How the Company That Owns MyQ Shot Themselves In the Foot

What does Kevin Spacey, Blockbuster and Chamberlain have in common?  They all ruined their reputation by shooting themselves in the foot.  Chamberlain, the makers of the once great smart garage door app MyQ, recently made some changes to the user experience.  What are the users saying?

“MyQ was a huge waste of money, they will never receive a dime from me” - Jim

“I'm not much of a Chamberlain/LiftMaster fan anymore but I've always loved the MyQ app, really nice UI and really easy to set up and get working. But killing off 3rd party apps just doesn't make sense to me” - Andy

“I will NEVER buy or purchase another chamberlain liftmaster product in my life due to this. They shot themselves in the foot.” - DZ

While these changes may impact your smart home setup, in this blog we will consider some details about the changes to MyQ and explore some potential solutions.

What Changed with MyQ?

Many third party apps have been locked out of MyQ.  Why Chamberlain made this move has the garage door industry baffled. Some functionalities are basically no longer available, for example MyQ will not allow popular smart home platforms like Google Assistant and Alexa to provide notifications about your garage door.    The reality is MyQ will no longer play nice with other smart home players and most of us hate that move.  

How Does This Impact You?

These changes may limit how you can control your garage door through MyQ.  There was a time that you could close your garage door through voice with your Google or Alex device, but that feature is now gone.  For good?  That remains to be seen.  Who’s been affected? As of right now there are about 20,000+ subscribers and the list seems to be growing.  

Why Did Chamberlain Make These Changes?

The reasons behind Chamberlain's decisions are simple.  They want to keep their customers on their platform for as long as possible.  Data is the new currency in this digital age.  Let’s not kid ourselves.  The more we play with an app the more these companies learn about us and our habits.  But hey what do I know, I’m just a garage door professional.  

Is There Anything You Can Do?

There are some workarounds.  RATGDO (if Bulls on Parade just played in your brain, that’s actually RATM), Tailwind, and Meross are all 3rd party garage door interfaces that will “trick” MyQ to work like it did before.  Of course there is a cost involved and a learning curve on how to install.  Yet many are claiming these solutions are similar to what MyQ once offered.  

Want to know more?

On our YouTube channel we dedicated an entire video that dives into the many ways the MyQ smart garage door app has changed. We also offer some perspective on how the most popular player in the garage door app industry upset thousands of their users.  Many are ready to leave MyQ, leaving the Chamberlain Group with not only a big hole in their foot but also a big hole in their subscribers base.  

Why Did Chamberlain LOCK US OUT of MyQ? - SOS Garage Door Service