Silhouette Reviews 

Why can’t we give zero stars?? Bought this machine and can’t even get it to work. It will never connect to the design store. Tried to go in and cancel the monthly subscription as their website says “ Yes! You can cancel or modify your subscription at any time. However, please note that any unused credits will expire at the end of your billing cycle.” but when I try to cancel it says I will be charged a 20.00 early cancellation fee. So NO, you cannot cancel at anytime. This company is a joke. Regret even wasting my money on this thing. Should’ve just bought the cricut.

I recently invested heavily in Silhouette products, purchasing a Silhouette Portrait 4, an Electrostatic Sheet, replacement protector sheets, the auto-sheet feeder, and the top-tier license for Silhouette Studio. I was excited to start creating, but I quickly discovered a major problem: the Silhouette Studio software on macOS would not allow me to select any tool except the move tool.

After some research, I found that this is a common issue with the software, and there are countless articles and forum posts online discussing the problem. Unfortunately, I learned about this far too late, and by the time I realized it, I was stuck with expensive equipment and software that simply did not work as advertised.

Reaching out to Silhouette’s support was a nightmare. It took well over a month to get any response, by which time the return windows had closed. I was left with no choice but to try and troubleshoot the issue myself. As an experienced software engineer, I explored various solutions, eventually finding that running Silhouette Studio on Windows 11 Pro ARM Edition in a virtual environment worked. However, this was a clunky and impractical workaround, significantly degrading my Mac’s performance and increasing power consumption. It was far from ideal. I had to purchase the Windows 11 Pro license just for this.

When I informed Silhouette support about my findings, their response was shocking: they refused to provide any further assistance because I was using a virtual machine. I repeatedly stressed that my goal was to get the software working natively on macOS, but they just would not listen. They seemed more interested in proving that the problem could be reproduced on Windows – something completely irrelevant to my situation.

After much frustration, I finally managed to get the software working natively on macOS. However, I soon noticed that the app was consuming over 50% of my CPU overnight while simply idling in the background. This spike in power usage translates to approximately £5 a day, forcing me to constantly close the app when not in use. The app takes several minutes to start each session. It’s unbearable and renders are very powerful machine useless.

Despite repeatedly requesting to speak with management about my issues, Silhouette consistently ignored my requests. They claimed their lead developer was on leave – but given how long it’s been since they updated their Mac build environment, I’m convinced they don’t have a lead developer. The software doesn’t even run properly on Apple silicon, which has been out for five years!

Silhouette’s customer support has been nothing short of appalling. They don’t listen, they don’t read, and they haven’t made any effort to resolve the issue or offer practical solutions. It’s clear they don’t care about Mac users or about their customers in general.

If you’re a Mac user or value good support, save yourself the headache and choose a different brand. Go to Cricut instead – their products are more reliable, and their support actually listens.

*edit*

I made one final attempt at getting help and was as clear as possible this was about native macOS and the reply?

‘We understand how frustrating it can be when software doesn’t work as expected. I want to point out that using Silhouette Studio in a virtual machine isn’t officially supported, which can lead to the problems you’re experiencing. For the best performance, we recommend running the software on a compatible operating system.’

The woman is truly stupid and needs to learn to read.

Been with this company since 2011. The past couple of years has seen it go from fabulous to the worst imaginable. I can no longer recommend their machines because of the lack of support and the software has become a bloated mess that does not function as advertised. I am jumping ship. Not sure where my next cutting machine will be from - I am positive it will not be a Silhouette product.

I bought a cameo 4 a year ago and have had problems ever since. It doesn’t feed the mat correctly or cut correctly. I emailed several times with no response. I finally after several emails got an automated email that did not address my problem. Now after a year they said they would replace it with a refurbished one. I paid full price for one that didn’t work. Why should I have to settle for a refurbished one. I wasted so much vinyl trying to get it to work. My first cameo was great which was purchased in 2015 but was dropped when I moved. No customer service and machine is a piece of junk. Please avoid purchasing

I've been a customer for years. And all was well until May 2024, when they decided to completely uproot their Design shop and move it to Adobe. Ever since then the shop hasn't been working correctly. Double triple and quadruple purchases of the same design were possible, owned designs were no longer marked as owned, the download orders feature has been removed, we now have to download each purchased design individually, which wouldn't be a problem, if I didn't own more than 1000 of them by now.
And now I can't "upgrade" purchases already completed to include the .svg file, which was possible until a few weeks ago. It's frustrating as they're adding new shop features all the time but not fixing their bugs!

Contacting customer support is absolutely fruitless, you don't get a response for weeks, and then you get a computer generated "Hey, we've noticed there's an open ticket from 6 weeks ago, is this still an issue, please reply with code xyz if you still require assistance" and then you never hear from them again, even after replying with the code.

The silhouette software broke around the same time as they moved the shop, because owned designs no longer showed up in the library, this issue may or may not be fixed (I know for some users it's still not fixed in November 2024, 6 months after the move), and a new update of the software appears to also have significant bugs introduced.

I would not recommend silhouette to anyone currently, because you need a lot of luck for them to actually work for you.

Very expensive glasses because they should be the excellence in therms of resistence, flexibility, nothing of that: the lateral bar broke twice in a few months even if the optician confirmed that the eyeglasses were very well treated. When I reached out to the customer service they gave useless answer, this product is crap and their service worse !

Customer Support literally does not exist. My Cameo 4 stopped working properly one month on. I contacted them at their support email twice with no response. I used their chatbot on their site and can show screenprints of where I put in all my information only for the bot to return, "Thank you for your submission.
Your ticket ID for this case is #" It gave no ticket number. It is absolutely impossible to get them to respond to any issue. The warranty is not worth the digital paper it is printed on because you cannot reach them to act on the warranty.

No response, machine has a software problem and the don’t have a solution for there own software. So I can’t use it anymore and the just don’t respond on our emails.

Machine worked great for about 3 months. I understand issues happen, so that wasn't the big deal. The problem is Silhouettes customer service is useless/ non-existent. If your machine will consistently work well, I'm sure you'll enjoy it. But if you need any help at all you will instantly regret giving silhouette any of your money. RUN AWAY.

Customer service and shipping is nearly nonexistent. I bought a refurbished cameo and they didn’t think a blade, mat or manual would be helpful.
Then the unit gets shipped to a town in the states with the same name as mine. Took a month to arrive. I joined the monthly service where you get 2 items every 3 months. Well first time it does the same thing, then gets lost in limbo forever. It took 2.5 months to arrive. Before that even shipped I had advised them of the shipping issue before. I then did the same thing before the next shipment. It’s been 3 months and nothing.

They use these tiny shipping companies in the US that literally don’t even know Canada is a country. Customer support takes weeks or months (no lie) to reply to you, if they even bother to. The last time the person told me to contact the shipping company and ask them about it. Shipping companies don’t give out detailed info to anyone but their customer that paid for the shipping.
The machine works fine, however the program you find out you have to pay for, is difficult to use. It’s very unintuitive and I need to watch YouTube videos from owners, who often have a different version of the software. I’m trying to sell it and get a Cricut. I’m not sure how Cricut’s shipping and customer service is but it couldn’t be worse than Silhouette’s.

I bought my Cameo 5 machine BEFORE Black Friday 2023. The issues I've had have not been addressed since then and we are into 2024. I understand the holidays - but taking DAYS to respond before the holidays and now "stupid" responses after.
The Customer Service is basically non-existent. The phone number provided tells you to email or use the chat bot. The Chat bot does nothing other than tell you to email.
You cannot get in touch with them easily. When you do - they take DAYS to respond.
I have an agent (Allan) that I've been working with. I've sent MULTIPLE emails that detail the description of my issue AND screenshots with highlighted portions of the program that is my issue. The response back from Allan is "can you send me the material you are using?" -- REALLY? The software description "Foil Transfer Paper" isn't enough? Does he want a SAMPLE?
There are no available managers, supervisors or other team leads you can contact to get some support. You are stuck with who they assign you and if that person isn't knowledgeable or interested in helping you are S*@# out of luck.
I can't even get in touch with them to send the machine back!! I am appalled at the lack of anything from them after the sale.
The new Cameo 5 has a lot of problems and you cannot even get help from them because there is NO contact information (other than email support).

Returning Silouhette Cameo Pro- Terrible service! Unresponsive and all you can do is chat with a BOT and not even get a record of your chat. If you call the company its a message only and then it hangs up on you after telling you to use the BOT on their website.

It took them 15 days to respond to me, I returned the items purchased a week ago and still no refund.

DON"T DO BUSINESS WITH THEM! USE ARE YOUR OWN RISK.

Extremely dodgy company. They claim to support Mac OS, but I've had major issues with the Silhouette Studio software for the couple of years that I've owned my Cameo 4. Worst of all is any software update since May 2022 has an extremely significant bug that prints everything extremely pixellated (regardless of resolution). There are countless complaints on forums from Mac users claiming that they have been forced to downgrade to V4.4 of the software just to be able to use it. I've written a number of e-mails to them and they ignore every one of them. Choosing Silhouette over Cricut was one of the greatest mistakes I made for my business. I would absolutely avoid purchasing anything from this company at all costs as their products are faulty and their customer service is non-existent.

Customer service is horrid. You cannot reach anyone, and attempts to use all forms of contact go unanswered. No response to emails, chat or messenger. Those who do get a response, generally wait at least 3-4 weeks. BBB shows a rating of F. It was not always like this. Perhaps they are struggling, but the product is worthless without any form of support.

WORST PROGRAM EVER FOR A SMART CUTTING MACHINE. The program is so badly built that it crashed my new m2 MacBook Pro. The cutting machine itself is great but the program is terrible

There is no customer support what so ever. I have emailed, sent messages on Facebook and tried the chat feature. No luck getting my questions answered. Makes it hard to troubleshoot when all the info online doesn’t answer them. I’ve waited 6 months for anything and so far nothing.

I love my Silhouette cutting machine. I now have a Cameo 4 having had the very first machine they made for some 12 years. It's not just the capability of the machine, unlike some other Craft Cutting Machines, Silhouette doesn't feel as though they're out to fleece you - you can choose how much you want to interract with their store, suscribe, buy vouchers, buy single designs or buy none - the software is great for making your own designs and always has been. With the Cameo machines it takes some geting to know your own machine - but once you do, the flexibility offered from your ability to make tiny tweaks to settings (and personalised settings) gives lots of creative freedom.