We have taken the liberty to summarise this information for you, which is from the updated terms and conditions and also discussions from the the Medit team on official Medit i500 Users Facebook Group:
Subscription models dominate most industries and IOS seem to be following suit.
One of the main advantages of the Medit over other scanners, like the TRIOS, was not having any subscription costs at all. This may no longer hold true in the future if you want to use increased cloud storage. In saying that, the Medit is still one of the only scanners on the market that does provide a free option in its subscription model and going this route does not hinder the functionality of the scanner itself at all.
Some other scanners (like the TRIOS) cannot be used at all if you do not pay for the subscription. You are literally locked out of using the scanner until you pay. In the case of the Medit i500, there is a free option with limited cloud storage but full scanning features.
Whether it will become a necessity in the future to opt in for the paid subscriptions, time will tell. After all we still do not know in detail what the 'new features' for paying subscribers are going to entail and how enticing they will be.
What does this mean for me?
If you don't own a Medit, this may be an important consideration for you. The Medit is still a completely free to use scanner but if you want to use more than 1 GB cloud storage, then you may need to sign up for the membership plans. We are also still waiting to hear what the the additional features are.
If you own a Medit scanner already, firstly, breathe. You can still use your Medit without monthly costs. You will just need to ensure you are working within the 1 GB limit. Take note that the cloud storage provided used to be much larger before the update goes live.
A few key pointers to ensure you stay within this limit:
Make sure to turn this OFF in the MeditLink Software!
That is all the information we have for now. Keep an eye out on our blog for future updates regarding the costs and features to be released by Medit in the upcoming months! If you have any questions, please feel free to leave them below or contact us through our website.
Happy New Year!
Thanks again for putting all of this information out there for us. I appreciate the work to do this.
My pleasure Derek. I appreciate your kind words and am happy to help where I can.
Too little impartial information out there with sales reps pushing their own agendas.
Thank you so much for all the detailed information. I am interested to by the i700 medit scanner (located n TX, USA) but have a hard time to find what is the recommended milling machine and furnace to work best with medit? Could you please help in this journey. thanks you so much!
My pleasure. Regarding milling, there is no milling unit that has any correlation to Medit.
Medit is for used for data acquisition, after that it depends on which cad software you’re using.
The best chairside mills are still the CEREC mills. But these require you to specifically use CEREC InLab and STL.
If you want seamless integration through Medit itself, exocad ChairsideCAD software works and integrates with mills from vhf, imes, Roland and AmmanGirrbach.
These are all decent mills but not as fast or easy to use as CEREC.
I hope that helps 🙂