(Photo : Pexels / Photo by Sharath G.)

One of the earliest smart home hubs, Wink launched in 2014 and boasted a variety of radios, including Z-Wave, Zigbee, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth. It is the only hub that is compatible with Kidde's linked smoke alarms and supports voice control through Amazon Alexa.

The Wink Hub was a good option for those wishing to set up home automation thanks to its user-friendly app and extensive device support for door locks, lighting, thermostats, sensors, and more.

Wink smart home hubs, however, have been inoperable for weeks.

The Users Were Heavily Affected by the Outage

The once-groundbreaking smart home platform Wink has been inaccessible for the past two weeks with no hint of a fix. According to Review Geek, citing posts on the r/winkhub subreddit, Around at around 1 AM GMT on July 1, the Wink servers crashed.

The Verge  mentioned that Wink initially didn't provide an official statement, but 10 days after the outage started, it did send users an email that was shared on Reddit. "We assure you that we're working hard on a resolution for the ongoing issue .... Unfortunately, we do not have an ETA we can provide at this time." it reads in part.

The email continues, though, by stating that the company intends to "be fully online soon" and will post updates at status.winkapp.com.

Wink.com is also operational again, although it just displays a static notice stating that the platform is now experiencing "an issue."

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Why Is Wink Down?

Review Geek noted that this is not the first time Wink has been down, adding that the company had a 10-day outage on Feb. 1 last year. And it appears that Wink has the same issue because it didn't pay its bills.

The outlet also mentioned that users of Wink frequently bring up Wink's precarious financial status. Additionally, the general smart home community does not know about it. This week's outage seems to support the widespread belief that Wink's nonpayment of hosting fees was the cause of the 2021 outage, Review Geek also said

A DIG command was used by Reddit user jam905 to determine the health of Wink's servers. However, it was noted that DNS records for every server are no longer present. This is what takes place when a hosting provider hasn't been paid.

Review Geek also said that former employees of Wink have complained on GlassDoor that they went for months without receiving payment. However, we are unable to confirm whether these reviews are accurate.

After investing a substantial sum of money in R&D and unintentionally bricking a large number of Wink Hubs, Wink's former parent firm Quirky filed for bankruptcy in 2015. After being purchased by Flex, the Wink smart home brand was then transferred to Will.i.am's company, i.am.plus. Wink then started charging consumers a monthly subscription for cloud-based services since it was unable to keep up a supply of new hubs and recruit new investors, as per Review Geek.

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