The smart health company is gating third-party app syncing to its own subscription plan for new users.
Withings
Withings has found itself in hot water with its customers after adopting an expensive policy change this week. According to a post on the company's support forum, Withings appears to be gating the ability for users to sync their data with Apple Health to its own subscription service. Current users don't seem to be impacted, but accounts made after October 13 need to be Withings+ members to automatically connect their information to Apple Health or another similar third-party app. The Withings+ plan costs $100 a year.
Many of the responses to the original post are from existing users criticizing the change to apply this additional charge to new customers for what is a comparatively simple feature. A reply labeled as "Official response from Withings" confirms the change, though stating that after the 13th, "automatic sync to third-party apps is part of Withings+." Rather than allowing the automatic sync, new free users will need to manually export and upload their history any time they want to access their latest Withings data in another platform. We've reached out to Withings for additional comment and will update if we receive a response.
Withings is primarily known for high-end smart health gear. The company recently released the Body Scan 2 scale, which costs $600, while the mid-range version will still run you $280.