Last week Kobo officially unveiled their new Kobo Stack subscription service, which includes a new Send to Kobo feature for syncing non-Kobo ebooks, and they also released their latest updated Beta OS software for select Kobo ereaders that adds support for using multiple library cards, among other things, and now Kobo has announced that they’re rolling out the new Beta software and Kobo Stack subscription service to several additional countries, including the US.
A Kobo Stack subscription costs $2.99 per month in the US, and there’s a 90-day free trial (except in TN and DC) for new subscribers.
Kobo also stipulates that using the Kobo OS 6 Beta software is required, but so far that’s only available for the Kobo Libra Colour, the Kobo Clara Colour, and the Kobo Clara BW.
In the US, it looks like a Kobo Stack subscription grants access to the Send to Kobo feature, which includes syncing of content and annotations, with 50GB of cloud storage, and the new “Workbooks” feature. But it doesn’t appear to include an extended warranty on select Kobo ereaders like it does in some countries.
On one hand, it’s surprising how many people are complaining about Kobo’s new subscription plan and how they expect Kobo to make the Send to Kobo feature free since Amazon does, but I think people forget that Kobo is just a simple, basic ebook store—outside of their ereader products they don’t sell any physical goods at all. Amazon is a completely different type of company.
Then on the other hand, people bring up how Pocketbook offers free cloud storage and syncing on their ereaders and apps, and that argument falls apart since Pocketbook doesn’t even have a competitive ebook store to fall back on. Kobo might have had more success with a free plan offering limited storage space, with the option to purchase additional storage space for a monthly fee.
Kobo has added a bunch of new countries to the list of where Kobo Stack is available now since last week. Check the Kobo Stack help page for the full list and for more details about what is included with the subscription.
There are a lot of complaints about the Beta software so you might want to hold off and do some research before updating.
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