It's only a monthly fee if you want recording. I have two dropcams, neither of which has a subscription attached, that I've been using for over two years now.

It's only a monthly fee if you want recording. I have two dropcams, neither of which has a subscription attached, that I've been using for over two years now. I think I activated recording for one month of the entire period, when I wanted to see what was eating my garden, but the rest of the time, one acts as our "let's make sure the house didn't burn down on vacation" cam, and the other is a glorified baby cam, both of which we just check on-demand. I recognize that I've bought a product that might stop working at Dropcam/Nest/Google's whim, but Google, at least, I trust to give reasonable notice for sunsetting. I used the dropcam to replace a homebrewed IP cam setup + dyndns + yadda yadda + recording to my synology. It turns out that free wasn't very free -- it took too much of my time on an ongoing basis. Having the dropcam just work was worth the price (and the risk of it becoming a paperweight after three or four years -- which it hasn't yet!)