Every time I am at an event and meet you, the most wonderful community, I hear stories of how many friends, neighbors, classmates, or colleagues got a Prusa printer based on your recommendation. Since the very beginning, word of mouth was the biggest part of our growth. But what always bugged me is, that I never had a better way to thank you for this other than just saying “Thank you”. 🙂 Now as we grow (getting close to 1000 people on the team) and constantly add new things to our portfolio, I think we finally have the opportunity to do more than just say thank you. So let’s take a look at the new Prusa to Prusa Community Reward Program – P2P program!
How it works
On Printables.com, we reward creators of popular models, makers who upload pictures of prints (those are extremely helpful for others thinking about printing that model), designer contest winners, and more – all of this with Prusameters. Virtual Prusament meters, which users can exchange for free spools of filament, merchandise, Prusa Academy courses, or even entire 3D printers for free. It’s also worth mentioning that users can donate Prusameters for education. During the last year, we had a record-breaking 84, 800 Prusameters donated this way!
We’re excited to expand this program. In the P2P program, if you own an Original Prusa 3D printer, your Printables handle (e.g. @JosefPrusa) doubles as a referral code. When your friends or colleagues buy, for example, a MK4 using your code, not only will they get a kick start with 100 Prusameters, but you’ll also gain 350 Prusameters — enough for a free spool of filament. You can even create a link that automatically applies your handle in the discount code field. If you bought a Prusa printer in the past, you can use the same account to log-in to Printables. You can find your handle on your profile page under your full display name. To join the P2P program, visit the Prusameter Reward page and click on Get referral code. That’s it! It’s significantly simpler compared to affiliate programs, which can be quite cumbersome, require contracts to be signed, and are generally more worth the time investment for people with dedicated YouTube channels, 3D printing websites, etc.
The Prusameter rewards in the P2P program are as follows:
- MINI+, 175 Prusameters for the referrer, 75 Prusameters for the new printer owner
- MK4, 350 Prusameters for the referrer, 100 Prusameters for the new printer owner
- XL, 700 Prusameters for the referrer, 200 Prusameters for the new printer owner
- SL1S, 350 Prusameters for the referrer, 100 Prusameters for the new printer owner
Simple rules
We want to encourage genuine endorsements from happy MK4 (and MK2/MK3), XL, MINI+, and SL1S owners. So when the discount code field includes someone’s handle, we check that the account has a Prusa printer purchase in their account history. I think this is absolutely key aspect for the endorsement to keep it’s high value.
Similarly, the handle as a discount code only works on the first purchase of the specific printer model on that account. Once you own it, you naturally have first hand experience with the printer. So using someone else’s handle as a discount code for subsequent orders of the same printer will not add Prusameters to your or their account.
Prusameters from referrals will initially be pending, becoming available about 60 days post-delivery, accommodating any order adjustments or canceled orders. You can check the status of your reward in a new tab on your Prusameter overview screen. Check the P2P Program page in our Help for more information.
New rewards – discounts for our printers!
One of the most frequent feedback on the Prusa reward system is to be able to exchange them for a discount on printer orders. As both the MK4 and XL had quite long wait times, we were not in favor of this change in the past. But thanks to our massively expanded production, we’ve been catching up with the queue over the past few months. The MK4 is now in stock! And the XL lead time is down to about 7 weeks and keeps getting shorter. So we’re going to give this a try! You can exchange Prusameters for $40, $100, $200 and $400 vouchers for your purchase of the Original Prusa MK4, XL, MINI+ and SL1S. The voucher works on both kit and assembled variants.
We’ll be looking out for your feedback on the new P2P program and as always, happy printing!
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Amazing news, curious if you could use multiple vouchers on a single purchase. For example if you saved 3 vouchers adding up to nearly the price of a mk4, would you be able to use all 3 to get the printer at near 0?
No you cant stack them read the rules of reward
Hello. Only one voucher can be used per order and the vouchers can't be combined at the moment. But we are listening to the feedback and we might allow it in the future.
Jakub Kučera – Prusa Research
Great reward system!
What in retrospective referring? On December and Februrary I referred two colleagues to buy the Prusa XL 2T semiassembled
Can someone explain to me, what the point of punishing more active people, or people with more patience is? I mean the vouchers you can get for Prusameters. Why do people, who save longer or are more active only get a lower value for their points?
e.g.: 1000 meters = 100$ vs. 7000 meters = 400$
So for the same points I get 300$ less as a penalty for being more active or saving longer?! Since you can only redeem one voucher per order, my value is almost halved.
Feels like a penalty for referring more people or being more active on printables.
And just to get this straight, I really like the incentive and the idea behind it. I think it is an overall good addition. It's just that this doesn't feel right.
Probably because you can't stack them and then the conversion needs to be worse to prevent people getting too much discount.
But that is exactly the problem I don't understand. I will be punished when I recommend more friends of publish more models? I don't see how this will motivate people to do more. It's even worse when you try to buy a printer with points alone. The Mk4 needs 25.000 Points. So this would be 2.500€ in vouchers. Something is clearly not in line here.
And as you mentioned in your other comment, Maker World makes a far better job here. Is less effort to collect Points there, buy a Bambu printer with it, sell it, and buy a Mk4 for the remaining Money. Not that it would make sense, but its easier as to collect points here and even get punished just as you do more.
Encountering a limit on something being given away is not a "punishment".
I can see the incentives right away. It's obviously deliberate.
You want a new printer? You are encouraged to get some points for a discount. Early vouchers are cheap.
You have a modest amount of points, say 1500? You are now encouraged to get a new printer with a discount, still paying for most of it, or to make new models to increment that discount.
Want a full printer for free? Make a lot of models.
It's not a videogame store, where they can reward you for saving and spending a lot all at once, because giving rewards on their end is practically free. They have a different set of incentives
I noticed it and it makes no sense. Also Prusa Team Jakub just mentioned abowe that they might allow combining the vouchers in the future, which also makes no sense, since the vaucher for 100$ is the best value..
I think this is the right direction, but a strange decision.
I guess this is a great reward for those that have ended up getting an extra sale for you but I’m one of those active people patiently building up points and I was never given 20 Prusameters for completing my profile in February. No one will tell me what I am missing. What more do I have to do?
This need to be fixed, should be allowed to use more than 1 per order, and pay shipping with coupons. In about 2 years in printables, with my models, I got 3 spools after paying 30 EUR, so basically a small discount, while on 2 months in makerworld I have already redeemed 160 EUR in stuff with free shipping
Dang, you introduced this program literally 2 weeks after I finally convinced my work to purchase a printer. Missed the window by just a hair.
I'm about to change my emailaddress. But in my Prusa account, I cannot change it. So I must create a new account here. And loose all my points earned so far (well, not that many, but still)….
Why can't we change our email? I also tried and I couldn't. What is the reason?
I like this. I'll start right away using it.
The points system still sucks making it not really worth the effort like it use to be. I've slowly been moving over to other sites with better rewards.
Sadly I won't be recommending prusa after my mmu2s/mmu3 experience .
could we have backward rewards when people bought mk4 a couple of months ago ?
I just "toss away" 1050 prusameters. I decided to use some prusameters to order three filaments. I checked if the colors and materials I want are in stock. Then, I click the get button for 3 filaments. I realized that I have to wait for voucher approval. I waited patiently for the approval. When the I received the approval, two of the filaments I wanted were out of stock. I waited patiently for the desired three filaments to be in stock. And now the voucher is not valid. I believe that vouchers should last longer, as long as there are issues with the filament supply.
I don't see the "get referral code" button.
Nice, i have been using the reward system for a bit now, i love it. Due to me using other brands of filament more i love the fact that i can use it for merchandise like the clothing. Hoping that it stays or gets more :D.
This program brings quite high effects [io games](https://iogamess.io/)
This is is an improvement but honestly it still doesn't move the needle for me. Printables is my "home" because I like the community and the quality of models here but the rewards are not valuable.
To make that concrete, I have a popular model with roughly ~20k downloads and ~1k makes on Printables and similar numbers on Bambu Makerworld. On Makerworld I've been able to redeem multiple flagship printers for myself and my friends. In the same time period on Printables I'm still working towards a Prusa Mini. I guess I could pay $21 to ship a roll of PLA to the states but why would I do that when I can get Polymaker or eSUN for the same price with free 2 day shipping?
Those are the problems, here are some solutions:
1. Open up the filament vouchers to the higher value engineering filaments! I've heard Prusa's PA and PC blends are really good, I'd love to try them and come up with some designs that take advantage of their material properties!
2. Remove the restriction of one filament voucher per order! It's not helping anyone but FedEx if I need to make a separate order for each item I redeem
That's cool and all, but 350 Prusameters isn't enough for a roll of filament… Shipping still costs $22, which isn't covered by the Prusameters discount code. That is enough to buy a roll of filament from somewhere else. Without the Prusameters discount, that's a ~$50 roll of PLA. I love Printables, and the Prusameters rewards look good on the surface, but they're unfortunately useless to me in the end because of this oversight.