Earlier this week, printer, software, and filament maker Ultimaker announced a new ecosystem approach that gives you one cloud-based platform to access the company’s software, education, marketplace, library, and services, and you can even network your hardware there for remote monitoring and so Ultimaker engineers can troubleshoot any issues.

“Our plan is to accelerate the concept of providing companies with a solution, not just a printer,” Ultimaker CEO Jürgen von Hollen, told All3DP.

The Ultimaker platform focuses on offering businesses an end-to-end workflow, from enabling engineers to collaborate on a design, to storing applications, and printing on demand.

The company’s ecosystem fortunately isn’t closed, but rather includes certified partners, including material provider ForwardAM, software giant Autodesk, and additive manufacturer Jabil, with more to come.

“We rely on our ecosystem of partners to contribute in their areas of expertise, and our open platform to enable companies to push the boundaries,” says von Hollen. “Each company has its own set of needs and unique processes, and we don’t want to offer them just one solution, but a whole platform to customize their solution.”

Ultimaker will provide open interfaces, APIs, and other tools for companies and developers to drive further innovation.

New Software Plans for Businesses

Ultimaker is bundling all new 3D printers with Ultimaker Essentials, the software-as-a-service subscription that lunched about nine months ago. The package still includes Cura Enterprise; Digital Factory, an application to manage multiple printers anywhere; the Ultimaker Marketplace, plus e-learning, support, and access to a digital library.

But now, for companies that want to scale up their 3D printing activities, Ultimaker offers two new software subscription plans; Ultimaker Professional and Ultimaker Excellence.

The new digital library hosted in the cloud​, allows for collaboration and application development among teams and it’s a secure place to house your digital part inventory and iterations. The reporting and analytics tool provides useful insights into your individual printers, print fleet, projects, and applications. It’s designed to full reporting oversight of your entire 3D printing operation and reduce costs with robust data on costs per part, material usage, and more.

The seamless CAD and platform integration (coming soon) will enable you to open CAD files in Ultimaker Cura, skipping conversion to .STL.

If you just bought an Ultimaker and missed out on getting Essentials, you can now buy a standalone Ultimaker Essentials license at $720 (plus tax) as a one-off payment from Ultimaker resellers.

Ultimaker Professional and Excellence licenses are billed yearly and their price varies based on the number of Ultimaker printers you will connect and the number of users accessing them in your organization. Ultimaker offers a full breakdown of these prices on their website here.

If you are unsure which software package is right for your business, you can always try Ultimaker Professional for 30 days for free, and cancel at any time.

Enterprise Level Support

Ultimaker still promises robust customer support for all customers, but a new level of expert consultation (plus full API access) is available for Ultimaker Excellence subscribers. The Excellence package give you faster access to Ultimaker’s application engineers, IT and API architects, and data engineering experts.

“We have more than 130 engineers here and we wanted to find a way to bring that expertise to customers in a packaged, modular way,” says  von Hollen.

A new level of education support at the Ultimaker 3D Printing Academy is also available to help businesses train staff with role-specific e-learning courses.

Of course, if you don’t want any of Ultimaker’s new bells and whistles, you can still buy and use their printers as usual.