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.

logmeinrant-1

We’re making some changes to LogMeIn Free — specifically introducing new volume limits on LogMeIn Free accounts — that will impact a small portion of our user base.

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…

In order to ensure that we can continue to provide high-quality, free remote access services, make meaningful improvements, and invest in products that meet the evolving needs of our customers we will be limiting the number of computers a user can access free of charge to 10. For users that would like to remove this volume limit and access more than 10 LogMeIn Free computers a subscription to LogMeIn Central, our remote management tool, will be required.  Any computers that exist beyond the 10 computer, free-only limit will not be deleted; rather they will not be remotely accessible unless the free account is upgraded to Central.

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.

We appreciate that with change comes questions, concerns, and sometimes angst.  And we want to make sure our users have quick answers to any questions and all the information needed to help ease the transition.  We hope users will make the decision to upgrade their accounts.  We also recognize many users may not be happy with this change and will unfortunately consider other alternatives.  In the long-term we believe this change will allow us to continue to support all of our users, paid and unpaid.

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…

About Joe D

I have always had a passion for everything computing. In early 2000, I decided to take my passion to the web. Thus, C.O.D. was born. Through the years we have made many great friends at C.O.D. and hope to continue our journey for years to come.

Check Also

DCS-1130 Missing Features After Firmware Update

If our readers are anything like me, they like to keep their devices up to …

3 comments

  1. Yeah, LogMeIn is pretty slick. It used to be my favourite, but now I prefer RHUB for its better security and its appliance gives you everything in one setup.

    • RHUB Looks decent, but not sure if it fits with the remote support model per say. Looks more like a unified communications client that has remote support functionality built in. A lot of folks have moved to Teamviewer to access their machines remotely.

  2. signup 2nd or 3rd account, problem solved

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.