LogMeIn Starts Charging for Free Service

I have been a long standing user of LogMeIn.  Their remote administration and remote control products have really made my technology life much easier.  Unfortunately, all great things come to an end.  LogMeIn has made some important changes to their service that will leave me searching for a new service.

Recently (3/4/2013), the LogMeIn team sent users of their free service a notice that they will be introducing some volume limits.

Specifically, their service has now been limited to 10 computers that can be managed remotely for free.  This limit may not affect the majority of users, but folks like me that use LogMeIn to remotely manage more than 10 computers (for personal use, not corporate use) will be out of luck.  They are offering an upgrade to Central at a discounted rate of $199 for the first year of use, regular price after that – $299 per year. Those kinds of cost pull me out of the personal realm and places me, unwillingly, into the corporate realm.

LogMeIn Machines

1. Personal Workstation
2. HTPC0
3. HTPC1
4. HTPC2
5. HTPC3
6. Personal Laptop 0
7. Personal Laptop 1
8. Son’s Laptop
9. Mother’s Laptop
10. Father’s PC
11. Step Father’s Laptop
12. Girlfriend’s Laptop
13. Home Server
14. Personal Netbook
15. Multimedia Server (for streaming movies and music to HTPCs)

Nothing in that list can be classified as anything but personal use… it’s a little extreme compared to what I consider a “normal” person, but still…

This announcement comes after I have been a long time user of their service, and someone that purchased their Ignition application for both Android and iOS.  I understand that they are a company that needs to make money to stay alive, but changes to service like this is the core reason people jump ship and look for other options, including me.

Previously, I had a conglomeration of tools running like UltraVNC & VNC Repeater, RDC, and TeamViewer.  Over the last couple of weeks, since the announcement, I have started to revert back to those products; employing things like OpenVPN and VNC Clients to easily manage my home network.  Products like DynDNS makes doing family tech support easy with VNC.  TeamViewer is coming along, but I still feel the product is too slow to be my goto application.

You can read their full announcement here: http://b.logme.in/2013/03/04/important-changes-to-logmein-free/

Does this effect you?  What are you using?  Tell us in the comment section below…