Introducing Cohorts: A Major Upgrade to Golioth’s OTA System

Today, we’re excited to announce the launch of Cohorts, a significant enhancement to Golioth’s Over-the-Air (OTA) update system. This new feature takes device management to the next level, offering more control, better organization, and a safer experience when deploying updates to fleets of IoT devices at scale.

When we first introduced our OTA system, it allowed developers to release firmware updates to devices in the field using tags and blueprints. While this system offered flexibility and worked well for many, we’ve heard from users that, at scale, managing implicit groupings and targeting could become complex. This sometimes required extra attention to ensure updates were applied to the correct devices with the right version.

Cohorts addresses these issues by introducing explicit groupings, allowing you to organize devices into defined cohorts for predictable, traceable OTA updates.

What’s New with Cohorts?

1. Explicit Device Grouping: Devices are added to cohorts based on tags or blueprints, which were previously used for targeting updates. Now, these tags and blueprints are used to form static cohorts, giving you clear, organized control over your OTA deployments.
2. Safer User Experience: The new console UX reduces human error by showing exactly how many devices are being updated, what actions will occur, and what has happened. This added context ensures users know what will be affected, making updates more intuitive and less error-prone.

For full details on how Cohorts work, visit our documentation.

A New Way to Organize Artifacts: Packages

Alongside Cohorts, we’re introducing Packages to manage the files that make up your OTA updates. A package represents a single upgradeable component on your device, such as firmware, AI models, or other assets. Each package has multiple versions, with each version corresponding to an artifact—a binary file uploaded to Golioth.

All existing artifacts from the old system now appear within their respective packages, streamlining organization and management.

For more information, see the Managing Packages section in our documentation.

Free for Individual Developers, Upgraded Features for Teams

At Golioth, we’re committed to supporting individual developers by offering OTA updates for free. With the launch of Cohorts, developers on the Free Tier can create up to 3 cohorts at no cost—perfect for small-scale groupings like “Dev,” “QA,” and “Production” cohorts.

For teams and organizations, the Teams Tier includes up to 10 cohorts for $299 per month, giving more flexibility and control over device groupings and deployments. New and existing Enterprise customers can access unlimited cohorts, ensuring large-scale deployments can be managed with ease.

Transitioning from the Previous OTA System

Devices in the field using Golioth for OTA will continue to receive updates, as expected, with no disruption. To migrate to Cohorts, devices must be explicitly added to a Cohort. We recommend starting by moving a test device or two into a Cohort to ensure a smooth transition.

Once you’re comfortable with the new workflow, you can transition your entire fleet. For more details, visit our migration guide.

Learn More

Cohorts is available now for all Golioth users. To get started or learn more, visit our documentation or explore pricing at golioth.io/pricing.

We’re excited to see how you’ll use Cohorts to keep your devices up to date and secure. As always, if you have any questions or feedback, feel free to reach out to us at [email protected]. Stay tuned for more updates!