Particle Reviews & Product Details

The hardware and software is reliable and adaptable for a number of IoT applications. It is fast to deploy in prototypes and robust and fully featured for deployment in demanding applications. Their team is invested in the success of devices built with their solution and the support is fast and well informed. It is our go-to platform for all things IoT. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The pricepoint of the platform is not well suited to consumer products. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

- If you are starting from scratch, Particle hands down provides the fastest way to design, develop and deploy a product. We deployed and released our first product with Particle within 12 months of starting development. This included full certification and a manufacturing line.

- Particle cloud services and dashboards are the real add-on value here. Dashboards provide quick ways to deploy FOTA, monitor your fleet, SIM card integration for cellular devices etc... are crucial to managing an IoT fleet.

- Great documentation & support for developers. This is important for any platform and is seriously underrated.

- Platform is mature and easy to use. Minimal learning curve.

- Hardware is fully certified and tested (i.e., FCC etc...) Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

- Dashboard is great but lacks features such as fleet health notifications, breakdown of API calls per device or fleet and other tools to debug failures

- Particle being a platform, has depreciated all their Gen3 products just three years after releasing them, making the initial hardware no longer available. This is terrible from a consumer standpoint as engineering time, development efforts, and certification costs will have to be done for new hardware

- Depreciation of significant features such as mesh. One of the key features Particle had was the ability to mesh devices together. This separated their system from other competitors. Unfortunately, this feature was also depreciated.

- Pricey, scaling up large fleets of IoT devices eventually become very pricey with Particle, if you have no need for their cellular integration and only require Wi-Fi devices. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Really well designed and made, with great community support, but really terrible customer service Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Particle doesn't even bother to follow up with open tickets. Really terrible customer service Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The ability to build apps without dealing with the infrastructure Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Developer language is too low level and firmware updates are not separate from apps. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The software interface is nice and valuable. Good community for clearing doubts Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Sometimes there is lag in the connectivity Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Quick setup and thriving and active community. Documentation is good and helps you write good code. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The prices when scaling up. 4G and Simcard options are very pricy leading us very quickly to move away from particle and choosing our own hardware now that we are scaling up. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The platform is very complete for the different types of applications you may be designing, managing the product by monitoring their status is very handy, you can watch the status of the smart items even with your phone app. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The need to stay connected to the cloud, you can not manage easily while the system you design with the particle devices is working offline, I would like to have the same easy managing system when working offline. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

We switched our sensor interface board’s logic/communication chip over from using Particle to a competitor’s micropython based boards. After we did, we had nothing but problems - from hardware failures to cellular connectivity issues to kernel panics. We were constantly trying to engineer new hardware and software approaches to mitigate all of the new and exciting ways that that board would find to crash. We finally got sick of it and switched back to Particle Boron and our stability has increased tremendously. I used to wake up every morning and check out backend metrics dashboard to find out which devices had stopped reporting. Now that we are back with Particle and have swapped out the last of our devices, I haven’t had to do this in weeks. They just work like they are supposed to. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The only thing I dislike (and the reason we moved away from Particle to begin with) is being forced to use AT&T in the United Stares for data on the Boron devices. We just didn’t have coverage in a lot of our area, but fortunately the coverage has improved in recent months. Having a Verizon option (the ublox chip can support it and is already an approved Verizon module, Particle just doesn’t submit the IMEI numbers to Verizon) would be amazing. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I switched to Particle because of the built-in connectivity. I am a novice at microcontrollers, so anything I can do to simplify the process is well worth it. When I received my first wi-fi Particle (a Photon), and again later when I bought my first cellular unit (an Electron), I was overwhelmed at how quickly the claim and communicate process worked. Following through with Variables, Functions, Publish, and Subscribe makes the process of exposing the Particle and controlling it extraordinarily simple. Add OTA flashing and, well, what’s not to like? Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I struggle a little with getting definitive information about specific functions. The Reference documents and Tutorials are okay, and the Community certainly helps, but I’d really like to be able to dig into a comprehensive reference document that provides accurate and complete information about how certain functions and models operate. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

- Thorough Documentation

- Timely bug/outage reports

- Helpful community forum with engaged Particle devs Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Lack of code testing integration/documentation Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.