It’s a good service and it has to make money to survive, but the announcement that the remote-access LogMeIn is changing to subscription only is a disappointment.
LogMeIn is a way to take control over another Mac or PC wherever you are. With permission, obviously. But it works so well: I’ve sat at my iPad remote controlling my office iMac, then skipped over to doing something for Angela on her Mac mini, then once or twice also gone to remotely do something on my MacBook Pro. Very quick, very handy. And without it I wouldn’t have been able to look back across the Atlantic during my last holiday to see if my Mac was on and whether I had a particular file someone needed.
Definitely an excellent product so definitely worth paying for. Except, I bought the iPad app called LogMeIn Ignition and that cost £20. I’ve certainly had my use out of it, but when it was sold, it was sold with the idea that this was it forever. You want to do more with LogMeIn, you want to control lots of computers or something, you then paid for the subscription model. But otherwise, the app was it.
Not anymore.
I’m reluctant to be disgruntled about it because, again, I’ve got my use out of LogMeIn Ignition, yet I will admit I am disgruntled. I am unhappy about it. Maybe I’d feel this way if it were only the LogMeIn Ignition change but there’s also that last year the company announced limits on how many computers a free user could have – and those have now been dropped too. Over the years, LogMeIn has also pushed extra products that don’t happen to be of any value to me, like its cloud storage system Cubby. Nice name, don’t need it.
So conditions are added and then dropped, you get used to having to say no to Cubby and other prods, the latest version of the desktop software was a bit of a pain, it’s all gone from a great experience to a well-at-least-you’ve-paid-once-and-that’s-it and now to nope-you-have-to-pay-again.
If you’re a LogMeIn user, the next time you try the service you will start a clock: you get seven days from that moment to when you have to choose which payment plan you’ll accept. Prices start from $49/year for existing customers; that’s half price and only for the first year.
It’s funny: LogMeIn is being completely reasonable about charging for its service and its service is very good, yet doing it this way leaves a bad taste. You know there’s a PowerPoint slide somewhere at the LogMeIn offices which says they’ll lose a huge number of users – and you know there’s a second slide saying that most of those don’t pay anyway so good riddance to them.
I paid for the app, I would pay for the app again, but it’s not worth the subscription price to me so I’m one of the good riddances.