Hayward pHin is Cancelled, Discontinued, Kaput - What Went Wrong?

pHin started in 2014 as a concept when these smart pool monitors were first coming online. They were a $7 million start-up and the pHin began to dominate the market. This caused ripples in the industry and many pool pros were worried that these smart pool monitors would replace them one day. Fast forward to Dec 20th, 2021, and the pHin is now discontinued and in all intents and purposes a paperweight now.

00:00 What to expect in this video
01:16 Failure points
02:43 The history of pHin
07:40 the problem with ORP
12:02 Subscription fee bad idea
13:19 What I would have told Hayward
14:22 Connecting the pHin was difficult
15:27 Email I recieved
16:35 Alternatives to pHin
20:30 Future of Smart Monitors

Here is the email from Hayward about the shutdown of pHin:

Dear David,
Unfortunately, we have made the difficult decision to end the pHin service on December 20, 2021, and close the pHin business. We are grateful to the customers who were so supportive of pHin. We understand this news is abrupt and would like to help provide answers to your questions.
Please note that your subscription to pHin has expired and is completed and you will not be charged for a renewal or any further charges from pHin.

Will I still be able to use my pHin?
No, the service will no longer be available once it is shut down on December 20, 2021. Your pHin monitor will no longer be actively measuring your pool chemistry. The pHin app will no longer be active but will have information on the end of monitoring services.

What about my subscription?
Your annual subscription was fulfilled and not renewed, so no further action is necessary.

What should I do with my pHin?
We recommend recycling your floating pHin monitor. Best Buy stores accept most electronic devices or you can search for a local drop off location at Recycle Nation www.recyclenation.com/find
Again, thank you for your support. Please contact customer care with any questions.

Some things that went wrong here are obvious. Hayward is an equipment company and the pHin although it was kind of a piece of equipment the whole concept of the device was to sell chemicals to the user. After taking the pH and ORP reading the pHin would recommend chemicals for you to purchase linked to a local pool store. In the beginning, it was set up as a mail-order device and you would get your chemicals delivered. The pHin was truly out there in left field for Hayward and not part of their core business which was manufacturing pool equipment.

Hayward also tried to sell the pHin as a replacement for your pool service company. A bad move in many ways as a big part of their equipment sales was to pool pros. So Hayward was talking out of both sides of their mouth here. Trying to get the homeowner to fire their pool guy and at the same time wanting their pool guy to buy their products. Bad marketing for sure.

Last, the pHin was limited for the price of $299 and the $100 annual subscription fee. It only read pH, ORP, and the water temperature. There are other important water test factors like Alkalinity, Calcium Hardness, and Cyanuric Acid levels. And let's not forget the most important, Free Chlorine. Yes, they tried to incorporate a test strip that could be scanned for these other readings but this required user interface of a level of actual physical weekly water testing. Which the pHin was designed to eliminate. It would be like creating a word processing software with a spell checker that only looked for errors in capitalization and punctuation and for checking the spelling you had to use a dictionary yourself.

The final nail in the coffin was that the pHin relied on ORP to determine if the pool water was safe or not. So many, many users got the “Unsafe” red warning on their home screens when the ORP dipped below a certain level. But to keep the ORP in the safe zone the homeowner would need to keep the pH below 7.4 and the Chlorine level at 5 ppm. Unrealistic in both regards.
My advice to Hayward if I was invited into the board room meeting about the pHin in 2018, stay in your lane. Keep making great pool equipment and stop dabbling in things that are not your core business.

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